Mercy Sunday Year C 2022

Christ is risen and for 8 continuous days we have been celebrating the great event of the Resurrection. Being the octave of Easter, the 2nd Sunday has been designated as Mercy Sunday. The focus on “mercy” might be a bit misleading because it is possibly myopic. Why? In the fullness of time, God the Father sent His Son to save us through His Passion, Death and Resurrection. If that was not the greatest sacrifice of love or act of mercy, what was it then?

The question is why the need to shine a spotlight on that which is obvious.

Down the ages there have been devotions dedicated to God’s mercy. It was right there at the inception of the Church where the human heart became the most fitting symbol associated with mercy. The description of blood and water flowing from the side of Christ, or from His Heart, entered quickly into liturgical language, and was rightly read by the Church as the wellspring of her Sacraments. Even the Evangelist St John can be said to be the first Apostle of Mercy since he rested his head on the Heart of Christ. Through St Margaret Mary Alacoque, we catch a glimpse of God’s merciful love through the Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. That was about 400 years ago. Of course, we are currently more familiar and more at home with the Divine Mercy as revealed to us through St Faustina. Most recently, Pope Francis’ Misericordiae vultus declared 2016 as the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy.

According to St John Paul II, “Divine mercy reaches human beings through the Heart of Christ crucified”. Thus, at the Canonisation of Sr Faustina Kowałska, JPII fulfilled the desire of the Lord, for in the diary of the sainted religious, Jesus instructed: “I want the Image to be solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter, and I want it to be venerated publicly so that every soul may know about it… My daughter, tell the whole world about My inconceivable mercy. I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of My mercy”.

If God’s mercy has been consistent, then the issue is with us because we suffer from acute amnesia. If gratitude is the memory of the heart, then forgetfulness must be the font of ingratitude. If one probes further, one realises that there really is no need to emphasise that God is merciful because, as the Psalmist would chant, His mercy endures forever. Moreover, every Mass, every Eucharist is a celebration of God’s mercy.

The very need to institute the Sunday of Divine Mercy reveals just how imperfect Man’s memory is. We need regular reminders that God is merciful as the history of salvation is littered with the debris and detritus of our forgetfulness. For example, the Jansenist heresy with its insistence on rigorous penitential practices was almost a denial of God’s merciful love. In that era, Jesus appeared to St Margaret Mary to reassure humanity of His enduring mercy. Clearly, the problem is that our hearts can be so callused that we do not recognise God’s mercy even when it is right in our faces.[1]

The human dilemma is such that mercy is a quality we most desire but least appreciate.

Consider a fault you have, preferably a weakness which you have been struggling with for a long time. Gossiping or taking pleasure in damaging the reputation of another person. Pinching small items that do not belong to you and excusing it as negligible since no one really cares about. Cursing and swearing when driving. Lustfully looking at people as sexual objects. Our faults are plenty. In general, everyone here has battles with his or her sins. Who would not want to be freed of his or her demon? After all, no one here is a canonised reprobate or sinner. If you were torn asunder and worn out by interior conflicts, would you not feel that you deserve a break? Everyone wants to be understood in his or her struggles. The searing temptations, the false starts, the continual failures and the depressing inertia of having to start all over again. Merciful relief would be to have a listening ear and the assurance that one is not being judged.

The irony is that what we most desire, which is mercy to shown us, we are often not generous in return. Like the unforgiving debtor, we easily zero in on the faults of others and the more we dislike a person, the larger his or her faults would appear and conversely, we tend to overlook the same defects in a person we like. As long as we dislike a person, nothing that he or she does will ever be right.

In this lopsided and entitled mercy, we will only have room for God’s mercy. Perhaps it might be good to reacquaint ourselves with what mercy truly is because desiring God’s forgiving mercy is not a one-way street. As St Thomas Aquinas reminds us: “Mercy without justice is dissolution. Justice without mercy is cruelty”. God’s mercy and His justice are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they embrace as Jesus reminded Sr Faustina: “Souls perish in spite of My bitter Passion… Secretary of My mercy, write, tell souls about this great mercy of Mine, because the awful day, the day of My justice is near”. (Diary #965). As much as we want God to understand our struggles, we have a duty to render, in justice, to Him a heart purified by conversion. Conversion is the appropriate and grateful response to God’s merciful love.

The conversion of hearts directs us to the bigger picture of what we are doing these days: Easter. By His Passion, Death and Resurrection, Christ did not just restore humanity but offered Man a renewed covenant as His people. God is merciful because we are His people. However, He is not “helplessly” merciful but instead, in His generous love, He invites us to respond in kind, in love. To His people He gave the Sacrament of Forgiveness. Breathing onto His Apostles, He commanded them to remit sins. Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation we benefit from His Mercy. In our desire to change, we return to His mercy again and again.

To stress that God is merciful does not make Him more merciful or add anything new to Him because His mercy endures forever. However, Mercy Sunday reminds us not to forget His mercy so that we will not let up in our effort at conversion. It is a life-long journey, which at every turn, if we are attentive, God’s mercy awaits to refresh us for this pilgrimage.


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[1] Just look at Moses and the Israelites after the Passover from Egypt. The desert was strewn with bodies of those who forgot God’s faithfulness. Right after their escape from slavery and whilst enjoying God’s providence, they murmured against Him.

Easter Vigil 2022

We have travelled with Jesus during the entire period of Lent and now we stand at the cusp of the Resurrection. On Holy Thursday, we acknowledged His humble service as He stooped and bent low to wash the feet of His Disciples, after which, He gave them and bequeathed us His Body and Blood as food and drink. Yesterday we watched helplessly, painfully aware that His Body, battered and bruised, hanging on the Cross, bore the brunt and burden on our iniquities even as precious life drained out of Him. Last night He was laid in the tomb to await the 3rd Day.

Just like Good Friday, we theoretically do not have a Mass today. Traditionally, the Vigil was celebrated as late as possible in the evening which makes it more a Midnight Mass of Easter. The service is supposed to stretched until dawn breaks. For this reason of Mass celebrated very late at night that today is called Black Saturday in some places which means that it remains a day of prayer and penance.

There are two ways of looking at Holy Saturday. According to some customs, the Body of Jesus is still in the tomb. Penance, apart from prayer and fasting, expresses itself in silence and stillness because the King is asleep. We accompany Him. This is according to an anonymous 2nd century sermon. On the other hand, the tomb could be empty but not because He has “risen”. Instead, He is busy as the Apostles’ Creed states that “He descended into hell”. There are two categories of souls in Hell—evil or righteous. Christ entry into Hades was not to deliver the damned nor to destroy the hell of damnation. Instead He went there because the righteous and holy souls are waiting eagerly for His deliverance—like Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham. The same ancient anonymous sermon tells us that in descending into Hell, Jesus told the righteous souls, “My sleep will release you from the sleep of Hades”. Even in death, the Saviour was hard at work rescuing souls who had been expecting Him.

As we cross midnight, this Vigil carries us into the 3rd day. As after the Sabbath, the ladies who were concerned to embalm Him went to the sepulchre where they encountered an empty tomb and two angels who asked them, “Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here; He has risen”. The description of the “3rd day” is a powerful resurrection motif because the 2nd Adam, Jesus Christ rising from the dead has renewed creation. As humanity is recreated, we encounter two powerful symbols at work. Firstly, we have the fire that becomes light. Secondly, there is the water of regeneration. Both are associated with the Rite which will take place shortly after this: Baptism.

This Rite celebrates Christ’s victory over sin and death. We hear the word “victory” but we may struggle to understand “sin” and “death”. Bear with me. Gathered tonight are a select few. These Elect will be baptised. Water to wash away Original Sin and whatever sins they may have committed since birth. Light to illuminate the path that starting from now they will journey on.

The presence of these Elect helps us to appreciate what we are doing here and what we are to become. Christ’ victory over sin and death is the “raison d'être” or the basis of Mother Church’s evangelical mission. Sadly, we tend to associate this task with preaching the Gospel, that is, to go out and proselytise. That is not the full story because Jesus descending into Hell provides a more complete picture of the Church’s vocation—to preach the Gospel and to save souls. The Church is in the business of proselytisation and salvation. In other words, preaching the Gospel is one thing, souls can be lost which makes salvation really an urgent matter to think about.

The Elect are baptised in order to be saved. Otherwise, baptism does not make sense at all. When we declare Christ’s triumph over sin and death, immediately we realise that we are not here just to “hear” the good news but also to appreciate that at the heart of salvation is the struggle for souls. From Palm Sunday till this moment, we went through the Paschal Mystery following Christ who submitted Himself to death in order to ransom sinners, one and all.

Otherwise, why be saved if we have no sin? Everyone here is a sinner who needs salvation, baptised or not.

The Church is not a spa. She was not founded to molly-coddle us, to meet our preferences or even our tastes. She is the prime battleground for souls. It is understandable that we demand “safe-spaces” and the Church should be a place where people feel safe and secure. But I am not referring to that kind of safety or security. Sadly, we may have been swept by the current culture of comfort and convenience that we are entitled to feel good when coming to Church. True, the Church is a sanctuary for souls because as a Mystery and Sacrament she is holy and therefore a sanctuary. But as a human institution, populated by sinners, she is not immune to the forces of evil because it is the nature of evil to battle for souls where they least expect it. Just because the Church is holy does not mean that the Satan will leave her alone. Indeed, Satan does not have to win over the souls who are damned. They already belong to him. Ever since the beginning of creation, he prowls about looking for souls to devour and how would Satan win if not by bringing down the Church in her sons and daughters?

This is definitely not a message that you would want to hear this evening or this morning. The truth is that every baptism we attend is our wake-up call. The Cathedral has only 6 baptisms this year. You can use the excuse of the pandemic for this poor showing. But is this the Mother Church of the Diocese of Malacca Johore? The dismal number may shamefully uncover the quality or the lack of in our discipleship. This is not a number game but what it exposes is perhaps the Gospel is not that great to attract attention. We know that it cannot be so because the Gospel is powerful—God’s word does not go out without achieving its purpose. What the depressing number of baptism indicates is how unappealing we are. We are pathetic witnesses.

But feeble witnessing aside, perhaps we are not “sinful” enough to appreciate our salvation. This is not an invitation to commit more sins. Rather we need to plumb the depth of our waywardness to grasp the scope and span of hell that Jesus would scour to save our souls. A grateful heart draws attention not to itself but to the One from whom one has received much. You observe this phenomenon in those who serve devotedly. They are not in the service for the name but because they have been saved by Him and therefore their witnessing is a return of love for love. Tonight, we are joyful because Christ’s salvation has reached the hearts of our Elect. We ask that through the renewal of our baptismal vows, the flame in our hearts may be rekindled so that grateful for our salvation, we shine brighter to attract into the fold those who are searching for Christ and for His salvation.

Good Friday 2022

Today is the day we abide with Him. We stand at the foot of the Cross with Mary the Mother of Jesus. Our rags to riches self-made mindset can only wring helplessly as we watch God’s only Son dying. As life slowly ebbs from Him, death eternal stranglehold is gradually loosened. No longer will death be perpetual.

The Church, our Mother, asks us to stay close to Jesus and so on the day which honours His Passion and His Death, no Mass is celebrated. It is the only day in the whole liturgical year where no Eucharist is offered. There is a deeper reason for not having Mass than just to accompany Jesus and it is supplied by the nature of what a Sacrament is.

Those familiar with the traditional catechism know the usual definition for a Sacrament is “an outward sign of an inward reality”. Good Friday shines a spotlight on the “inward reality” which means that the “outward sign” must take a back-seat. The explanation given by St Thomas states that “the figure [the Mass] ceases on the advent of the reality”. The Eucharist is a “figure and a representation” of our Lord’s Passion. On the day in which His Passion is recalled as it unfolds, the Eucharist is not consecrated.

Another way to understand this may be taken from the Sacrament of Matrimony. There is no marriage in heaven and we think that this is based on Our Lord’s teaching in Matthew 22:30: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven”. A Sacrament functions like a road sign. On our journey to heaven, we will definitely need directions but once there, road signs can be dispensed with. In that sense, the intimate bond between a man and a woman is a sign or a representation of the union between Christ and the Church. On earth when we encounter faithful and fruitful love between a man and a woman, we are reminded of the conjugal love between Christ, the bridegroom and the Church, His bride. When we are in heaven, we will no longer need that reminder or sign because the reality is right before us—Christ in His love for the Church. Likewise, in heaven there is no need for baptism because we are already the members of Christ’s Body.

So on this day when we aim is to recall and feel the Passion of the Lord as we observe the anniversary of His death, we will refrain from celebrating the Eucharist. Instead, we come bent low before the blood-stained throne of the Cross to adore Him who rules the world in His humility. On this anniversary, even though there is no Mass, we are privileged still to receive His Body because we consecrated enough hosts yesterday.

Absence is to help our hearts grow fonder. The glaring absence of Mass throughout the world today is to allow sadness to touch us because we, or to be more personal, “I have loaded my sins on the back of my beloved Saviour”. As He hangs on the Cross, the weight of my sins is slowly suffocating Him. My sins nailed Him to the Cross but it is His love for me that has kept Him there.

The scale of this Man’s love for me can be appreciated through the dynamics of John’s Gospel. Earlier, as the Passion Narrative was re-enacted, one got a sense that Jesus already knew what lay ahead of Him. He was more than the Suffering Servant of the 1st Reading because that image of Prophet Isaiah is rather passive—almost a victim. In John’s Gospel, Jesus knew they were coming to kill him. Like most sane people, He could have avoided it. He could have just gone into hiding and escape this horrible death. But the reality remains that He resolutely stared death in the face by accepting His Passion. In other words, life was not snatched from Him. He willingly surrendered His life so that I can have eternal life. He did all that for me.

And we should be at a loss. As the Cross is unveiled, I should keenly feel responsible for my sins and have at least a modicum of guilt that I contributed to the death of my Saviour. Like I said on Palm Sunday, it is easy to hide behind the generic “we” without ever assuming personal accountability. Furthermore, we tend to gravitate towards “happy ever after” and because we are ill at ease with loss, we quickly gloss over what is uncomfortable. It is more consoling to feel that He died for me than for me to take greater responsibility that my sins put Him there.

Our current psychology favours sickness, illness, or psychosis as the cause of our sins rather than sinfulness as the root of some of our diseases. For example, one cannot help stealing because one is a kleptomaniac. You name it, we have it but when sickness becomes an excuse for one’s sinfulness, it definitely lessen one’s culpability. This effort to retake and regain accountability will require time and space but more than that, it needs a lot more brutal honesty than mitigating justification. Staying with the lifeless Body of our Lord might give pause for a more profound reflexion on our guilt and allow us to reclaim personal responsibility.

To grow more and be converted to the Lord, this day is necessary as it allows us to focus on the Cross. Without a doubt, Good Friday has to be sorrowful but the last word is not death. It cannot be because love will not be trapped by death. Good Friday begins with death of the Saviour but it will end with life eternal—that life, which by Christ’s death on the Cross, He purchased it for me. To grasp the depth of His sacrifice for me, I need to stand watch at the foot of the Cross. As I drink of His blood that flows from His side, I pray that He gives me the grace to cherish deeply the life He has won for me.

Maundy Thursday 2022

The Gospel is taken from John. It is interesting because if we were to apply a measure to judge Jesus’ ministry, He would be considered a failure. Everyone but the Twelve deserted Him if we follow the long discourse in John 6. The crowd roundly rejected the condition which Jesus set for eternal life because He predicated it on eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood. This evening, in the context of the Last Supper, we are given a mandate by Jesus. “Mandatum”, the Latin root for Maundy Thursday, is the command to love. Taken from the Vulgate’s translation of John 13: 34, “Mandatum novum do vobis” reads in English as “A new commandment I give to you”.

There is no mention of the Eucharist in this Gospel passage which simply suggests that the focus is not on the Sacrament as we are at the cusp of a momentous event that will take place immediately after the Last Supper. Out of convenience, when we shifted the Solemnity of the Body and Blood Christ to Sunday, we may have lost the connexion between these two great solemnities. Both are supposed to be celebrated on Thursday allowing the association between them to stand out as Maundy Thursday commemorate the Institution of the Sacrament of the Eucharist [1] whereas Corpus Christi highlights that the Eucharist is truly, substantially and really the Body and Blood of Christ.

It is not easy to discern the link between Maundy Thursday and Corpus Christi. As we read in John 6, the Jews have all but deserted Jesus when He asked them to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. “How can it be that this Man gives us His flesh to eat?”. But without hesitation, very early on in the history of the Church, there was already a consensus that the bread after Consecration was no longer bread substantially but was of another reality. Likewise for the wine. St Justin clearly stated that: “For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Saviour being incarnate by God’s word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the word of prayer which comes from Him . . . is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.”.

This evening, the humble service of Jesus in washing the feet of His disciples is re-enacted at the Mass of the Last Supper. Given that the idea of a hero these days has to be a kind of an anti-hero, it is easy to repaint Jesus in a revolutionary shade. The latest hue has been to sketch Him as a political liberator who takes the side of the poor. It definitely rhymes with the mandate to love. In no way should we deny that His prophetic messages have political implications. But what is most revolutionary of Jesus and if there is something to be said about His radicality is that He changed the Passover meal from just a blessing to a memorial that brings forward what was in the past.

This forms the basis for us to speak of the sacrifice of the Mass as bloodless. What happened on Calvary can be brought right to our altar. In John 6, He told His audience in no uncertain terms that eternal life was centred on eating His flesh and drinking His blood. How can He set such a condition if He did not provide for that possibility?

St Thomas Aquinas called it transubstantiation. That He came to serve was indeed meek and modest and we ought to emulate Him. But the most profound expression of Divine humility is when we can recognise Him in the consecrated Bread and Wine. In the Eucharist, He is unassuming in the manner of His appearance. In Holy Communion, He gives Himself to us as food and drink. At every Eucharist, there is no equivocation with regard to “Whom” we consume. One of the early charges against Christianity was her cannibalism. We cannot be cannibals because we do not eat parts of Jesus. Instead, we consume Him, Body and Soul, Divinity and humanity.

In the focus on Christ who came to serve, we can miss the connexion that the mandate He gave to love and to serve flows from the Eucharist. The more we want to love and serve, the more we need the Eucharist. Perhaps this is the reason for John the Evangelist to emphasise service on the night where Jesus celebrated the 1st Eucharist. We need strength just to love. What more our enemies. Ordinarily loving is already demanding. What more to serve. The spiritual energy needed to embrace and live out the mandate of Christ comes from the Eucharist.

In loving and serving, we can never get enough of Jesus. Perhaps in our world of “can do” we have forgotten how powerful the Sacraments are and how necessary the Eucharist is to our ministries and apostolates. We tend to depend on our own strength. So, this evening, as we gather to recall what He did that night as an example of love and service, we also remember that He left us the Eucharist as the source of the spiritual strength to follow Him in loving and serving others, most especially our enemies.


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[1]  Three mysteries are commemorated. (1) The Institution of the Eucharist and (2) the Priesthood, (3) the command to love one another. 

Palm Sunday Year C 2022

The official title of this Mass is “Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord” and today is supposed to be the 2nd Sunday of Passiontide. The title is long because we are combining two events into one. From the joyful respite of Laetare Sunday (4th Sunday of Lent) we should sail into the short season of Passiontide consisting of Palm and Passion Sundays, respectively, the 5th and 6th Sundays of Lent. From the 5th Sunday of Lent onwards, the statues, the images and the Cross[1] are supposed to be veiled in purple to dramatise the concealment or the “hiding” of Christ’s divinity as His humanity will now be paraded and parodied through the Passion. We also used to celebrate Our Lady of Sorrows on the Friday of the 5th Week of Lent.[2]

However, rightly or wrongly, in the amalgamation, what happens is that we seem to dash through the liturgy with barely time or space to savour the silence of helplessness because the mood very quickly takes a dramatic and sensational turn. Beginning with waving palms, jubilantly we enter into Jerusalem but by the time we re-enact the Gospel drama, we are already thick in the Passion of the Lord. Whatever the loss of space or time to stay and watch, our focus is no longer penance but the bitter passion of Christ’s suffering. Passiontide directs our attention to the sorrowful Saviour as He struggles up to Golgotha.

What we have today is the longest Gospel in the liturgical year and it previews what is to come on Good Friday. A sharper focus of what Jesus goes through has already been foretold by Isaiah’s Song of the Suffering Servant. If we were to remove all the details, the entire Passion drama can be abridged into the 2nd Reading. There St Paul’s theology is central to appreciating what God’s Son went through, all for the sake of humanity.

His state was divine but He clung not to His divinity. This is the great paradox that Jesus taught and lived: life is lived fully not by surrendering to our survival instincts and definitely not by self-preservation. It is counter-intuitive that the fullness of life comes when one gives it up so that others can live. Think of a candle that burns. The only way to emit light is through being burnt off. The idea of self-sacrifice is not unfamiliar to us. Many of you work south of the border so that your children can have a better life. The lofty challenge is to lay down one’s life for strangers and not for blood relations.

Self-preservation is the mantra of a post-Christian, post-truth world. The greatest love is supposedly self-love. The true Servant of Love is Jesus who exemplified that true love equals laying down one’s life and the hymn in the Letter to the Philippians reveals the full sacrifice of that love. If we take our inspiration from the 3rd Luminous Mystery where Jesus proclaims the Kingdom of Heaven, what He does in "kenosis", in self-emptying, is to make sure that the Kingdom He came to inaugurate is not an empty slogan but can be recognised in this world.

And yet, we are far from that Kingdom, are we not?

Even as we claim discipleship, conversion has been painfully slow. St Paul’s “incurvatus in se”, translated as “curved inward on oneself” describes the contradiction between good intentions and our inclination to evil deeds. Man is deeply afflicted by concupiscence for even though the Sacrament of Baptism washes away Original Sin, it does not remove our tendency to sin. This impulse is akin to the experience that we cannot “unknow” or “unlearn” what we have come to know and learn. A person who knows how to walk cannot “unknow” walking.

Why is it so difficult to be converted?

The hurried descent from triumph to failure may have robbed us of the opportunity to stay with the Lord. Like Peter, James and John in the Garden falling asleep while Jesus agonised alone, the sudden slide from victory to defeat also lets us off the hook of staying with the Lord in His suffering. We are ill at ease with inaction, that is, doing nothing, because our basic attitude is activism. After all, are we not upwardly mobile? Instead of waiting for the winds to push our sails, we fly into the storm to get to where we want to be. To be productive is to do something because a minute stalled is a minute wasted. Furthermore, we are uncomfortable with sorrow and we shy away from pain because we associate God with a sense of well-being. In our rush through the liturgy, there is no time for silence and sorrow. No space for us to stay with Him and to feel the weight of our sins loaded onto His shoulders.[3]

If the spiritual objective of Lent is renewal, then, as the etymology of the word suggests, it is a springtime for the soul. In fact, the season of spring leaps forth after the passive fallow of winter. Conversion is the fruit of our penitential practices. But it is not guaranteed automatically. Some Catholics who mortify themselves rigorously will discover that the lasting change they long for always remains as elusive as the horizon. Here we may not realise that conversion is most radical in a grateful heart. A thankful heart is more disposed to change. Without gratitude, Christ’s salvation can feel like we are entitled to it and when it comes to accepting that He died for us, without a matching sense of gratitude, we will take salvation for granted and remain where we are, unmoved, unchanged, unreformed.

Gratitude grows from staying with the Lord. The prolonged Passiontide and the entire Holy Week give us ample time and space to accompany the Lord and to deepen the awareness and to savour the gravity that He died for “me”. He sacrificed Himself to take away “my” sins and not the generic He took away “our” sins or that He died for “us”. It is not “we” who hanged Him on the Cross. It is “I” and not “we” who crucified my Lord. It is easier to hide behind the generic “we” but it requires more personal responsibility to acknowledge the “I”.

Sadly, entitled and insulated that we are, “I” want God to stay with “me”. Whereas a conversion of lasting effect is the fruit of keeping close to Jesus. Furthermore, “I” stay with Him not because He needs “me” but because “I” need Him. Especially when “I” want to rid “myself” of sins or grow in the deeper appreciation of how “my” sins crucified my sweet Jesus. The longer I stay and the more intimate I am with Him, the keener will I feel my sinfulness through and through. Like the Publican at the back of the Temple, not daring to look up, beating his breast, I can lament, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am a sinner”.

In the 2nd Reading, St Paul rightly sings of the abasement of Christ. If the fall of Adam is my damnation, then the abnegation of Christ is my salvation. If I have no sins, then, I really have no need of Him which can only mean that salvation is unnecessary and if He did die for me, I will not be able to appreciate it. Just like the Pharisee in the Temple who was not saved because he had no sin.

Finally, we may not have veiled our images as we have been instructed to do it on Holy Thursday. Notwithstanding, just be mindful that these days of inactivity, our sight should be drawn toward the essential work of Christ’s redemption and the price paid for our salvation. In these coming days of silence, let the hymn “Abide with me” play in our minds. More effectively, change the wordings to “Abide with You” to signal that “I intend to stay with You, my Lord, in Your agony in the Garden all the way to Your death on the Cross so that I may rise with You and be freed from the sins that cling to me”.

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[1] Except Stained Glasses, Stations of the Cross and Procession Cross.

[2] Our Lady of Sorrow is now permanently commemorated on 15th Sept, a day after the Exaltation of the Cross. Its trace is found in the alternative Collect for the 5th Week of Lent. “O God, who in this season give your Church the grace to imitate devoutly the Blessed Virgin Mary in contemplating the Passion of Christ, grant, we pray, through her intercession, that we may cling more firmly each day to your Only Begotten Son and come at last to the fullness of his grace”.

[3] What we are comfortable to do is bubble-wrap the notion of God’s presence in safety and security that we often fail to recognise that He is there in our physical, psychological, social, ecological and spiritual pain.

5th Sunday of Lent Year C 2022

For Laetare Sunday last week, God’s unfathomable love was revealed through the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This Sunday that same love shines through the woman caught in adultery. What sort of love does Jesus manifest when He dealt with this shamed woman?

In the 1st Reading, Prophet Isaiah who wrote during the Exile interpreted the subsequent return of the people in the light of the first Passover where Moses led the Israelites from Egypt to Palestine. For Isaiah, this journey to freedom will be even more glorious than the first Exodus when the Jews were set free from Pharaoh’s slavery. In this return from Exile, the desert will now be a free-flowing highway for the sons and daughters of God to traverse.

In charting the journeys of God’s people either from Egypt or the Exile to Palestine, liberation or freedom is the language of God’s love. Written into the relationship with God is that Man has been created for freedom. This is where the adultery case in the Gospel comes in.

Firstly, just from a covenantal perspective, adultery is the proper description of Israel’s repeated infidelity to God. In Hosea, Israel is compared to a harlot selling herself promiscuously. Despite her many betrayals of the compact with God, He does not abandon her. The Gospel illustrates the length with which God would go to in forgiving despite Man’s treachery.

Secondly, with respect to the adulterous woman, the background is rather simple. The Pharisees and the Scribes were not at all sympathetic to this woman’s plight. Her religious conversion was not on their menu. Instead, they saw her a pawn in the chess of entrapment. They cooked up a catch-22 dilemma for Jesus to either defy the Mosaic prescription or to usurp the Roman’s authority to punish and put to death. Neither was a tenable or viable option for Jesus.

In place of these two non-viable options, Jesus issued a challenge that severs the Gordian Knot His enemies had woven for Him. There is no doubt that the woman caught “in flagrante dilecto” was a sinner. Sadly, what was reflected in the accusers’ lofty perch is how our poor vision does not need any corrective or magnifying glass to spot the sins of others. On this point, we are very much like the Scribes and Pharisees who could not even recognise their own sinfulness. In such an instance of blindness, the genius was simply Jesus inviting any sinless person to cast the first stone. In the end, Jesus set the woman free.

To understand what Jesus is offering us, we may need to explore the idea of progress because it is entwined with the notion of liberty or freedom. In terms of change or evolution, progress is not merely technological advances. For example, Tony Fernandes should be able to advertise: “Now everyone can launch into space for leisure”. Embedded into this developmental process is the idea of personal autonomy flourishing which means that one should have absolute liberty to express oneself in any which way one desires. As an illustration, the current concept of progress should include the possibility that a male who claims to be a woman, be allowed to enter into competition with female swimmers. That is the kind of freedom we have come to expect, except of course, to be a murderer, a rapist or worst, a paedophile.

This notion of progress that is linked to the deepening of individual freedom is captivating. We are enamoured by material progress as witnessed through the embrace of “newer” ideas, inventions, innovations because the concept promotes greater convenience, wider possibilities, etc. We are coasting through an expressway of technological upgrades. The more developed we are, the freer we expect to be. While the feel of freedom is exhilarating, what we have never asked is why have our addictions become deadlier. The very fact that countries are liberalising the usage of narcotics like marijuana or cannabis is not because they have become more permissive but because the “latest” or “newest” opiate, stimulant and dope have become even more lethal or addictive. So much for the freedom that we crave.[1]

God’s love for us should result in our freedom but it is “less” than what we think. In other words, it is more sober than stimulating, more austere than awesome. Perhaps, in terms of the definition of freedom as stimulating and awesome, “selfishness” has somewhat perverted our sense of freedom.

Take for example a male celebrity who with his boyfriend decide to have a child through surrogacy. Presumably because technology[2] has not caught up yet, which means that the couple has to procure the human oocytes from the ovum market. Have them fertilised with either one of the partners’ reproductive fluid. Then proceed to surrogate the embryos.[3] But what happens when the child comes of age and begins to ask who his or her mother is? The love of the couple for the child is not the issue here. Instead, the child’s query is existential for every human person wants to know his or her origin. The irony is that we are a generation that needs “closure” for completion and to move on in life, and yet does not seem to recognise that the same need exists for the “manufactured” child.

This case underlines the reality that we have been drinking from the well of “selfish” freedom where to be free is generally limited to thinking of one’s needs and self-fulfilment (selfish-fulfilment, more like it). The male celebrity and his partner wanted a child for themselves without considering the existential truth that a child needs a father and a mother.

Our unfettered liberty is never absolute because for Jesus, freedom is tied to the extirpation of sin. In no uncertain terms, He told the woman “Go and sin no more”. This profoundly challenges our approach to God because we seemed to have pigeon-holed Him to this cubicle of soft love. He is understanding and ultimately, He bends to our will. Freedom is not the liberty to behave as we want but a decision to live as what God has intended for us. When translated, our freedom equals emancipation from selfishness, to live independent from sinning and to submit ourselves to God’s will. To do God’s will is freedom and as Jesus told the adulterous woman, to be free, is to sin no more.

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[1] If you do not care for narcotics, think how deadening our addiction or compulsion towards mobile devices has become. We wake up and the first thing we grab is our cellular phones.

[2] We cannot “manufacture” human eggs.

[3] Employ someone from a third-world country to surrogate the foetus. Ukraine is facing a problem because it is thought to have the biggest surrogate industry in the world.