24th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A 2023

From handling disputes and conflicts, this Sunday we enter into the arena of forgiveness. The 1st Reading taken from Ecclesiasticus is truly a pointer for us. It is almost like a precursor to the Lord’s Prayer where forgiveness cannot be a one-way street. If we yearn forgiveness, we must also be forgiving.

The Gospel sets up the scenario for us to consider how forgiveness operates. Peter is curious about how often one has to forgive and suggested a quantity which to most people would come across as generous. The response of Jesus was profoundly qualitative in the sense that the King’s generosity in forgiving the servant’s debt and the servant’s inability to forgive his fellow servant had no comparison. A disciple is called to forgive immensely.

This is our challenge. Forgiveness is not easy and many people struggle with it. A good example is the case of infidelity or adultery. For example, how can a husband forgive his cheating wife? Let me just say that this question sounds odd, skirting, as it were, on the thin ice of misogynistic patriarchy. Statistics might just reveal that men do most of the cheating. Still the question remains how a man or a woman forgive his or her spouse for infidelity.

Why do we struggle with it? Why are we not able to forgive? Perhaps the answer is revealed through the popularity of a genre of movies like the Equaliser or the Punisher. Denzel Washington has never acted in a sequel except this franchise in which he is depicted as a man who rights the wrongs. It is a tell-tale sign, no doubt. Why? Our justice system is perverted.

Recently Rowan Atkinson, whom many are more familiar with the character of Mr Bean, spoke on the topic of “free speech”. He admitted that he, being a personality, can get away with murder in whatever he says because the law, in general, will not touch him. However, he raised concern on behalf of those who might not enjoy the protection, not of the law, but of the court of popularity. When you are rich or famous, the rules do not apply.

We have two-tier system of justice. The usual sense is that only the rich will enjoy the benefits of this type of justice system. Lack of access to proper justice tends to make the yearning for closure so much more acute.

True justice can be better understood if we look at the phenomenon of revenge. Those who seek revenge are presumably looking to right a wrong which has not been made right under the law. In the case where the victim who had been denied justice now exacts his or her revenge, the question is how long will the satisfaction of getting even last? Schadenfreude, an experience we all are familiar with, is a German composite word that is made up of damage and joy. It describes taking pleasure in the misfortune of others, most especially of one’s enemy. Like someone you hate has met with an accident, you cannot escape the sneaking thought inside that goes, “serves him right”. But we all know that once the initial exuberance felt that a misfortune has befallen an enemy dies off, we are left with the same feeling of dissatisfaction.

The deeper root of our struggle is possibly due to the loss of faith in the Resurrection. We do not trust that God can take care of us, if not in this life, then in the next. Faith in God cannot be confounded meaning that God will never let us down. He is the Father of the poor, the widow and the orphans. He is the protector the oppressed and in His might mercy will see to it that we receive the justice we need and the mercy we deserve.

Trust in God allows the will to forgive. To forgive is a matter of the will and not a description of our emotion. It is the desire to forgive and not a feeling that one has forgiven. The fact is that forgiveness does not guarantee a good feeling which many erroneously would equate “forgetting” as a quality associated with forgiveness. In reality, even though one has forgiven and years have passed, sometimes, we can be reminded of an incident and are overcome by visceral feelings surrounding an old emotional trauma. It is just an feeling and it does not mean that we have not forgiven.

The ability to let go must be hinged on a reality which we hold on to. It is the idea that perfect satisfaction for our pain comes from God alone. He alone can heal our broken hearted. Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Roman Emperor said that the best revenge is to be unlike your enemy rings true. We might believe that exacting an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth will salve the raw wound or fill the aching void in our hearts when in actual fact, it is only temporary until we recognise that only in God will our pain be healed.

Forgiveness is possible because it frees us from heavy burden of anger and hate weighing down our shoulders. We can be so blinded by rage that we fail to realise that the target of our hatred is sleeping soundly at night. No, forgiveness does not mean we pretend that there was no hurt. Instead we acknowledge that hurt but make a conscious decision that that hurt will no longer control our imagination and power our behaviour.

One of the best ways to forgive is to seek blessing upon our enemy. Quite the opposite of Schadenfreude. Blessing our enemy actually frees the heart because hatred and blessing do not go together. Pray for them and ask the Lord to bless them because they need it. The Germans also gave us another composite word: Freudenfreude which means brother’s joy, that is, the enjoyment of another person’s success. Perhaps this is the test. True freedom to forgive comes when we are able to rejoice that our enemy has done well. To forgive is to trust and say “You, O Lord, are a better judge than I can ever be”.

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A 2023

Through Peter’s profession faith in Jesus as the Christ, we catch a glimpse of its consequence. The confession led to Peter’s designation as the foundation whereupon Christ will build His Church. However, last week we see how even Peter was not immune to having the wrong idea of what a Messiah should be. In other words, Jesus had to remind Peter and the Apostles that the Cross, with its attendant realities, is part and parcel of Christian discipleship.

Today we cross from having personal faith to its full flowering in the community. Even though faith requires personal commitment, its impact is communitarian. This is where it becomes tricky.

Firstly, for any society to function, there must be consensus as simple as keeping to the left when driving. What happens when someone does not follow the basic rule of law? According to the 2nd Reading, charity (or love) towards another is the fulfilment of the law. To keep the law, we have to be charitable. In the Gospel, this love or charity is expressed through private fraternal correction. We only ask for witnesses if a person were reluctant to change. In the 1st Reading, the focus is on the responsibility of leaders to care for the salvation of souls. Therefore, the Church is involved when we encounter stubbornness.

These days people chafe at the idea of the Church interfering with their personal autonomy when it comes to how they ought to live their faith. This rejection of ecclesial authority is expressed as “spirituality yes” and “religion no”. It means a person has an interior spiritual life but does not want to be associated with organised religion. In other words, faith is reduced to a personal expression without any social connexion.

Such a notion fails to realise that at the heart of religion is relationship. This translates as any functioning relationship that is worthwhile must have rules and regulations. The saying “No man is an island” expresses this profound reality that man has been created for society and therefore the community has a hold on his behaviour.

Many would consider the community’s demands as irksome and constraining because nobody likes to be told what to do. Moreover, the loss of confidence in leadership and in institutions has created a moral crisis, be it in the political, economic or ecclesial sphere. In the case of the Church, her voice is weakened when “preachers” do not walk the talk.

What should we do when the world refuses to listen or be corrected?

We can rule out the Gospel of Niceness. The attempt to be agreeable, pleasant and uncomplicated does not close the credibility gap since it fails to represent who Christ truly is and what He really teaches. The Church has a duty to proclaim Christ and what it means to follow Him. The keys handed to Peter gives the Church power to bind and to loose. Through the exercise of this power, the Church has the authority to absolve sins, to pronounce doctrinal judgements and to discipline her sons and daughters. If we are overly sensitive, any correction will always sound like judgement or even scolding. But to teach, discipline and correct are acts of mercy.

Thus, to be faithful to Christ, the duty of the Church is to speak the truth in an age of disbelief. To do this the Pope suggests more conversation. Through the synodal process, Pope Francis has proposed that the Church enters into a conversation with the world. In this conversation the most important person present is the Holy Spirit. He is promised by Christ to Peter and with Peter’s successors to the Church. There are many issues pressing upon us. Migrants, climate change and identity politics are major concerns. We could focus on these pressing issues and then force the conversation to move in the direction of how the Church should change to accommodate us. But that is not the Synod nor is it the synodal process.

Instead, our conversation should always search for where the Holy Spirit is leading the Church and it may not be what we like or want. Why? The Church is not just the Church now. She is the Church from the time of Christ until now. While change is necessary, it must always be in consonant with the deposit of faith that we have received.

This is not always easy to hear or accept especially for those who have entrenched positions. The ability to speak truth demands that Bishops be brave and so too the priests who assist them. If laying down one’s life is the ultimate martyrdom, then leaders of the Church should never be afraid to speak what needs to be spoken no matter how unpleasant that may sound.

As the process of the Synod involves the Holy Spirit, the fruit of the process cannot be a Church torn apart by internal disagreement. If that be so, then the question arises as to where the Spirit is who unites rather that divides? Or which spirit are we following? A true Synod is a process of the Spirit shining on the truth of Christ through His Church.

In our conversations, what is important is that truth is not a possession we use to silence contrary positions. Instead, truth is a submissive posture because it is being obedient to the Spirit of Christ. The geography of human experiences and relationships is truly messy because everyone feels that he or she possesses the truth. But we might be able to grasp better the will of Christ if we recognise and accept that we are firstly, stewards and servants of truth rather than its masters. Whatever we say or do, we are at the service of truth.

In conclusion, as servants who build up the Body of Christ, the clear boundaries we put up is not because we are exclusive but because we are heading towards heaven. This coincides with the basic meaning of religion which is to tie, bind or align us with God. What unites us is not just love but caritas in veritate, that is, love in truth. We would like to believe that the driving force that binds humanity together is love. One would have heard of the slogan that “love is love” and love is all that matters. And while it is crucial that we solve the problems affecting humanity, it would be myopic to think that the greatest love and service we can show the world is the various solutions to our problems. In the midst of making the world a better place, the mission remains to proclaim Christ to a disbelieving world and one that is marked by the scandal of credibility deficit. Despite these challenges, the task continues that we announce Christ, if not by words, then by the eloquence of our deeds. The greatest love and service that we owe to each other is truth; of who Jesus Christ is and of who we truly are.

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A 2023

From the Rock to Satan, from a steady stalwart to a stumbling stone, the fall from hero to zero came at the speed of light. Last week, He was Peter the man upon whom Christ staked His Church. This week, He is called a scandal which in Greek means a stumbling block.
What makes for Peter’s fall from grace? And there will be more occasions for him to stumble after this.

The notion of a Messiah is loaded with revolutionary ideals. Israel was an oppressed nation and as a people under One God, the reality of being ruled by pagan Romans who worshipped false gods was chafing or degradingly undignified, to say the least. Like for example to have a “Chinese or Indian” PM in a certain country. Hence, to consider Christ as a rebel leader opens up possibilities and Peter was not wrong in thinking about this. If Christ were to be the new Daniel, then Peter must have had an inkling about how Jesus should behave. Given the first of three predictions about the coming Passion that Jesus had to endure, Peter would have struggled to reconcile the concept of a leader with that of a servant. More than serving, this is a Leader who will lay down His life for His sheep. Indeed this was a paradox which Peter could not grasp.

But Peter is not alone in rejecting Christ as the Suffering Servant.

The mystery that all Disciples must come to terms with is the Cross. Good Friday comes before Easter Sunday. But the world is increasingly uncomfortable with even a fleeting shadow of the Cross. There is a stream of Christianity that preaches the Gospel of Prosperity which in a way rejects the Cross. This theology is not entirely unfounded because it flows from an Old Testament mentality which spoke little of the afterlife and focused more on this life. God blesses and He cannot be outdone in his generosity. Prosperity or material progress, which is a good, is the result of God’s blessing and it roughly follows a principle of tit for tat or reward and punishment. Blessing is God’s reward and mishap is God’s punishment. That was how Job’s friends conceived of his misfortunes.

This kind of Gospel is tempting. Be generous with God and He will bless you. However, the life of Christ stands against this kind of simple equation. He gave everything to His Father and yet He paid the price for our salvation with His Body crucified and His blood poured out.

Akin to the rejection of the Cross found in the Gospel of Prosperity is the idea of wellness in the Gospel of Therapy. The central tenet of a therapeutic religion is that people are supposed to be happy and feel good about themselves. In fact, God wants that of us, if we were to follow the definition of God as love. We have an entire supplement industry that promotes well-being to achieve wellness. There is a hunger for spirituality and relationship with God; a vacuum which wellness capitalises on. Wellness is endorsed as a holistic approach to healthy living, characterised by physical, mental and social well-being. We need to be well in order to live a more meaningful and beautiful life. The demand for therapeutic wholeness also tries to blot out discomfort or suffering.

Nobody likes to suffer. Perhaps we can understand from a human health perspective why Peter reacted the way he did to Jesus.

Christ offered an alternative which in a way Job may have understood. Job’s friends felt that his misfortunes were signs of God’s displeasure though the answer that Job finally received from the Lord was ambiguous. In a way, the righteous Job prefigured Jesus. Like righteous and moral Job, Christ Himself was innocent and yet His would be a life marked by suffering and ultimately by His humiliating death on the Cross.

Even if we do not preach a Gospel of Prosperity, many of us are like Peter in rejecting the Cross. Somehow, we have embraced its fruit by believing that God should bless us because we have been good and we have come to believe that discipleship is incompatible with suffering.

Imagine your grandparents or great grandparents. Divorce was almost unheard of amongst that class of people. Was it because of taboo? Maybe. Perhaps our ancestors held a view which did not exclude suffering from their discipleship. On the day of their wedding, they made a promise to God that they would remain together through thick and thin, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. They accepted the suffering they had to endure, not that they deserved to endure it.

Given that we live with both prosperity as a right and wellness as a goal, it is unthinkable to propose to a person who believes that he or she has made a mistake, to stay in a marriage because we operate under the principle that suffering is something to be avoided at all costs. Again, this does not mean that a person deserves to suffer.

Both the Gospels of Prosperity and Wellness have as their goal, the attainment of heaven or whatever conditions are associated with heaven here on earth. Unfortunately, heaven cannot be located within this realm, no matter how much we try. Thus, we are left unfulfilled and in a way that explains why there is suffering.

Broadly speaking there are two types of suffering. Firstly, according to Buddha, the root of suffering is desire or ignorance. For example where there is lust, you would think that satisfying one’s lust would lead to fulfilment. The reality is that when there is unbridled lust, there is never enough “love”. In a way, some people will have to suffer not because they deserve it but because they need to purify their desires and wants. The second type of suffering which Jesus tried to school Peter and the rest of the Disciples arose from His mission to save souls. In Him, suffering is not incompatible with life. In fact, in Christ, innocent suffering has been raised to the dignity of redemption. Look at the recent saints who suffered bodily. Therese de Lisieux or Bernadette Soubirous. Both suffered painful deaths. Or think of Carlo Acutis who died from leukaemia at the age of 15. He taught us what it means to suffer. He offered his sufferings for Pope Benedict XVI and for the Church, saying "I offer all the suffering I will have to suffer for the Lord, for the Pope, and the Church”. We suffer because heaven is not meant to fit us. Instead, we are meant to fit into heaven which means we suffer as we die to selfishness and sin. However, there is always innocent suffering which means that we have been called to follow Christ closely like the saints mentioned above. Setting their eyes on heaven these saints endured profound suffering because they have faith that after their Calvary there is the Resurrection and Ascension. This beatific vision rests on the assurance that the end of this earthly journey is a hope which lives forever and a happiness that is complete in Christ Jesus our Lord.