The
other part of this great country, the more sizeable section of it has just
marked its harvest festival—Kaamatan and Gawai. Pentecost, 50 days
after the Passover, is basically a similar type of celebration. It is an
occasion to offer in thanksgiving, the first fruits to God and when the Temple
still existed, it culminated with a trip to Jerusalem.
Luke’s
placement of the Holy Spirit’s descent during a harvest festival is quite prescriptive
for us all. The birth of the Church within the context of harvesting or
gathering provides a compelling testament to the missionary nature of who we
are—the Body of Christ. The head who came to gather humanity into a people of
God and now is seated at the right hand of the Father has left behind His body
to continue His mission.
The
birthday of the Church through the dynamic agency of the Holy Spirit
inaugurated her missionary endeavour. Prior to the Holy Spirit’s coming, the
Apostles were cowering behind closed doors, fearful of what might happen to
them. After receiving the power and charisms of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles
immediately went out and preached the message of Jesus to everyone—especially
to those who spoke other languages.
The
words “Apostle” and “Mission” are both characterisations of sending. The
designation “Apostle” comes from the Greek “apostollein” meaning to be a messenger sent
forth whereas the word “mission”, derived from the Latin “missionem” most probably associated with a
Jesuit being sent abroad as an agent, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, to
“preserve and augment the faith of the Catholics in England”—a mission when
captured inevitably ended with death—either by beheading if you were a nobility
or being hung, drawn and quartered if you were a proletarian.
If
the Church is by nature missionary, then, how is she missioned? We are
conditioned to think of mission mostly in ad extra terms. Just like the Apostles
standing at the windows thrown open, the image paints a picture of them talking
to those who do not believe. However, Vatican II gives us a more comprehensive
picture of what mission should be in our era.
A
cardinal during Vatican II sketched a scenario for the Church’s missionary undertaking
when he spoke in terms of ecclesia ad intra and ecclesia ad extra, meaning that the mission is both
within and without the Church—inside and outside the Church.[1]
The
scandals of the recent past, within and without the Church has also rendered
the missionary undertaking more arduous. Just to refresh our collectively
perfect but terribly short memory, you may have heard of Barings Bank, Enron or
Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis. If not, maybe Cows for Condo might jolt your memory
and our very special cherry-topping 1MDB. Top these corporate scandals with
ecclesial failures in the area of chastity. The reason for the almost excessive
and obsessive scrutiny on the Church is because people have this innate sense
that if the world were that wrong, at least, let the Church not be so. In a
way, it is a back-handed compliment to who we are as Church. The professional
standard that we are presently initiating is simply proof of how far we have
fallen from who we are supposed to be which leaves the Church with a
challenging proposition when it comes to preaching the Good News.
Today,
more than ever, in a credibility-challenged society, the mission ad intra and ad extra are almost seamless. We cannot
hope to be an effective messenger out
there if we have a credibility deficit in
here. The foundation of our message must be built on our trustworthiness,
starting personally with each one of us. Christ’s message stands or falls on
our shoulders. Without internal reform, we simply thwart the Holy Spirit’s mission
to unite all in Christ[2] because we have failed to pay
attention to the mission ad
intra.
The mission ad
extra must
begin with the reform ad
intra.
Let
me illustrate how crucial that is at the most fundamental level. We must know
who we are and what we are about. A Protestant pastor once said to a Catholic
priest, “If I believe what you believe, I will not just fall on my knees but I
would fall on my face”. He was referring to the Blessed Sacrament. When the
Blessed Sacrament is in procession, what is noticeable is how Catholics basically
carry on their usual business—read the papers, talk, laugh or eat when in
reality, recognising “Who” is passing by, we should instinctively fall on our
knees (for those who can). Somehow it is proof that for so many of us, the
Blessed Sacrament is no more than a piece of blessed bread. Holy? Yes, but
nothing more than a symbol. We may know what it is (sacred) but we do not know
who it is (Jesus truly, really and substantially present). At the most basic
level, the renewal ad
intra requires
strengthening the foundation of who we are and what it means to be Catholic. In
short, the need for proper catechesis. Just recently I have been asked to
approve the new signage for attire and behaviour in Church. The proper code of
conduct is derived from knowing Who it is that we are coming before and not
from an obsessive fixation with “rigid laws or regulations”.[3] Poor choice of attired is a sign
of a lack of conversion. And the same too can be said of someone who regularly
comes late for Mass. He or she is waiting for conversion.
Reform
and renewal ad
intra with
the aid of the Holy Spirit makes us effective in reaching out to those who are waiting
to know Jesus Christ. As agents of the Spirit, our lives are transformed
through the gift of adoption we receive from Baptism, strengthen to be soldiers
of Christ through Confirmation, healed from the debilitation of sin through Confession
and nourished for the mission by the Eucharist. With the Spirit’s gifts we can
bear His fruits a plenty.[4]
Unfortunately,
the consequence of Original Sin stares us in the face. Desiring to be good is
no guarantee that we will not sin, much less knowing who we are. It does not
follow that the more conscious we are of our identity as Catholic and Christian,
the less we sin. Instead, the contrary may be true. In some ways, we are all
hypocrites because there is often a gap between what we publicly profess and
how we privately behave. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit never gives up on us for
He waits patiently to assist us in closing the gap and to reduce the
credibility deficit we have. Our duty is to collaborate with the Him. St Paul
VI, in Evangelii nuntiandi said, “Modern
man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen
to teachers, it is because they are witnesses” (EN41). Thus, Pentecost
is a personal invitation to each one of us to be docile in order for the Holy
Spirit to work in us and through us, as the
Body of Christ, so that the Church may carry out what her Lord and Saviour had
tasked her to do—to be His Body in the world for the harvest is great indeed.
[1]Two documents
best illustrate this two-fold mission. The first is Lumen gentium, that is the
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church reflecting the mission ad intra whereas the
Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes directs our
attention to the mission ad extra, focusing on the Church’s missionary activity in the world. To
assist us in our mission ad intra, the Church gave us the
first document of the Council, that is, The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,
otherwise known as Sacrosanctum Concilium. And to aid us
in navigating a world which basically does not know her Lord and Saviour, we
are guided by the Decree of Ecumenism, that is, Unitatis redintegratio. In short, the
Church was given fresh insights into her self-definition, her relationship with
Christians and non-Christians, in particular both Judaism and Islam.
[2]Christ came at a
particular time and hence His mission has a limited reach. The Holy Spirit
through the Church is to extend the frontiers of Christ’s restricted
particularity by bringing all under His headship, meaning the headship of Jesus
Christ, to the glory of God the Father.
[3]Sadly, we have lost our sacramental sensibility. Traditionally
when we see the Bishop, we kiss his ring. But, in our age of data
democratisation, meaning that we are all equal on account of our egalitarian
finger—Google, such behaviour of kissing the ring would come across as
obsequious bowing and scraping. But, the older generation know that the Bishop
is the fullness of priesthood. It is a sense of the sacraments so much so that
according to Nr 49 of The Ceremonial of
Bishops: “When, in a particular case,
there is a tabernacle on the altar at which the bishop is to celebrate, the
Blessed Sacrament should be transferred to another fitting place”. In no way can it be interpreted as an exaltation
of the bishop with respect to the mystery of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.
Instead, the ring signifies the Bishop’s marriage to the local Church and
typically, when the Bishop wears a pectoral cross, it should have no corpus on
it because the Bishop himself is to the corpus, laying down his life for his
bride, in imitation of our Saviour (Jn 15: 13 and Eph 5:25).
[4]Charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity (kindness), goodness,
longanimity (generosity), mildness (gentleness), faith, modesty, continence
(self-control), and chastity.
