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In the long, cold and dark shadow of Covid, the Readings and the Gospel examine the two inter-related realities of life and death in man’s experience. Even though they are both existential facts but when shrouded by anxiety, despair, and panic, it becomes almost impossible to peer beyond this massive wall of fear. On the one hand, fear reflects a healthy sign of respect for the gift of life. On the other hand, it could also expose both society’s acute attachment to life as well as hide its compelling distaste for death. Fear or not, our reaction to these existential realities begs the question of what we understand to be living and dying.
To say that we are materialistic is not really saying much. Perhaps what is closer to experience is that we are not as materialistic as we are in denial of it when facing the pivotal concern of this cursed pandemic—and it is not physical death even though it is staring us in the face. The point is physical death is part and parcel of who we are and whether we accept or deny it, it remains a certainty from which we cannot escape. Thus, in this global and coordinated endeavour to prevent physical death, what we may have failed to contend with is what comes after. Does physical death flag the end of everything? Or have we overlooked the point that far more “deadly” than dying is the possibility of spiritual death.
Today, the 1st Reading draws our attention to this concern that we may have missed out. The author of the Book of Wisdom highlights that God in creation has meant us for eternity. Immortality is a share in the life of God. Within this scheme, death entered into human experience not because of God’s will but through jealousy of the devil. Nevertheless, physical death is not total annihilation. Instead it has become the only gateway to life everlasting as promised by God.
The goal of life on earth is eternity. But it is not an eternity on earth. The 2nd Reading can shed a light on how one can attain endless life. Giving away wealth or money is more than just divesting ourselves of our attachments. It is also a form dying, a way of letting go of life’s temporal arrangement so that we may enter eternity. We speak of the “accidents” of birth. Race, rank or riches are but accidents of birth and rightfully, they belong to life’s temporary arrangement. One could be Indian, of a high caste and born with a silver spoon in the mouth and that is accidental because one could have come from a Chinese family living in the interior of China and whose parents have to eke out a living in a parched farm threatened by an encroaching desert. All we have does not belong to us for we are merely custodians. Hence letting go is the proper disposition of stewards. The lighter we are, the easier it is to rise to the top. The less we possess, the freer will our choice be for heaven.
Hence, the healing in the Gospel provides an understanding that both life and death must be lived in connexion to eternity. Firstly, it must be noted that the relationship between life and eternity is not articulated in the language of “either/or” meaning that the current efforts at life’s preservation implies a disdain of heaven. What the pandemic may have uncovered is the unspoken “either/or” attitude towards death meaning that our natural recoil has taken on an unhealthy distaste. What is proper to both temporal existence and eternity is that one is ordered towards the other and falling within this continuum is physical death. Life is a gift to be appreciated and the 1st Reading, even though it highlights the immortality that we have been created for, it does not in any way repudiate earthly life.
Secondly, it is within this context of life flowing into eternity that allows us to grasp the message of the Gospel where both death and life are held in tension. In the eyes of a puritanical society, the woman with the haemorrhage was as good as dead. There was no place for the likes of her. To touch her would be to court death itself. Hence, in her simple comprehension, she believed that just by touching the fringe of Jesus’ cloak, she would not contaminate that much of Him but would draw enough of His power for healing. She was spot on, not in the area of tainting Him, but rather that His entire person exuded healing.
Then, there was also Jairus’ daughter who was already dead as Jesus’ intended visit was delayed by the attention paid to the haemorrhaging woman. Yet, Jesus did not allow death to take centre-stage as He proceeded to draw the child back to life. In this simple action, He demonstrated His mastery over death and life. Through the healing of the woman and restoration of the young girl, we are challenged in the way we approach life and death. In other words, how should we live and die?
Firstly, the idea of eternal life is not gained by disparaging earthly life for that would be to spit on the face of God. A reckless endangerment of others through irresponsible social behaviour is not an act of faith. Indeed, one must take reasonable precautions, and this is where the tricky balancing line comes into play. The boundary between prudence and paranoia is thin. Secondly, what can help is to recognise that the preservation of life at all costs is not tantamount to eternal life. Here we are brought into the domain of “quiddity” which for many Catholics has become rather bewildering. The question is, when is a sacrament “sacramental”? In the case of the woman with a haemorrhage, touching the fringe of Jesus’ cloak is reminiscent of the sacramental act.
Sadly, our situation has taken on such a frightful turn because a clearing of the throat, a sniffle, not to mention a hug or a touch, evokes a self-doubting speculation. Have I been infected? Will I infect others? Both the miracles of healing and restoration involved a degree of touching. Our predicament is that what is necessary for sacramental efficacy is now throw into suspect. Every contact is a potential contagion. This is a crisis that we are facing as Church. It does not help that we can easily escape into virtual reality.
The days will come when we need to return to sacramental worship. For now, any conversation regarding the celebration of the Sacraments is bound to stir up strong reactions for or against. Perhaps in the calm after the pandemic storm we might find the opportunity to reflect on the question of how we should live which is at the same time a question on how we should die. In this, we are challenged by Jesus in Mark’s Gospel: “For what does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world but loses his soul”. It was the same gauntlet thrown at the vainglorious Francis Xavier by Ignatius Loyola when they were in studying in Paris.
There is a “promise” or “threat” of a 5th (or 6th or 7th, whatever) wave to come. Many have adapted well to this “new normal” of isolation etc but for some the dilemma is “How much are we to stop living” that reduces us to basically breathing but not living. Again, this is not an advocacy for abandoning precaution. Despite this numbing paralysis, this Sunday holds up clearly for us the Christian meaning of death. It must be noted that eternal life is predicated upon living temporally and dying. Let us not crown death as the greatest catastrophe because it is not annihilation. Christ has already transformed perpetual death into eternal life. Therefore, we are prompted to live life to the fullest, to the best of our abilities, but always holding in front of us, the need to prepare the soul for its eternal destiny. Lodged within our hearts is the inescapable longing for the higher life which can only be satisfied in and by Jesus Christ. Our life here on earth should always be a happy preparation for the hereafter. Let us live in Christ and for Him alone.
What can the 1st Reading and the Gospel this Sunday say to us?
In the 1st Reading, Job’s experience reminds us that even at a personal level, God is present. As a rule, it does not feel so, otherwise Job would not have felt utterly abandoned which occasioned his anguished questioning of God. The answer supplied by God, we all know, does not really sit too well with many of us. We are, after all, proud of our “Enlightenment” pedigree and rightly we firmly hold “Reason” to be the foundation of a framework in which science and technology are tools in the shaping of nature and everything in it. There is barely space for “magic” left in this new world order, let alone “mystery”. Yet despite our celebrated capability and capacity, nothing much has changed in the arena of total dominion. We are at the mercy of mother nature whereas death is still very much our fate, no matter the effort to avoid or overcome it.
If Job’s personal encounter with God does not satisfy us, perhaps, the Gospel can give us a better indication of how close God is to us.
For a nation with a coastline, there is no love lost between the Israelites and the sea. The Old Testament nourished them with the epic saga of Noah who nearly got swept off by a raging deluge. Annually, they recount the watery woes of the Egyptians consumed by a raging sea. All these washed down by Jonah and his nautical travails, tossed, turned and finally swallowed by a whale from the dark and deep. For the Jews, the sea belongs to the realm of the untamed. However, this uneasy relationship between man and water is not the context for the disciples. Many of their contemporaries would have crossed the Sea of Galilee with nary a concern. But, on this fateful day, as is frequently the case for the unpredictability of life, they sailed into a savage storm. Immediately, the disciples were throw into a disarray. Ironic though that amongst them were experienced fishermen that only made their fear even more existential: “Master, do you not care? We are going down”.
Jesus’ response to the situation was “radical” because He carried them back to way before the “Great Deluge”. In fact, they were transported to the beginning of time. There to witness that whatever destructive and menacing power the “primaeval” waters had, it has always been under the sway of the Creator Himself. How much more intimate can the disciples get of their Creator and Saviour? He is at centre of whatever storms they may have.
One can derive that the primary message in the Gospel and the 1st Reading is to assure us that God is always the Emmanuel. Therefore, we should trust in Him. But why does this entreaty not seem to impress us?
Firstly, it could be that the invitation to trust God is a bit trite. Not tried and tested but rather a banal or hackneyed phrase we bandy about when we no longer have any control especially when we are faced with a peril that is now threatening us systematically. Secondly, a reason for our dissatisfaction could be that trusting in God feels very much like the attitude some may take with regard to faith which we have heard before. “Faith begins where reason ends”. Thirdly and more likely, perhaps, our ennui arises because we are responding with a faculty that has been impaired. A reason the appeal to “just trust in God” does not satisfy us may tie in with an ingrained awareness that that our ability to trust needs purification. It is not that we do not want to trust in God. We are unable to trust Him and that is not because He is untrustworthy. Rather our faculty has been impaired.
Thus, our notion of trust may require a little more purification than we are prepared to sacrifice or to let go of. In the first place, just like the definition of faith, our trust seems to be defined by a lack of choice, as if, we were expected to trust God simply because we have no choice. We are supposed to grit our teeth, suck it up, and get on with whatever curved balls life throws at us. It may be true that we have no choice, but that is not how trust functions. Life’s vicissitudes are not meant to be punishments. Instead, trust resides in the realm of freedom and not the lack, thereof.
Trust in God is strengthened the more we liberate the faculty or the ability to choose from the many distractions and attachments we have in life. One example to illustrate how distracted or attached we have become can be gleaned in the simple chore of cleaning. In an epoch long gone, we have dedicated laundry days. The washing machine was invented to free time for higher pursuits, like quality time for the family. Or even for God. But we seem to have less chance for the family whereas engagement with our devices through electronic connexions has increased exponentially. This is just one glaring example of our many distractions and attachments. Like sin, they impair our ability to freely choose.
Two words that frame the experience of the disciples in the calming of the sea are “radical” and “primaeval”. Both connote a return to the primordial past, to the very beginning of creation when the cosmos recognises its place as well as God’s. In other words, nature remembers its creaturehood. More than that, God is at the heart of all that He has created, and trust must be located within the centre of this “unequal” relationship. The path to radical trust treads through the trial of purification and sacrifice so that when God is returned to the top of our priorities, then our choosing becomes freer.
Whether or not the seas are troublesome or that there is a raging pandemic are immaterial. When our choice places God in the midst of all we are, we know that He will never let us be damned. When we acknowledge His sovereignty, then we shall rest in the peace that He will never betray our trust. It is this kind of trust that allows saints to function. Saints are able to carry on even when everything is in doubt because they trust that in God, they will always have a future.
Our experience is less than stellar. Even without a war or before the full blossoming of this pandemic, we were already embracing an uncertain future as evidence by the offerings on Netflix. We have been bombarded with one dystopian movie after another—a future replete with wars between lycans and vampires, zombies ravaging cities and countries and of course the many movies centring on the theme of contagion. Recently, at a vaccination centre, the public address was blaring out “Thriller”[1]. There is no God and in His place, we have Ironman, Thor and Superman. Our prosperous and advanced civilisation believes that it can exist without any reference to God. Any future without God will always be bleak and that may explain our present despair that God is distant.
Trust in God implies more than Him being on our side—fulfilling our bidding. It means placing Him at the top of our priorities. The 2nd Reading points us in that direction that “we live no longer for ourselves but for Him who died and was raised to life for us”. With Him as our focus, then whatever comes our way will be peripheral as they should be. This is trust in God which elicited for St Paul the joyful acclamation that “in all things, we endure tribulation, yet we are not in anguish. We are constrained, yet we are not destitute. We suffer persecution, yet we have not been abandoned. We are thrown down, yet we do not perish. We ever carry around the mortification of Jesus in our bodies, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies”. (2 Cor 4: 8-10).
God is in the boat of our time, and we are in His loving care. Let us trust in Him.
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[1] If you are interested. Here is the link to Michael Jackson’s Thriller - https://youtu.be/sOnqjkJTMaA
Contrast this crawling pace that nature takes to recover with the experience of a media career that has a currency of approximately 15 minutes. We are aware that the present social fabric is weaved together by hypes and fads which rise and fall at meteoric speed. The challenge that accompanies this fluctuating ebb and flow is the heightened expectation of immediacy which when unmet easily plummets into frustration and despair. In our need for speed, even patience feels impatient these days.
Thus, the Gospel is truly appropriate in these unnerving days of the lockdown because God seems to be silent and unresponsive to our prayers. In the absence of God, just as well that we have the parables of the sower and the mustard seed to accompany us as we ease into Ordinary Time where the pedestrian tempo of the season is synonymous with monotony.
But this humdrum is useful as reminder to us that life is 99% mundane and only possibly 1% adventure. More than that, it gives us a sense of how God works. We use to bid farewell using the phrase “Go with Godspeed”. This benediction has nothing to do with momentum. Instead its meaning is more “material” as in asking God to bless someone with success along the way. Thus, when hyper-speed expects immediacy, Godspeed actually cautions us that the blessings we seek belong to the will of God because we succeed as and when the Lord deems fit and not as when we demand.
In what we desire, when we believe that we are in control of our destiny, we easily forget that God is providential. If anything, our failure to control Covid merely proves that everything is dependent on God. In the two parables of the Gospel, botany provides an organic portrait of how the principle of God’s hidden providence operates in the way plants have to germinate, sprout, and grow. In the first reading, Prophet Ezekiel speaks of the Creator who has absolute sovereignty over creation. He is the planter who tends to the cedars that grow.
In the light of the emerging “narratives” of the previously “debunked” lab-leak theories, we are reminded that creation, as fashioned by God, has a pattern of its own and a good gardener is one who respects the rhythms of nature. The beauty of creation is that it is plastic because we can shape it. We cross-breed and cross-fertilise. Countries have altered their coastlines and increased their landmass. Yet, in trying to dominate nature, we hear the oft-repeated mantra that climate change is beyond our control highlighting that there is a law inscribed into nature which we ought to respect. We are accustomed to dominating when organising life according to our whims and fancy. Perhaps nature has unkindly sent us a reminder that we may have forgotten the author of creation Himself, God our Lord.
The past do not have a monopoly of stupid but sadly, we may have just cornered the market for arrogance. Nature is one of God’s playbooks. God still speaks through nature but somehow His voice is muted in our quest not for stewardship but for dominance. It is truly unfashionable to even suggest that God dared to speak through a vocabulary of pestilence. It does not fit the accepted standard that a good God is capable of allowing a such a malady to afflict us. If God spoke to Noah in the past, it is conceivable that He can still speak to us.
In fact, the stalled progress in subduing this pandemic is a teaching moment. The “Spanish Flu” that infected a third of the world’s population in 1918 (1.5 billion inhabitants at that time), through four waves, ran a course of more than two years. This is not to say that we should prepare ourselves for a longer run of Covid. It did come at about the time when Our Lady appeared at Fatima which is perhaps an indication that we should do what is within our power, that is, to pray and trust in Providence.
Sadly, haste required for a solution to any problem we have is determined by what is convenient for us. We have come to expect lightning speed when it comes to change either in a person or a situation. However, the rationale for our feeble conversion is simply attributed to us being “works in progress”. We are unquestionably swift in judging others but monumentally reticent in condemning ourselves. This phenomenon whereby we are passive in self-recrimination and easily excusing ourselves could be more reflective of reality in the sense that it actually leads us back to how God’s providence operates.
Despite our sinfulness, God has been nothing but kindness towards us. As the Psalmist reminds us, “He is slow to anger and rich in mercy”. (Ps 145:8). The change we so deeply want to see in ourselves and in the world is best accomplished by trusting in God. When what we want cannot be rushed, prayer is the solution.
Prayer is a good place to start the process of appreciating that God’s providential pace is not always ours. Saintly mothers and saintly Queens come to mind when we think of how God works. St Monica who prayed hard for St Augustine her son. St Elizabeth of Portugal who patiently prayed for the conversion of her unfaithful and immoral husband, King Diniz. Despite praying and failing, many saints trust and know that God would answer their prayers, not in their time but in His time. Prayers give God space and time to work. As a scientific and technical culture we are so impatient that we generally set conditions that God must work according to our schedule.
According to St Thomas Aquinas, patience is attached to the virtue of fortitude which St Augustine would agree as it “allows a man to bear the evils of life with equanimity of soul without allowing himself to be troubled by vexations”. A patient person puts up with inevitable evil so as to remain on the right path in the ascent towards God. Thus, in the parable of the Mustard Seed, the sheer size of the seed and the shelter of the scrub highlight that faith is the key to our prayers and trust in God’s providential care. Built into providence is the exercise of patience especially in this time of great and grave adversity.
This pandemic is truly a blessed exercise of patient waiting for God to come to our assistance. It is not at all easy because of the economic hardship we can observe around us. But, as the Gospel rightly points out, if God is the sower, then our faith is the mustard seed that needs to sprout and grow. In such a difficult time, Prophet Micah prompts us “But as for me, I will look to the Lord, I will wait for God my Saviour; my God will hear me”. (Mic 7:7).
An occasion of solidarity is now a likelihood of death.
Our fear of this Covid contagion, which is natural, and consequently our phobia of death, seems to have taken on a heightened alert. In such a situation, what can the Solemnity of Corpus Christi teach us since its context is basically that of a gathering and a meal?
Recently, someone mentioned that the last she received of Holy Communion was in March 2020. Sadly, she is not alone in this plight. Many have been deprived of the Eucharist on account that a religious congregation, that is, the act of coming together to worship, is deemed no longer safe. What is worse is that the life-giving food of the Body of Christ can become a neuralgic point of death.
While the word “fomites” has not entered common conversations, its definition has. A “fomes” simply means “an inanimate object that, when contaminated with or exposed to infectious agents, can retain and transfer a disease”. A good example are the buttons of our lifts. Notice that nowadays users are happy to let someone else press the button to a floor or they might just use a sharp object to press a panel button.
We have become so fearful of touching. But, touching, which is one of the 5 senses, belongs to the reality of materiality. Matter, which is the basis of the Incarnation and therefore the Sacraments, is now considered to be a means of death.[1] The 2nd Person of the Trinity, through the instrumentality of human flesh became Man. In short, matter has been sanctified by Jesus Christ in the Incarnation because the very act of God taking on flesh changes everything about the world. Thus, through the material mediation or instrumentality of bread and wine, He gives us His Body and Blood. In conclusion, the efficacy of a sacrament is dependent on its materiality.
What happens when we suspect materiality? In the place of matter, we have turned to technology because it promises all the wonderful connexions which matter has hitherto provided. We marvel as how instantly we are transported into an encounter thousands of miles away. Imagine kneeling in front of the TV before a virtual display of the Blessed Sacrament in Jerusalem. Contrast this experience with the action of Jesus who spat on the dirt to form a paste to daub a blind man’s eyes in order to restore his sight. Such a healing action would have been unthinkable in the face of Covid’s contagiousness.
What good then is the Blessed Eucharist? Our reaction may just reveal the uncomfortable reality that our need of the Body and Blood of Christ is superfluous after all. In the hands of reason and progress, virtual reality has become the appropriate medium of choice to wean us of the hopeless material dependence on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. This nouvelle regime of technology is connected, uniform, digitised, hyper-real, monitored and always on. We do not have to put up with the inconvenience of Jesus alone in the Tabernacle because He can be on tap. All that is necessary is the focus of a camera connected online and He can always be available to us, albeit virtually and not really.
Corpus Christi is the celebration of the principle of sacramentality. In fact the entire system of the Church’s hierarchy is build upon this principle. Jesus minced not a word about the necessity to eat His Body and to drink His Blood in order to live forever. The crowd that abandoned Him was never told that it had misunderstood Him because He had been speaking figuratively rather than literally. Not at all. Instead, He reiterated the requirement of eating and drinking Real food: His Body and Blood.
For that, a valid succession through ordination is a sine qua non for the ability to confect and make available the Bread of Eternal Life. In this sacramental economy, it makes perfect sense that those who are on the verge of death be given Holy Communion because it is THE food for the journey, the Viaticum. Even those who are not dying consume the Body and Blood of Christ too because they are on the same journey toward eternity.
Many cannot receive the Body of Christ today even though the Solemnity is highlighting it. Indeed this is an enforced Communion fast. Whilst spiritual Communion has become the “staple” for most people, we must not forget that spiritual Communion is ordered to the actual reception of Holy Communion. Therefore, every effort of ours should be geared towards the return of full service of the Mass and the reception of Holy Communion.
It is through the Sacraments, that Christ ordinarily effects His salvation of humanity. He continues to save us, really and not virtually, through His Church which is the place and the provider of His Sacraments. As such we cannot absolutise “safe spaces”[2] in the sense that we want to guarantee and secure 100% safety without appreciating that safety and salvation, whilst not mutually exclusive, are not equal. Safety is not the equivalence of salvation.
In the face of an overwhelming fear, any discussion which does not absolutise “safe space”[3] will be deemed as reckless. Indeed, in a climate of panic, we have lost the currency for courage. The daily figures for infections are fluctuating wildly suggesting that we have not crested an uncontrollable wave. The authorities appear to be reacting with a logic less coherent than a headless chicken running. The point is, diseases, especially of a virulent contagion, exaggerate the reality of death.[4] But thankfully, the Body and Blood of Christ emphasise the certainty of eternal life. We should never forget that and therefore, fearful that we are, it is also a time for us to summon forth courage. For Aristotle, courage is the basis of all other virtues. True, courage is not a licence to rashly court danger. Instead, bravery means we acknowledge that life is contingent, and that we humbly embrace the truth that every human activity rests upon the foundation of mortality. As in a war, in a time of trial and tribulation, we call forth the courage to trust in God and have the audacity of faith that despite this overwhelmingly dangerous infection, we hold on to the belief that Jesus is always Emmanuel—He is truly present to us in His Body and in His Blood.
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[1] Nevermind that “death” or temporality is built into materiality.
[2] We live in a world of material inequalities and the measuring system we have put in place is not helpful. Our focus is on productivity and the best person is supposedly the “self-made” man or woman. This itself creates the crisis we have with regard to individual mastery and autonomy. This kind of individualism already traps us in loneliness and isolation. Imagine the “excessive” health precautions we have put in place create even more isolation and loneliness. The very isolation we are suffering from because of our social structures seems to be “cured” by more isolation. There is a psychological price we have not reckoned with because our preoccupation now is survival.
[3] Unwittingly we demand a space where nobody has to die. That somehow the job of the authorities is provide us with such a space. Is it even achievable?
[4] Yes, death becomes us. But we seem to have an amnesia that life, that is, eternal life too becomes us in Christ. In the past, death is so much a parcel of life that cemeteries are located right at the side or the back of the Church. Today, we have engineered to remove this reality by placing memorial parks way beyond our visual range. We may get it out of sight or drive it out of mind, but it can never be banished forever. The only solution to overcoming death is faith in the afterlife. The only secure passport we have to eternity is the Body and Blood of Christ.
