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One more Sunday before we reach Christ the King, and the tenor of the Readings is tending toward the Last Things. Today we have the Book of Wisdom and it is a sobering reminder: Wisdom comes to those who seek her. The 2nd Reading while remaining on the topic of the final days, turns our attention to the wisdom of living in trust and hope rather than cowering with fear. The Thessalonians were familiar with the promise Christ made about returning. Before they could make their way through the Decapolis, they were already concerned that they might finish running through the 10 cities and Christ would still not have come.
Paul merely assured them that they should not be overly concerned about when Christ would come.
It brings us to the Gospel message: the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids. The difference between wisdom and foolishness is as clear as day and night, which makes the comparison an academic exercise. What might be better is to look at it as a distinction between wise and smart maidens. The line between being wise and being smart is rather thin.
A good example would be the Camino. To walk it, one has to be prudent in terms of the things one carries. If we were to follow the virgins taking extra oil because it was the wise thing to do, we will soon be overwhelmed and it would have defeated the pilgrimage. Why? This extra towel, those extra trousers, this added plaster and whatever we think might be necessary for any eventualities will definitely weigh us down.
Remember a time when cars were simpler? Their function was to ferry people. Today, a young family with a child might not just need a car. They feel they must have an SUV because they need a special seat for child-protection. Then the boot must be ample because of the bags of eventualities for this cut or that bruise etc. Do you travel with this and that bag because you might need this and that? The list goes on.
Preparation requires wisdom. In a culture which fears and hoards, our preparation is not wisdom but fear. The Camino is rather purifying in the area. The collective wisdom so far is that the backpack we carry to walk 800 km should not weigh more than 8 kg. Every gram counts. In the case of the wise virgins, they only had to bring along an extra flask of oil to last them just in case the bridegroom was late. But on the Camino, every gram counts, and the tendency is for the pilgrim to pack for the “what ifs”. What if I need this? What if I need that?
The wisdom of the virgin has to be more than just a flask of oil.
In the first place, there is a difference between spiritual readiness and material reliance. The virgins were praised for their spiritual preparedness, not so much for the extra flask of oil. In fact, their refusal to share the extra oil with those who were ill—prepared shows us that readiness requires an attitude. Those virgins had the inner resources to wait it out just in case the Lord did not show up. On the Camino, over-packing a bag is not a sign of readiness but rather a symptom of the lack of trust and the fear of facing uncomfortable scenarios.
In fact, often enough when things fall short during our events, somehow God provides. Wisdom is not about material reliance as the case may be but an ability to trust that God will come to our aid. The most important thing we need to do is to be ready for when God comes.
I remember an exercise which the late Father Moses gave us when he was still a deacon at St Theresa’s Church, Malacca. It is a familiar one where we were asked to think of what we would want to do in the last three days of our lives. It was interesting that many scrambled because time was of the essence. With 72 hours until death, each list was packed with as much as one possibly could do. But one of the youths gave this answer, which has since stayed with me: “Nothing. I will not deviate from what I have been doing”.
It means that salvation is not a last-minute effort—like, for example, asking the priest to bless you for your examination when you have not spent time studying for it. That is hoping that some magic might work. Spiritual preparation is always in view of a long journey towards a destination that spans eternity. The oil symbolises the inner resources we need when we are faced with trials and tribulations.
In fact, if one were to apply wisdom to the Camino, it is to know what we should leave behind so that we can walk freely and better rather than being weighed down by the extra pair of shoes which may come in handy but which we may never have to chance to use. When we are over-attached to material things, wisdom will not find an easy home in our hearts.
Do you remember the movie Terminator? When we were developing artificial intelligence, we were enamoured by what AI could do. This scenario in the movie and right now with AI is similar to what happened at the time when scientists were splitting atoms in the desert of Nevada. We have been driven by this need to know what AI could achieve but now that the genie is out of the bottle, we realise what we failed to recognise: knowledge is not amoral. The desire for knowledge is a drive which requires wisdom to govern. We must know when to stop, otherwise we will be in trouble.
The saving grace of wisdom is that our hearts are made for it. In this knowledge economy, we may have heard it said, “knowledge is power” many mistakenly equate knowledge with wisdom. But knowledge is not wisdom. With knowledge, one accumulates—just like someone googling and gathering information. But wisdom is applying what one knows and a lot of times, wisdom comes with age and experience. And Wisdom is another name for the Holy Spirit.
Being wise is to be led by the Spirit which therefore means we need to return to the source of wisdom. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding. Knowledge is just knowing but in itself, it cannot bring us to heaven. We need the wisdom to guide our knowledge. Let us return to that Source today. We pray: Come, Holy Spirit, and fill the hearts of your faithful. Amen.
Plastic saints are a dime a dozen. Actually, closer to the truth is that we are burning rosaries, crosses and not a few saints. Speaking of saints, we are mostly familiar with are Mary, Joseph and may be one or two more. We do not provide a burning service but we have found ourselves loaded with old statues, rosaries, crosses and bibles that need proper disposal and the best way to dispose of a sacramental, short of burying, is through burning.
It is common to hear “All Saints’ Day” preached as a celebration of the unknown saints. We are commemorating the saints next door, so it seems. The grandmother who prays regularly. The man who looks after his wife who is sick. The daughter who decides to stay behind rather than to migrate because of ageing parents. This is what All Saints’ Day is supposed to be because we want to celebrate our possibility.
But what sort of possibility?
The 1st Reading speak of a number which represents a multitude of saints. They have washed themselves in the Blood of the Lamb. Both the Responsorial Psalm and the 2nd Reading confirm that this multitude which has remained faithful will be privileged to see God face to face. That is great but there seems to be something missing.
While celebrating a multitude of faceless saints, a problem arises because it does not take much for faceless to become nothing. Facelessness is in a way a celebration of “nothingness”. Let me explain.
Prior to Vatican II, there is a prayer which is said inaudibly by the priest, after the Our Father and just before the Agnus Dei. The priest, in a way, appeals to Jesus personally by saying, “Look not on ‘my’ sins but look at the faith of your Church”. Today, that prayer is said aloud and the possessive adjective has changed to “look not on ‘our’ sins but on the faith of your Church”. According to Pope Benedict, the shift from a “personal my” to a “collective ours” might just see a shift and a shrinkage in responsibility. To give an example, the photocopier in the office that belongs to 50 workers ultimately belongs to nobody and when it breaks down, few care to take responsibility for it. Or just like the public laundry where the dryers have lint traps that nobody cares to clean out.
There is a hollowing out of All Saints’ Day because it is merely a day of obligation in which we come to celebrate ourselves and the possibility of our sanctity and nothing more. Ask any of the young children if they know any saint. At best, they might give you some names and they are usually the faddish ones like Carlo Acutis or the familiar ones like Therese of the Little Child Jesus. Beyond that, many have never heard of other saints.
It brings me to this point of the “usefulness” of the saints. We laud the multitude in heaven but there has to be more than extolling the faceless saints because saints are real. And we need real saints to inspire us rather than to speak of them in a more generic and abstract sense. Saints function like sacramentals. They excite our faith.
The lives of flesh and blood saints are there for us to know and in a way grow into. Take the example of St Ignatius, who while he was recuperating in Loyola Castle, read about the lives of Ss Dominic and Francis of Assisi. It was not some vague abstract concepts of saintliness that converted him but the nitty-gritty real-world examples that made him realise, “If Francis and Dominic could do this, so can I”.
Saints are important not because we ask them to intercede for us. They are important because their lives are analogous to the role that sacramentals play in our lives. The sacramentals like medals, relics, gestures dispose us to receive the grace of Christ our Lord. Saints in a way function like that through inspiration. Reading the courageous action of Mother Teresa of Calcutta in embracing a leper might inspire us to be more loving to those are sidelined to the margins of society.
Many of our Churches are devoid of saints. Hardly are there statues and if there were, they would be a hold-over from the past. Furthermore, if anything the names of Churches sometimes follow the trail of profitability. It is a form of commercialisation of popular saints, for example, Our Lady of Velankanni or Our Lady of Lourdes. If you like, a big draw would be St Anne. If not, then we have become a bit more defensive in the sense that we have become over-sensitised to the Protestant “protest” or criticism of Catholics worshipping the saints. Consequently, we have refrained from assigning the patronage of a Church under a saint and have sought the safer path of naming Church according to Jesus’ attributes like “Divine Mercy” or Christ the Redeemer etc.
When saints are driven out, then the Sacraments might run the risk of becoming empty symbols. Why? Saints are proofs that the invisible grace of the Sacraments is powerful. The grace that Christ gives us in the Sacraments is witnessed by the lives of the Saints. Without the pantheon of Saints, where are the proofs that the graces of Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist actually work?
It would be nice if we have a few more saints on pedestal. We are not putting them up for gawking but for us to be surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. The saints are testimonials of what we profess every Sunday—the belief in the Communion of Saints. We are not just a social gathering of a group of people at this time or in a particular place. Instead, when we come to worship, we are joined to those who have come before us. That is why we profess the faith that is handed on by the Apostles.
Saints are not abstract or conceptual. They are real and they belong to the incarnational reality of our faith. When Christ took Flesh through the Blessed Virgin Mary, He made His home with us. As such, the saints continue that incarnational spirit by showing us how the faith is lived at different times and places. Get to know a saint. Get to know many saints. They are not just decorations but companions. They are not distant friends far away. They are our living help on the way to heaven.
We have inevitably arrived at the crux of Christ’s teachings which are centred on two commandments. To love God and to love one’s neighbour. The background for these commandments is easy to appreciate. The Israelites had escaped Pharaoh’s slavery. Any exile is haphazard because the people were fleeing for their lives. Within our living memories are the boat people who had to leave everything behind when South Vietnam fell in 1975 and more recently, the Rohingyas escaping from the wrath of the military of Myanmar.
As in the case of flux and change, what is crucial are laws and the Lord gave Moses warnings about the treatment of the refugees. God took the side of the orphans, the widows and the poor. And their prayers will be heard by Him.
We may not have open borders but the reality is that we do have those who come from overseas and who have overstayed. Even if they have not broken the law by overstaying we still have a substantial number of foreigners residing in our country. Migration is an economic issue. Even though we can preach that man does not live by bread alone, man still needs bread in order to function, in order to survive.
Today’s commandments given by Christ add to how we can function and they are crucial to how we treat others.
I remember my first encounters with post-communist era Jesuits. They came from the supposedly picture-perfect socialist systems which were designed to uphold the human person’s dignity by ensuring that each man/woman is treated according to what he/she needs. Each according to his or her needs and not his or her wants.
The thing about us, especially, in the West, is that we are accustomed to wearing our hearts on our sleeves. Some of us may remember the 1980s, when images of starving children flooded our living rooms. Since then, the world has been shamed into action, terrified that staying silent would make us look heartless. In fact, some of our actions for good are nothing more than virtue-signalling. For example, I read that Ed Sheeran’s silence with regard to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has hurt his popularity. This is yet another example of virtue-signalling imposed by the prevailing orthodoxy.
The idea of loving God and neighbour has to move beyond this need for performative virtue-signalling. To help the poor on a short-term basis is easy in the sense that we can always provide food. Readily we give out rations etc to help the poor tide over their economic crunch. Long term, the situation might be different. It is not easy.
Our inspiration can be drawn from the Cross which is made up of the horizontal and vertical beams. The vertical beam denotes our love for God, our worship, our prayer and our longing for union with Him. The horizontal beam denotes our relationship with each other. It is the love and honour we owe to each other because each one of us is made in the image and likeness of God.
In the context of the practice of wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve, whether out of the need to virtue-signal or not, the thing is that we are strong on emphasising the horizontal aspect of our relationship. Otherwise, can we explain why there is this need refute the usual claim that the Catholic Church is cold.
When one of my Jesuit confreres from the western world used to stress the idea social justice and the need to make sure that all be treated equally and etc, another Jesuit confrere, from Eastern Europe said something which has remained with me till this day. He said, “You preach social justice. We live social justice. We queued up for two hours for a loaf of bread”.
When I visited Poland, I was intrigued by the fact that going to Church for most Polish Catholics was a matter of expressing their relationship with God. They are strong on the vertical dimension of the Cross and when it came to “Let us offer each other a sign of peace”, they were not entirely bothered to turn around to exchange a sign of peace.
It was interesting. Both emphases are one-sided in the sense that a focus solely on the vertical dimension or a focus on the horizontal dimension will lead to an impoverishment of our faith. But I wager that there is a need, not just for a balance of the two emphases but also to respect a kind of priority in terms of the which emphasis comes first.
If we look at Jesus, we realise that He reached out to all those marginalised because He had a right relationship with His Father. A right relationship with God always leads us to love our brothers and sisters. All the great missionaries were driven to leave everything because they were in loved with their God. In fact, our hospitals were all founded on the idea that our love of God led us to care for His brothers and sisters. This is usually what we hear “How can you love God whom you cannot see if you do not love the brother whom you can see”. It is usually the guilty pitch that goads us into action. The truth is that we do not need to love God to love our neighbour because philanthropy does it. Philanthropy is the love for humanity. The desire for action must flow from God to neighbour. It means like the saints, when we love God, the fruit of that love for God will be our love for our neighbour.
To pay or not to pay taxes. It is a familiar dilemma for some of us, no? This Catch-22 situation Jesus found Himself in is different from our moral debate between tax evasion and tax avoidance. It is closer to a cloak and dagger scenario: "Amicus meus, inimicus inimici mei" (My friend, the enemy of my enemy). In this case, the Herodians and the Pharisees, quite mortal enemies to each other, have joined hands to gang up on Jesus. They were hoping that whatever answer Jesus supplied would incriminate Him either way. So “Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t”.
Maybe a way to wriggle out of this conundrum is to focus on where the question is coming from. The trap they set for Jesus opened up the question on how one should be a citizen of both the City of God and the City of Man.
In effect, the attempted entrapment was to test Christ’s loyalty. But Jesus turned the table on them providing the appropriate answer concerning a person’s loyalty. In effect, we are citizens of both the City of God and the City of Man. We are destined to be citizens of Heaven which means that we must labour in a manner so that we can gain a foothold in heaven. Hence most of our salvation is worked out in this life, that is, in the City of Man.
At the recent concluded Malaysia Pastoral Convention, what was evident was how many of the delegates in the open forum were asking for the Church to provide organisational structures that will facilitate the faithful to be Catholics in Malaysia. One of the Bishops during his final exhortation encouraged the younger delegates present that they should enter politics.
We all know how politics makes strange bedfellows. We get first-hand experience of political prostitution in our country. Parties merging and dividing and merging again. As Lord Palmerston, the UK PM said in the British Parliament, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow”. Politics is the art of the possible and it has to do with self-interest or its preservation.
A sentiment expressed over ang again during the MPC was how the Church should become a source of moral authority. Given that much of politics is self-serving and in a way, open to corruption, the Church is presented with a possibility of being an alternative voice which can be trusted. As the Bishop who encouraged young people to enter into politics said, “Yes, enter into politics but be clean”.
In the matter of our engagement as citizens of God and of Man, ours is not a divided loyalty as a King once thought. Henry VIII’s treatment of St Thomas More gives us food for thought. At the execution of his good friend and Chancellor, Thomas said: “I die the King’s good servant but God’s first”. St Thomas’ final words merely highlight the truth of God’s primacy. Tension arises whenever earthly authorities arrogate upon themselves the sovereignty which belongs solely to God. The instruction of Jesus to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar is part and parcel of our discipleship. There is no divided loyalty as long as we recognise the supremacy of moral commands which come from God. If we accept this, then as good citizens, we should make greater contributions to the various systems and structures which govern and administer our nation. If politics is supposed to be clean and cleaned, then the disciple, conscious of his or her citizenship in heaven, should attempt to make sure that this world, temporal though it may be, bears the characteristics or the marks of heaven.
Thus, the Church, as the Body of Christ, plays an important role in the world. Our impact as citizens, whether we be of this country or any other, is immense. In the past the Catholic Church led in two major aspects of life in which communities were changed and civilisations were forged. She played a foundational role in social welfare and education, in hospitals and schools.Apart from feeding the soul spiritually and sacramentally, the Church also tended physically to the body and ministered intellectually to the mind. But somehow, as civil societies advanced, we basically seemed to have loss most of these humanising and civilising institutions. There is a vacuum and for most parts, we have come to expect the “state” to take up the role of the care of the minds and the bodies of the citizens. In other words, we expect the state to play the nanny.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of what is called World Mission Sunday. We have a mission still. If a diminishment in the number of missionaries like priests and nuns is a reality, perhaps the word mission should be enlarged. We are Church and each one baptised has a role in the mission of the Church. Not just the priest or the nun.
The core mission of the Church is to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, to extend His salvific action by administering the Sacraments and to bring to fruition God’s plan of salvation. In short, each one is missioned to sanctify the world through his or her life and in the end, gain eternal salvation. The theatre is the present and not in any form of future fantasy. We take our daily life, boring as it may be, and allow it to become the locus where encounters take place between heaven and earth. Somehow, the simplest tasks are the hardest to perform. For example, the daily chores of looking after family or even doing routine office work. These are not glamorous and do not attract any kind of clicks on your Instagram. But perform them with diligence and with devotion and we are already part of the movement to sanctify the world.
We live a stone’s throw away from a country where everything seems to function better. We long for an improved country where all citizens can thrive equally under the Malaysian sun. But it feels impossible with the result that many believe that a better Malaysia is found in Australia, Canada, New Zealand etc. Many believe that these are the places where your children will thrive and their talents appreciated. A better Malaysia must start here and now and not in Canada, New Zealand, Australia or even Singapore because you must believe that you are part of the solution to a thriving Malaysia rather than elsewhere.
Finally, waiting for the “Church” to transform society is like passing the chalice. Waiting for others to perform what is basically our duty is an invitation to wait forever. The City of Man needs each baptised person to take personal ownership of his or her role in the mission of the Church. As one Bishop at MPC remarked, “People keep asking the Church to do this or that, the question is ‘Who is the Church?”. “You are”. The ball is actually in your court!!
Jesus criticised the leaders in last Sunday’s Gospel. This weekend the spotlight lands on the topic of salvation, what value does it have and the range. The Gospel uses the marriage feast as a metaphor to showcase God’s invitation which according to the 1st Reading is extended to everyone. God will prepare a banquet for His people. God will provide abundantly and the scope of the invitation reveals His mercy and benevolence.
There is a twist in the Gospel. Those invited persistently rejected Christ’s invitation. We can presume that Jesus meant to infer that the religious leaders were those who rejected God’s initiatives. To underscore the gravity of the situation, God’s seeming violent reaction reveals how serious the loss of salvation is for those who are obstinate in their rejection.
Talking about reactions, in 2011, on the 1st Sunday of Advent, the new translation of the Mass for the English-speaking world came into effect. Well, there were similar reactions to the new translation of the text. One important alteration which caused a stir was in the Institution Narrative where a minor alteration was made. At the consecration of the wine in the chalice, the words were changed from “which will be poured out for you and for all” to “which will be poured out for you and for many”. From “all” to “many”. If the reactions were not violent, there are still priests who have refused to comply because you can still hear “for all”.
The reason for the change was simple. It was a return to a more accurate and faithful translation of the original biblical texts. The change would make us all be in tandem with the more ancient liturgies of the Eastern Churches. Moreover, “Pro multis” in Latin and “Pollon” in Greek, which is translated as “for many”, were found in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. Yet some have felt that the change seemed to have short-changed Christ’s salvation. Did He not die for all?
There is a slight theological distinction. Ontologically, Christ died for all. He offered salvation to each and everyone. In other words, He was not choosy. It makes a lot of sense that the mission of Christ is not provincial or parochial. He is the Saviour of all mankind and not just Christians. Thus, the scope of God’s salvation is extensive. It covers everyone but effectively, this salvation is received only by the “many” meaning that not everyone will be saved. Hard as this may be to digest, this is not a form of exclusivity. Just like the Gospel today, some chose to go to the farm. Some decided to engage in business. In fact, some were even harmful to the messengers. Salvation is offered to all and it is a testament to God’s great benevolence but He does not force upon us His salvation. Like the famous quotation, attributed to Saint Augustine and found in the Catechism, which says, “God created us without us; but He did not will to save us without us”.
Since God who created us without our permission cannot save us without our consent, that means, we are free to accept or reject His salvation. Creation and salvation are two different realities. We have no say in creation but we have a big part to play in our salvation. Who is to say that salvation is cheap? Much like those cheap free gifts given away at trade-conventions that visitors accept but later throw away. In fact, the acceptance of God’s salvation comes with a price.
We value our freedom. We do. In fact, we guard our autonomy so jealously that the idea of God creating us without our permission is rather jarring and also somewhat irritating to hear. In fact, if my life were “crap”, I would rail against God. “Why the hell did you create me for?”. This not only shows how entitled we have become but that we are enamoured by our freedom. But more than that, it also reveals a certain hubris with regard to God’s way of proceeding.
I remembered an experience during my youth that a relative committed suicide. He was buried outside the cemetery as a sign that the person had made an irrevocable decision to reject God in his life. Notwithstanding that our understanding of human psychology has progressed and that there may have been mitigating reasons for a person’s less than “composed mental” state, the present practice seems to state that our decisions are never totally free. And that God is not in any way bothered by our decision. And we in a way project onto God, that He has no choice but to save us all which is rather ironic given that we are so jealous of our “freedom”.
We do have the freedom to reject God and God respects that. And there have been cases where someone made a decision and then at the funeral, just for those alive to “feel” good, priests are required to perform some rituals and pray for the soul of the deceased as if nothing of his or her decision mattered at all. The range of God’s redemption may be extensive but there is a value to being saved because freedom has consequences.
After those invited rejected God’s initiatives, many others were invited. But those who came had to follow protocols. As we read about that individual guest who attended but did not dress up for the occasion. He was thrown out. God’s salvation requires that we change or be transformed.
The value of salvation is that it is not free or not cheap. The good thing is that according to St Paul in the 2nd Reading, Christ is there. We can change because He is the strength and the grace which gives us an ability to respond to a higher calling. We are graced by our baptism to live a life in Christ our Lord. The Wedding Garment is therefore the call to our conversion and a call to a life of holiness. Holiness is to be in Christ, to be like Christ, to be Christ in the world
This weekend, the imagery of the Vineyard comes to fore. In the 1st Reading, the Lord sings beautifully of His love for His Vineyard, Israel. In fact, He goes out of His way to protect Israel, the choice vineyard. In the Gospel, Christ speaks of the treacherous tenants who foolishly thought that by destroying the owner’s son, they could take over the inheritance. Of course, this parable was told days before Christ’s execution and the reference was to His impending passion and death.
But there is more to this prophecy and there are valuable lessons we can learn from this.
Firstly, it highlights ultimately the rejection of God’s sovereignty. The killing of the landowner’s son represents humanity’s desire to be rid of God’s authority so as to take ownership of humanity’s own destiny. There has always been a desire on the part of humanity to be the architects of its own fate. The parable is really reminiscent of the Tower of Babel. In the Gospel, greed was not the main issue even though the parable does sound like a land grab. Rather, it was a chronicle of humanity’s illusion of its own radical autonomy. The rebellion was exercised through ignoring God’s messages. It progressed to the stage of violence against the messengers themselves and finally it climaxed with the murder of God’s only Son.
In this saga of rebellion and in trying to chart our destiny, there is a truth which may escaped rebellious humanity.
Secondly, I had a honour of working with someone in a project to renovate a Church. She told me, “Money is not yours until you spend it”. I have since taken to heart this pithy wisdom. It was not an advice to be profligate, that is, to be reckless or prodigal in one’s spending. Instead the parable touches on one fundamental truth which is of ownership and it is relevant in an age of hoarding.
Hoarding does not make sense if we are sure that the moral in the parable is about our stewardship. Money has been entrusted to us for good. The wealth of the land has been put into our hands so that greater good can be done for others.
In short, we are not masters of our destiny but rather we are stewards or servants of creation. We are not and we cannot be the masters of our destiny no matter what. In the 1st Reading, God dug the soil, cleared it of stones and planted choice vines. In other words, God has bestowed a lot upon us. He gave us His laws expressed through the Church. He also bequeathed us His Sacraments in our liturgies. God has carries a far greater load than we have.
If anything, what the parable has shown is that we are not owners but stewards. Even though the Israelites have been given a lot, the fruits of the vines were sour and tart. They failed to acknowledge the honour God has given to them to be the light of the nations. God’s choice of them was for a great responsibility, given for a greater good, for the furthering His Kingdom. Failure to recognise that, they instead turned that privilege into something else. And it was catastrophic for their religious leaders.
Stewardship is not to be trifled with. We hear this, right? It is my life. It is my body. It is my time. It is my money. And I can damn well do with it the way I like. This might not sound revolutionary simply because we do not see anything wrong with absolute ownership. Instead of focussing on an issue which is immediately polarising and that issue is abortion exemplified in “my body, my choice”, let us look at something else. This is a matter which is less threatening or upsetting.
It still belongs with the notion of “my body, my choice” and it concerns the matter of scattering of ashes or what is now called “cremains”. It is trendy nowadays to leave instructions that after one’s death and cremation, one’s ashes should be scattered into the sea or over a field. The idea is to be free, to let go and to be reunited with nature. The truth of the Church’s prohibition is more than just the affirmation of the Resurrection of the Body. The Church views the human body as sacred simply because it is the temple of the Holy Spirit and as such it needs to be treated with profound dignity even after death. Perhaps more fundamental than it being the abode of the Holy Spirit, how about viewing the human body as belonging to God. We own nothing.
Even our body, whilst gifted to us, is still on loan from God. It might just upend our notions of what autonomy and ownership are. We own nothing and everything we have is on loan to us. Even life can be described as living on borrowed time. Everything is lent to us. A priest, whom I like very much, used to quote his favourite Opus Dei trope… “If you can, leave a place in a better state than when you first found it. If not, leave it as you had found it. Never worse than before”.
We have been entrusted with a lot. The Jews first. The Church next. If the Gospel is to be taken seriously, the religious leaders were complacent because they viewed their privilege as an entitlement. God’s choice was removed from them and given to those who could bear better fruits. Likewise, we might think that we have inherited the privilege of the Jews and that we might be untouchable. A notion of stewardship might help to disabuse ourselves of this entitlement.
Thus, in the 2nd Reading, St Paul reminds us to be the fruits that God desires. If we model our lives on Christ, a life of integrity, charity and justice we might act like those who are stewards who, at the proper time, humbly handover the proper fruits to the Landowner
NATO, not “North Atlantic Treaty Organisation” but “No Action, Talk Only”. Today the Gospel gives us an example of NATO. Two sons responded to the father’s request. The one who said yes but did nothing was “NATO”. The one who said “No” but eventually carried out the work is an example of conversion to the will of God.
We all may begin with a level playing field meaning that each one of us (except, you know who) starts with a deficit. This is because each one of us, except Mary, and consequently Jesus, inherits humanity’s wounded inclination toward sin. Even though we have been created good, we are nevertheless imperfect because each one carries with himself or herself a spiritual deficit otherwise known as Original Sin. If anything, we are united in our starting point by ourneed of God’s grace for salvation.
Thus the 1st Reading makes sense. It is a given that we need grace. But the necessity of grace means we have to take personal responsibility for our behaviour. It is a wonderful realisation that God does not judge us because of our past. We hear this kind of guilt expressed when the Israelites lamented “Our forefathers ate sour grapes and our teeth are set on edge”. So how can God punish us for our fathers’ sins? And the Lord concurred. I am not punishing you because of your father. I am fair because I punish you for not taking responsibility for your future. It means that we are not locked in by our past. And what we perceived as God’s unfairness is actually His mercy.
How so?
We cannot depend on our past good deeds as if nothing of the present matters. Life is clearly unfair because one can be good or virtuous his or her entire life but because of one stupid mistake, the person is condemned. And to rub salt to wounds, a person can be dissolute his or her entire life but at the last minute is saved by conversion or a change in behaviour. Our sense of justice is somehow assaulted when we consider how that last minute or in the final moment, a bad person can gain heaven whereas a mostly good person can be condemned.
God’s fairness is basically our hope and it behoves upon us to take responsibility, not once but always. It means a life-time of choosing good and rejecting evil. No matter how late, the door of grace is always open to sinners.However, the past goodness of a person does not guarantee a person’s salvation in the matter of his or her present choice. A person who for most of his or her life has been a good person, he or she still can still go down the wrong path at the last minute.
This is frightening because it means we have great freedom. Secondly, it means we must choose wisely. And it is really a challenge not to be proud. The 2nd Reading can be interpreted from this perspective. The first part of Philippians Chapter 2 lays the foundation for our interaction with each other. We care for each other and that if there were supposed to be a competition amongst Christians, it is to have the mind of Christ. To be like Him. Even though His state was divine, He clung not to His divinity but became a slave. The Cross was Christ’s ultimate choice for His Father because He gave up His life in order that we might be saved.
In that way, both the Readings come together and they invite us to think more of who we are with regard to God’s will in our lives. When Christ told the elders that prostitutes and tax collectors were beating their paths to heaven, He was not condemning the elders. Instead He was warning them not to be blinded by their complacency.
Like the elders, we can be faithfully attending Mass Sunday in and Sunday out. We go for Confession regularly, recite the Creed each Sunday, receive Holy Communion faithfully and yet our hearts can be far away from God in the sense that we think these are enough to get us past the pearly gates. That is the danger of a complacency that considers the minimum as an expression of our relationship with God.
What happens when we leave our Sunday worship? We only spend an hour or thereabout each weekend in Church. The vineyard which the father asked the sons to labour in is not restricted to Church-grounds. There is a vast vineyard where we can still cultivate our relationship with God through our interactions with the world. Out there, we can still be selfish in our behaviour. Or we may continue to gossip about people we do not like. We might just live an unexamined life.
The point here is not so much to label whether one were inside or outside. Rather we can be both. We can be both outsiders and insiders—the prostitutes, the tax collectors and the elders and the Pharisees. It is not a matter of who is more virtuous. The fragility of grace indicates that one day we can choose good and the danger is the next day we choose otherwise. We are called to consistently to choose God and this ability is assisted by God’s grace and the faculty of choice for the good is strengthened by the Sacraments that we receive.
I guess for many of us, we have a lifetime of faithfulness to concretise meaning that we strive day in and out to live according to God’s laws. If we are good and if we consistently choose God, all the better and perhaps the challenge is not to be prideful that we are on the side of good. If we are struggling to be faithful and we are failing time and again, then the challenge is to cling on to God and not to give in to despair trusting that even at the end God’s mercy awaits us.
