Christ the King Year B 2024

Have you heard of Klaus Schwab? Maybe we are more familiar with George Soros whom Mahathir accused of damaging the country’s economy because he speculated on the Ringgit prior to the 1997 financial crisis. Anyway, the former, meaning Klaus Schwab, founded the advocacy think-tank called the World Economic Forum in 1971 and annually they meet in Davos, Switzerland. The latter, George Soros, is basically one of the billionaire participants.

Anyway, if you do not know these personalities or their plans, it is not the end of the world. More importantly, does this slogan sounds just about right for you? Building a greener, a fairer and a smarter world. These words describe the Great Reset.

The movement initiated by Klaus Schwab aims to transform the world into a better place that is fair for all. What made this dream closer to reality was the devastation brought about by the Coronavirus pandemic. It presented the perfect platform to jumpstart the world aright.

Perhaps it has escaped the notice of these great thinkers and leaders that the Great Reset is not humanity’s first attempt at “reshaping and unifying” the world. Very early in history, this very alluring idea was hatched when mankind tried to construct the Tower of Babel. The early 1900s saw Marx attempting to forge a fairer system where everyone will have access to what they need. Babel brought disarray into humanity whereas Communism destroyed lives.

Yet somehow mankind cannot help itself when it comes to attempts at setting the world aright. Given our fascination with performance indices, we are inclined to define ourselves through the metrics of achievement. There is an obsession with numbers and as a consequence, the temptation to push for a systemic reset is great. Coupled with this temptation is the hubris, the arrogance that every emerging generation seems to think that it holds the panacea to the ills of the world.

While it is noble to envision a better world, the reality is that systems can only do so much. Take for example, fines. Monetary penalty works to keep behaviour in check. The heftier the fine, the more subservient the citizens. But what if there were no enforcements? Like in this country. We have notices of fines for smoking but never enforced. In general, people tend to revert to their default position. In other words, you can take a monkey out of a jungle but you cannot take the jungle out of a monkey. Fear may be a great motivator but it is basically just that, fear and no more.

The Great Reset does not begin with grand systems. The Great Reset that we yearn for so badly actually belongs to Christ alone. The programme was already put into place two thousand years ago. He died in order to justify and to restore man to God’s favour. The price for that redemption, the Great Reset, was paid with His blood. It is an ongoing programme that continues with His Church through Apostolic Succession. Sadly, we find it hard to believe that there is already a reset or a restoration initiated by the Lord. If “system” is what fascinates us perhaps we should consider embracing His programme and it is His Sacramental system. Unfortunately, our fixation with novelty drives us to search for the better solution as if the Lord’s reset had been deficient.

Nature has been weakened by sin. Christ’s passion, death and resurrection is aimed at restoring our weakened state. To support this goal, His great reset, He left us His Church and His Sacraments. This is the part which is rather mundane and not in any way exciting. Imagine coming for Mass every day. It is a ritual which can be boring but it is there that Christ’s life-giving Sacrament allows me to be part of the Reset. Every Sacrament is Christ Himself making us a part of His programme of restoring the world to the Father.

Thus, the Great Restoration begins with me. It is an intensely personal journey. Becoming a better-quality Catholic is, by far, the most graceful answer to the Great Reset. The two great Sacraments of Reset of the Church are Confession and the Eucharist. One tends to the wounds caused by sin. One provides strength for the journey. Both the Sacraments belong to the life-long process of reorienting our compass in the direction of Christ.

Today we celebrate Christ the King. Discipleship is a daily reality. Like coming back from work and looking after a family—elderly parent who is losing her mind, young children who cannot afford housing. It is mundane and precisely the point. Christ did not conquer the world with the wave of a finger. He conquered the world one heart at a time. He did not conquered classes or races or societies but individual consciences. Temptation is always there to “reinvent” ourselves, as the Great Reset is one example. But as the Psalmist reminds us, “If the Lord does not build, then the labourer shall toil in vain”. Today we turn to the great Architect of the only reset for humanity, Christ the King and from Him we ask for the conversion of heart and the strength to follow Him closely and daily.

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

Ordinary Time is drawing to a close but unlike Year A’s focus on the end time, the spotlight of Year B shines on faith in the midst of tribulation. From trusting in God’s generosity, we continue with the theme of faith in the Lord.

From the perspective of the Readings, discipleship has a cost which can only be paid by faith in the Lord. Without faith in Him, nobody can ever bear the price of discipleship.

Following Christ through trials and tribulations only makes sense if there is an end to our time on earth. The “Eschaton” invites us to think about the afterlife. However, it is a rather uncomfortable issue for some because nobody wants to be reminded of death. Two years ago, a priest from a parish not too distant from here was found dead in the bathroom of the Diocesan Retreat House. His death was most unexpected. It was unnerving. Unwittingly, we tend to run like clockwork. We wake up in the morning to slog or to slave during day and back to sleep at night. We eat from one meal to another. Sometimes even before we have finished eating we are already planning for the next meal. There is a rhythm or cadence to life which we take for granted. All we need is a spanner in the works. We assume that life will run smoothly but a death just throws us off kilter. It was in the aftermath of a death close to the presbyterium that we began to have workshops about our health etc.

But it does not take long for us to revert to our old ways. Until the next untimely death. Whether we like it or not, we need to think about the afterlife. We can go on accumulating but when we are at death’s door, nothing of what we possess materially can pass through that portal. What counts are the good deeds which we have done, the merits we have gathered, not as a guarantee of our entrance into eternal life but as gifts which, by God’s grace, we present to Him. In other words, all the merits we have are His gifts in the first place.

To reach that place, we need to calculate the cost for the journey. Much like going on an extended trip. The destination determines the amount of petrol to pump and also the toll to pay in order to get there. Last Sunday, the two widows gave their all. What are we prepared to sacrifice so that we may enter the gates of eternal life?

In the matter of paying the price of discipleship, we may have “romanticised” it by glamorising it with “blood”. While it is true that martyrdom is bloody yet the best description for it is actually bloodless. What is required is patience that comes from daily living out the call of Christ as in the Shema and the love of neighbour. It is not glamorous at all. It is daily and it is grinding. That is the cost of discipleship.

To give an example. Before marriage, the man and woman have great dreams of their shared life together. Just after their marriage, the couple remains barren despite all attempts to remedy their childlessness. Top that with the debilitating stroke of a spouse that ends with caring for the partner’s daily needs and also balancing the responsibility of being the sole bread winner for the family. This is a bloodless discipleship arising from the vow to remain together “for better or for worse”. It is not glossy or glitzy at all. In fact, such a life weighs upon and wears down a person. It is through difficulties that one gathers merits with the grace of God.

So, when Christ spoke of the end-time, it might seem to us that it is set in the future which we have to watch out for. The truth is the end-time can be closer in the sense that we might just drop death, like the priest in the bathroom mentioned earlier. Or like anyone engaging life like clockwork only to be stopped by an untimely death.

The watchfulness that the Lord asks of us is not as much directed to that specific time in the future as it is focused on our behaviour, our duties, our discipline because we can never tell when the time is for us to make that journey to eternity. Thus, we are called to be mindful that whatever good we can do, we should and we must never waste the many opportunities granted to us to make up and to repent while we can.

This sounds rather forbidding and frightening but if we look at the warnings of Jesus we realise that He is not trying to scare us. The life we have on earth is temporal. Between temporal and eternal, there is no comparison, no measure. If anything, the trials that we undergo is but a blip in the spectrum of eternity. We ought to live for that eternity. It might be better to remember that the end-time is not out there but rather it is in our hearts. Christ’s sacrifice has defeated Satan’s power forever but the battle continues in our hearts. It is there that His victory is to be asserted.

In fact, Christ makes it a point to emphasise that all will pass away. As the author of the Ecclesiastes reminds us, “All is vanity” and so we take heed. What Christ also promises is that He will come again and with Him, our salvation is assured. We should attempt to live as if today is our last day so that when we are called, we have already said our goodbyes. Our hearts are already prepared and we have been longing for the coming of the Lord.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

Last week, the love of God was paired with the love of neighbour. This week, God’s providence is paired with two widows’ generosity. If love for the Lord is the springboard for our out-reach towards our neighbour, then God’s trustworthy providence is the assurance of our generosity. 

The 2nd Reading seals our guarantee. We have been focussing on Christ as High Priest. But the author also tells us that Christ generously offered Himself as a sacrifice for us. He dared to walk into oblivion knowing that He will never lose because of His Father. Laying down His life as a ransom for us is the ultimate sign of trust in Providence. God is dependable because He spared no expense to provide for our salvation.

On our part, scarcity is a fear of the future. There will never be enough when we are fearful or are uncertain about what the future holds. Fearing future scarcity will limit our generosity. Exactly the situation of the Widow in the 1st Reading. She barely had enough to feed herself and her son. We are afraid to part with what we have and instead we tend to operate from a space of surplus. We give only because we have more than what we need and the best part is that we may even feel generous about it. But consider the sacrifice that saved us was paid with no less than the life of God’s only Son. God held nothing back, giving not from His surplus but of His most precious Son.

It is fascinating that we have so much and yet somehow we feel that there is not enough. In fact, some countries today are experiencing population decline. What brought about this phenomenon?

When the Industrial Revolution took off, machination increased production. Whether life became easier for everyone is debatable. What was evident is that medical science advanced in tandem. What followed was life-expectancy increased and correspondingly child mortality decreased. The result was a spurt in the population growth. The world seemed to have more people but somehow there never seemed to be enough for everyone.

When population growth spiked, the alarm was sounded. Humanity was growing at a pace where it was felt that natural resources would not cope. What we had failed to realised was that the industrial progress had made it possible for food production to increase. Instead the scare was that we will never have enough. This fear resulted in some countries’ attempts to limit population expansion through birth control and family planning that even included forced sterilisation. That programme has been so successful and now these same countries are facing a population decline.

The usual mantra is that the world is incapable of supporting a burgeoning population and have you noticed that our food wastage has also increase exponentially. It just does not add up.

Why?

The model that we have been operating under is one of surplus and not of need. We dare to share only because we have surplus. We are hesitant that if we were to part with what we need, then when the moment arises for what is needed, we do not have enough and we suffer. Perhaps it explains the phenomenon of hoarding. Actually, accumulation represents a kind of fear that when the moment comes, whatever we have, cannot supply for the present need. But hoarding is not limited merely to material goods. Some millionaires and billionaires can be considered hoarders too because they fear inadequacy.

Hoarding is just a way of saying that God does not know how to take care of us. Perhaps it would be a wonderful occasion for priests to preach a “gospel of prosperity” meaning that parishioners should be generous because God can never be outdone in generosity. After all we are in the midst of a renovation, right? But do you know that a “gospel of prosperity” actually misses the point? The generosity suggested still operates from a model of “surplus”. According to this “gospel of prosperity”, the person who gives a lot would still be giving out of surplus and not out of need. Do we give to God what we have and do not need any more OR do we give to Him what we have even though we need it? Again, like the Widow and her son of the 1st Reading who were supposed to eat what they had and then die but she obeyed Elijah by surrendering what she needed.

In other words, dare we hand our hearts and our wills, our whole selves to the Lord? That means everything we hold dear, our family, our loves, our joys or our careers. Do we dare to place all in God’s hands to do with them according to His will. Like Jesus walking into death’s embrace for He knows that the Father is ever there for Him. That is the lesson for today. God does not need anything we can give Him. After all, what have we that we have not received in the first place? In fact, everything belongs to Him. Giving back to Him is nothing more than surrendering to the rightful owner. But like Jesus who walked into His death, God wants us to depend on Him.

To be generous even with what we need is a kind of grace. It is a fortitude in facing the future not with fear but with confidence. Fear is certain that scarcity is around the corner whereas faith is a strength that believes abundance awaits because the God whom we trust will never let us down.

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

Today the teaching of Christ highlights the great Shema of Dt. 6:4 and the love of neighbour of Lev. 19:18. How to navigate the love of God and neighbour?

We have a dilemma. The world appears to be on the brink of a war. Looking back at 1914, who would have thought the murder of an Archduke in Sarajevo could have reshaped the world. Now Israel and Iran are digging deep into their trenches, the former in self-defence and the latter intent on annihilation. On top of the spectre of a global conflict we are reminded that the planet is ravaged by climate change while the affluent West is inundated by economic migrations.

In other words, our attention is held sway by “hunger”. Whatever crises we face, be it an armed conflict, economic migration or even climate change, the stomach is involved. There will be hunger whenever a disaster strikes. Where is God in all these?

Today Jesus taught in the Temple emphasising the Great Commandment. We are in a bind. What does it mean to love a God who is absent at best or helpless at worst? Religion is mostly irrelevant and people shy away from organised religion. Increasingly people defined themselves as spiritual but not religious. In a meaningful “spiritual” realm, away from the control of organised religions, God, if there is one, should be a benevolent force. Thus, our definition of a compassionate God necessarily excludes His sovereignty. It means that if He exists, then it is His responsibility to affirm us and to ensure that we feel good about ourselves. In such a “spiritual” realm, God is the ultimate “therapist”.

The truth is, God is sovereign. If we can “define” ourselves, that would necessarily mean that God should be “defined” too. Given such a scenario, our self-definition might not fit in with God’s self-revelation. There is a possibility that we may not be included in His life, not that He needs us. This should give us pause to re-think our idea of who God is. He exists but not to prop us up. He is not our “therapist”.

Moreover, the dilemma we have with God is supplied by an urgency of a global magnitude. We experience how bad the world is and God seems to be silent or helpless even. Thus we set the question up. “How can you love a God whom you cannot see if you do not love the brother whom you can see?”. This question draws our attention to the glaring problems that we have before us. Hunger creates conflicts and also human migration. We want to solve this human ecological crisis.

Perhaps a better way to frame the need for action is to reorient ourselves with regard to the problems that we face. Jesus who laid down His life for His friends did not do it as a proof of His love for the Father. Rather it was His love for the Father that enabled Him to freely to lay down His life.

This should be how we approach the question of the love of our neighbour. The notion that we can create a world free from hunger and totally just or fair is appealing and seductive. However, the pantheon of canonised saint did not achieve sanctity from this great idea. Each became a saint because he or she had a personal love for Jesus. Their love for Christ fired their unreserved charity towards their brothers and sisters.

The ability to love a God whom one cannot see has a powerful effect. There are great people who are able to love even if they have no relationship with God. They are philanthropists and the world is packed with them. From this, it is easy to see how the love of neighbour has become the proof for the love of God.

The Shema is a call to each Christian to fall in love with God, not an idea of God nor even a wonderful idea of humanity. Perhaps what is radically wrong in the world today is that we have forgotten that love should flow from God to humanity. It remains our dilemma because it is never possible to convert the world to an ideology of good. Any attempt to make everybody loving in order to achieve a greater good will only result in human misery. Thus, the saying is true that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It is rightly so that when we love God, there should be a kind of visibility to that love. The proof of our love flows into the love of the neighbour. That is the correct direction. If there is no love for our neighbour, maybe the question to ask is if one has truly loved God or rather what sort of relationship do we have with the God we love.

We desire a better world as we should and the only way to change is when enough humanity has fallen in love with God. Christianity as an effective force for good depends on this love of God. He is the reason that missionaries dared to fan out into the world to spread the Gospel and to share the love of Christ.

An example might illustrate how the love for God flows into the love for neighbours. Which is easier to order? Char Koay Teow. Or Char Koay Teow but no taugeh, without lap cheong, “see hum” must be cooked and fried with duck’s egg. If you were to “tapau” food, it is much easier to just say to the uncle, “Tapau, Char Koay Teow, two packets”. But it is definitely more mouthful to give that special instruction CKT. If the person were someone you truly love, it would not be a problem. You go and you even ensure that the CKT uncle complied with your instructions. But if it were someone whom you have no love for, you would find listing the exceptions an inconvenience and might even resent the person’s fussiness.

Likewise, in the matter of organised religion, complete with rules and regulations, when there is no love, everything will come across as impositions. But when we are in love, nothing is ever too much. The love of God and of neighbour are not equal loves. In order to fully love our neighbours, the challenge is to recover our love for the person of Jesus Christ.

To love your neighbour as yourself may be feel like the best recipe for social change especially if we think love can be programmed into actions like a machine can be programmed to run. We continually want to reshape the world by the dint of our will-power and thus through our machinations. We do possess technology that can increase food production. We can feed the world all over but why are we not doing it? The truth remains that without loving Jesus, we will be doomed to failure. Therefore, if we want to transform the world, then we must be inflamed by the love of Christ. There is no other way to love Him except to spend time with Him, through personal prayer, through scripture and silence, through the Eucharist and through Adoration.

All Saints’ Day 2024

Today we celebrate our saints who are mostly unnamed.

A particular Christian sect literally reads the Revelation and believes that only 144,000 people will be saved. Thankfully, the Apocalypse is more hopeful because it also describes “a huge number, impossible to count, of people from every nation, race, tribe and language; they were standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands”.

Two essential things to note.

Firstly, for every saint the Church has canonised, there are many more who are uncanonised. They do not live quiet lives of desperation but rather quiet lives of unsung heroism. They may not be acknowledged by man but they are definitely known to God. He alone knows their struggles and tribulations for “these are the people who have been through the great persecution, and they have washed their robes white again in the blood of the Lamb” and now they sing, “Victory to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”.

Secondly, we live in hope. The Saints enjoy the fullness of God’s love. Those on earth are hoping to share in that plenitude of love. We are struggling to get there. Thus, the Saints are beacons of hope because they know our struggles. They continue to pray for us and also to pray for the souls in purgatory. Both the souls in purgatory and those of us who are on earth are either waiting to enter or are still on a pilgrimage to the Beatific Vision. Like the Saints in heaven doing good on earth, so too our brothers and sisters in Purgatory who are praying for us. While they can and do pray for the living, what is lacking for them is that they are totally dependent on the Saints and those of us on earth to pray for them.

An interesting quote might help us appreciate how one can be a saint. “Some people are just born to fight. It is not that they are born brave. It is not that they are born strong. It is just that the universe has decided that this one, this one will have grit and fire and steel in their blood. And it will be tested, this cosmic mettle of theirs. They will face trial after trial, be broken and damaged in countless ways. But this one was born to fight. Maybe it is not the life they would have chosen. Maybe they would love to lay down their arms. But they were born to fight. It is what they know. It is what they do best. It is all they can do”.

But here is the kicker. The difference between a person born to fight and a saint is grace. A person may have grit and guts but without grace it is just brute force. No effort of our own can ever propel us to sanctity. What we need is God’s grace. His grace is our strength and our hope. Julius Caesar writing a letter to the Roman Senate referred to his swift victory over his opponents, allegedly wrote, “Veni, vidi, vici” translated “I came, I saw, I conquered”. The Saints have conquered but they teach us what it means to be graced by God and with greater humility they will paraphrase Caesar, “I came, I struggled, I conquered” with the assistance of God.

In remembering the saints, we also celebrate the vocation of sanctity that every Christian is invited to. As we remember our many unknown Saints, we affirm our belief that we too have been called to holiness and we confess that by the grace of God, we too can be raised to the altar of sanctity.

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

As Jesus was poised to enter Jerusalem, He encountered Bartimaeus, the blind beggar. What can we learn from this encounter?

Of the many persons helped by Jesus, we get to know the beggar’s name indicating that he could have been an important personality. In fact, outside the inner circle of Christ’s disciples, this man, even though visually impaired, was alert intuitively or spiritually to the presence of the Saviour.

In Bartimaeus’ appeal to Christ, we catch an echo of the Penitential Rite at Mass. “Jesus Son of David, have mercy on me”. “Eleison me, eleison me” translated becomes the familiar “Kyrie eleison”, that is, “Lord, have mercy (on me)”. This plaintive cry of Bartimaeus can help us take a look at who we truly are and what we need most.

Bartimaeus shows us that we need God more than we realise. The overarching theme provided by the first and second readings is our creaturely helplessness. In Jeremiah, the Israelites were exiled and vulnerable. It was God who led them to freedom. In restoring the Israelites, God revealed Himself to be the Father of a people. In Hebrews, Jesus the High Priest can empathise with our helplessness and weakness because He is a man like us except for the inclination to sin.

At every turn, man is helpless, especially in the area of sin and salvation. We may have bionic capabilities propped up by technological mastery but when it comes to saving ourselves we are beggars like Bartimaeus. The beauty of this blind man was not only his sensing of who Jesus is but despite the attempts to silence him, he still cried out to Jesus all the louder. Beneath the cry for healing was a firm faith supplied by the title “Son of David”. Faith in the Saviour saved him.

He is a symbol of a humanity that is disabled by sin and whose only recourse is to throw itself at the mercy of the Saviour. As sinners we are unable to save ourselves but must depend on God alone.

In the case of Bartimaeus, his faith is immense. After Jesus called him, he shook off his cloak and went towards the Lord. Such was his confidence in Jesus’ ability to heal. If the miracle did not materialise, one wonders how Bartimaeus could find his cloak. The cloak is like our security blanket and forsaking it signals the courage to leave behind one’s comfort. Sometimes we can be canonised in our sins because we know no better.

The nature of sin is not only its addictiveness. It could also be a form of security. We cling to sins because we dare not let them go. It is like a security blanket and therefore it is not merely a case of faith or a lack of it, as if we have no faith. The challenge for modern man is that our faith is often limited by our capacity to control. Since we are self-made, we pride ourselves on the ability to control our destiny which means we tend to shun helplessness. We even resent the state of helplessness because it is a sign of weakness. A self-help generation trusts God only in as much as it trusts ourselves. In other words, we turn to God only because we cannot do things for ourselves.

A good illustration is provided by our political experiences. Think about palace plotting, or party politicking, or clerical conspiracy. While we consider them weaved into our social fabric but manoeuvring is a symptom of our need to be in control. Thus, the election of the Pope is never an innocent affair because certain quarters will try to manipulate the outcome. Intrigues and politicking are indications of the lack of faith and our need to be in charge. We are fearful that God cannot be depended on and so set ourselves to supply what God is incapable of doing for us. We want to be in control.

While we may want to direct our destiny, still we can never save ourselves. The Israelites and Bartimaeus are lessons to learn. They mirror our need for God and His salvation.

Finally, Bartimaeus asked to see. Sight or vision is not merely a physical faculty but it also to have the eyes of faith, that is, to see what is proper. Our notion of vision is basically that of an ability or capacity to see. Fair enough? But is that the function of sight? Perhaps a question might just clarify this for us. We have fundamentally become a pornographic generation. It is so because smut is acceptable, accessible, affordable and anonymous. Consider these two options. Between being blind and being able to watch porn, which would you choose? The correct answer should be: I choose to be blind rather than to offend God with the faculty of seeing.

In the case of Bartimaeus, there appears to be no difference between seeing and not seeing. He was blind and yet he already recognised Jesus. So if we cry out like the blind beggar, then our desire, that is, what we most need, is to see Jesus our Lord so that we can be saved. As we inch closer to Jesus, we grow deeper in the awareness of His presence in the lives of others, most especially in the lives of those who are poor and outside the ambit of our vision, the vision of society.

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024.

The themes of the last few weeks seem to coalesce together this Sunday. There was the disciples’ discussion that centred on who the greatest would be. The previous Sunday Jesus lamented on how tough it is for those with possessions and riches to enter the Kingdom of heaven.

Today two brothers compete to sit on either side of Jesus. The context for all these exchanges and teachings that follow remains the impending Passion that Jesus will face. For Christians, the road to triumph must always be preceded by Calvary. In other words, there is no glory without suffering but the disciples seemed to suffer from selective hearing. While they zoomed in on the victory, Christ continued to point to the reality of His Passion.

The 1st Reading shines a spotlight on the Passion of the Suffering Servant. Like a Holy Week’s Good Friday follow-up, our iniquities are laid upon Him and we are saved by His Passion. In the midst of trials and tribulations, the Responsorial Psalm assures us that no one, most especially the servant who trusts in God, will be forsaken.

Interestingly for us is our take on or understanding of power and the glory that accompanies it. For Jesus, suffering comes with the territory of power. For us, we are enamoured by power’s control and capability, that is, the power to command and move things. Within this perspective, power is equated with dominion. For example, there are laws but how often have they been swept away because the one who has power decreed otherwise, giving the impression that the powerful are above the laws.

Poets are perhaps like the little boy who can see the Emperor or power for its nakedness. The two siblings who sought coveted positions believed that prominence will grant them dominion over the rest. Shakespeare could have set them right. “Uneasy is the head that wears a crown”. But Jesus goes a step further. Now, instead of supremacy, He equates superiority with service, meaning that it is a privilege to serve rather than to be served and the greatest distinction of one’s service comes from bearing suffering on account of another. A good illustration is whenever Americans encounter a member of the arm services, they have this tradition of saying “Thank you for your service.” Whether they support a war or not, the soldiers who have had their limbs blown off are taking one for the team.

If we think about it, all personal power must come to an end. In fact, power is ephemeral or fleeting, none more obvious than in the “after” or the lame-duck period that we are familiar with. The best case in point is President Biden. He is the most apt figure that “nature abhors a vacuum”. As soon as he exhibited public frailty, the power players behind him started plotting and manoeuvring to rid him. Now he is nothing more than a shadow of his past. Every king or anyone who has powers knows that at the end, there will be others who rule over him or her. Rightly so in the post-Resurrection scene by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus told Peter that in the end, people will lead him to where he would rather not go.

If power is fleeting, then power’s greatest expression should never be to dominate but to expend itself for the greatest good and that is to serve. Jesus told the disciples in John’s Gospel that the most profound love one has is to lay down one’s life. This magnificent expression of Christianity renders the words “love, power and service” interchangeable.

If we are powerful, how should we love or serve?

In general, our ruling elites are an embarrassment. A consolation is that our country is not special as if we have a monopoly of the most corrupt politicians in the world. In every corner of the cosmos, the scenario is repeated. Instead of serving, the ruling class has no difficulties with selfishness, concerned only with their own welfare and enriching themselves.

To serve is not alien to us. The truth is that the third leg of the human economy today stands on services provided. Some island economies geared towards tourism even depend entirely on the service industry. Airlines, banks and hotels are prime instances of this third sector of the economy. The challenge is to decouple service from fiducial consideration. At present, excellent service comes with a price. You get what you pay for.

But we are familiar with the excellent service that comes from our dedication to Christ. Catholic hospitals and schools were built upon the example of Christ’s hospitality. It was possible at one time to render free services because missionary brothers and sisters gave their entire lives to orders or institutions that provided gratuitous services. They drew their inspiration from their King who lived as a servant.

The decoupling between power and prominence in Jesus Christ is seen as strength and service, or better still, the strength to serve. He uses His power and authority always for others and never for His personal gain. A true leader serves others and never himself or herself knowing that the reward for him or her cannot be supplied by this world.

In a culture bent on self-promotion, the Gospel proposes a better option to the need for recognition. Who better to acknowledge us than God the Father? It is to Him we turn and from Him we receive the fullest affirmation. For Jesus, assured and secured in the Father’s embrace, the service of the vulnerable became the true expression of power. The reward promised for those who lay down their lives can only be claimed beyond this life. Lest we feel insecure and uncertain with this truth, we only have to look to Christ in Whom the instrument of shame and subjugation has become the source of strength and life. He who laid down His life for others became the Lord and Saviour of all humankind. In the Cross be my glory ever!

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

Do you sometimes think that the Church is stupid? For many of us, the experience of Church is basically immediate which means that the parish staff or the priest/s. When parishioners are at odds with the parish office or the priest/s, for them, that is the Church. But do you think that God is stupid? The answer is possibly no because we are God-fearing. Nobody wants to cross His path, just in case.

Today, someone walked up to Jesus to ask the question of eternal life. God’s word is eternal life but somehow that word mediated when through the Church does seem a bit outdated or even stupid. For example, last week, Jesus did not mince His words. He told the Pharisees outright that God had intended for marriage to be permanent but the Pharisees had been waffling with the teaching to suit their needs. They are not alone because many of us feel that “No divorce” sounds rather out-dated and dumb.

In the Gospel, Jesus proposed to the young man to sell all his possessions and to follow Him. We all know the outcome of the invitation. If we listen attentively to the 1st Reading and the Responsorial Psalm, they may strike a chord with some of us personally because we are living in a wealth-soaked society. It might not feel that way but not a few amongst us have enough money to last a couple of life-times. Now, imagine Jesus who directed the young man now telling you who have more than enough to leave everything behind and to follow Him. In the context of the 1st Reading and the Psalm, wisdom is needed when it comes to our relationship with mammon, possession and wealth.

Wealth and riches are not bad in themselves. In the OT, riches are considered blessings from God. They represent God’s benevolence. Our problem is not too much wealth. Rather our challenge is sharing. In that way, wealth and riches can and do enslave us. In inviting the young man to leave everything behind, Christ did not make of poverty or divestment of possession an end in itself. Two words come to mind and they are love and tension.

Jesus looked at the young man with love. Here, love is not soft. It is not indulgence or a condonation of our weakness. The 2nd Reading speaks of a double-edged sword which we can apply to the word “love”. Indulgently, we all want to be loved. But a two-edged sword would also mean we are to love as well. It is not easy to love in the fullest sense of the word. The love that Jesus had for the young man comes from a place of realisation and understanding. He knows that we struggle to maintain the balance, that is, everyone grapples and wrestles with the tension between having and not having. This is exemplified in two scriptural experiences. First, the temptation in the desert. Second, the welcome extended by Moses and Jesus in last week’s Readings.

Man does not live on bread alone. In His hunger, Jesus was taunted by Satan to turn stones to bread, He replied that Man does not live on bread alone. Christ was not saying that we do not need food because He knows that in order to worship God, we need strength provided by nourishment. After all, we are not angels but earthly creatures. The retort of Christ to Satan was simply that food is not and should never be our God.

Likewise we should be more welcoming, as we heard last week where Moses and Christ showed hospitality. But the slogan “all are welcome” can be deceptive because we know that not everyone is welcome. At least, not a terrorist, for example. True welcome is to love sinners but also to reject sins. The rule of engagement in wars is a good expression of this of proper welcome. We respect the enemy captured and treat him well even if we stand on opposite sides. True charity does not condone obstinacy or stubborn resolution in sinning. We protect ourselves against serial killers or rapists.

We are brought back to the central truth that following Jesus on earth is filled with challenges, most especially when it comes to wealth and possession. The Franciscans themselves were racked by this struggle. Immediately after the death of St Francis of Assisi, his followers clashed on the form of poverty they should embrace with regard to possession. It was not a pretty picture for them but it shows how hard it is for us to deal with possessions.

Detachment has never been a rejection or a repudiation of creation. Detachment signals one’s desire to cling onto Christ alone. On a recent pilgrimage, my luggage weighed about 12kg. I was proud of myself but during the journey, it became clear that I had two shirts and one trousers too many. What weighed down the bag were the small items which came from the thoughts of “I might need this or I might need that”. A pilgrimage is where one learns the meaning of true detachment because one’s luggage can be burdened by the weight of our attachments.

The lesson this Sunday is centred on our relationship with material possessions and wealth. The truth is we have too many wants but only a few needs. All of us Lazada, Shopee, Temu and Shein experts know this. Of late, we have been focussing on climate change and the need to adjust our lifestyle. Indeed, we should care for our common home, that is, show concern for the environment. It is a serious call by no less than the Holy Father. But like every follower of Christ we also know that this is not our permanent home. Is it precious? Yes, it is. Is it permanent? Never. That is the difference. It is wisdom to know where our permanent home is and none of our possessions or wealth can ever follow there. After all, Jesus did proclaim on the Mount: Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

We make a sharp turn to the family this Sunday. Fortuitously the South Johore Vicariate is also focussing on the family. What goes into the creation of the family? The first is marriage. A marriage establishes a family. The second is children. Children are fruits of a marital union.

These two aspects that form a family are fraught with difficulties. In certain places, the word “woman” is already a problem. How to define who or what a woman is has become highly controversial. In fact, the challenge is to delineate what marriage is and even the Bible is not “helpful”. Through Sacred Scriptures, we know that God established the human family through the bond of marriage between a man and a woman. Presently, this definition is being challenged. What about the union between two women or two men?

Difficulties arise because people are emotionally attached to their definition. For example, “Children completes the marital union”. In itself, such a statement speaks of openness to life but when a person, for example, like Taylor Swift, heard that, she proceeded to label herself a “Childless cat lady” as she endorsed Kamala Harris. Definitions can be emotional pitfalls. Here in our country the word for God is also an emotive issue and considered dangerous.

The focus of such a simple statement that “children completes the marital union” should be seen in the word “union”. It means that the union between a man and woman must be open to life. It is true that this statement may affect some couples because they remain childless after marriage. From biblical times until now, we have no idea why some women are unable to conceive or why some men are sterile. However, technologically, we have developed fertility practices to help infertile women to conceive. Progress is amazing but the challenge is that we do not sufficiently discern between possible and permissible technologies.

A reason that the definition of marriage has become problematic is because current technology permits the fertility industries to hire wombs to gestate and bear children. When wombs can be rented, the very union between a man and a woman is dissolved since wombs can be rented. A corollary to the rentable womb is that the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman is also loosened. Since ova can be purchased, then two men may now be so-called married and have a family.

As we slide down the path of absolute “diversity”, meaning that almost everything possible (with the exception of rape, murder and child sexual abuse) should be allowed, it might not be long before preaching a homily on marriage based on the age-old Catholic teaching be labelled as hate speech.

Yet, in the Gospel today, Christ did categorically teach that there is to be no divorce. How do we reconcile His teaching on marriage? An angle to take is to recall how “marriage” as a sacrament is related to God’s relationship with humanity and to refresh a look on the priesthood of the Catholic Church.

Marriage as a natural phenomenon represents the covenant between God and humanity. For two baptised, the covenant is sacramentalised because it symbolises the union between Christ and the Church. Through the relationship between a man and a woman, children, the fruits of this particular union, are signs of the love between Christ and the Church. Christ’s love for the Church is faithful and fruitful. How? He proved that love through the sacrifice of His life. He laid down His life so that the Church might be born. That sacrifice of Christ’s life—giving action or love is witnessed through the couple’s openness to life, that is, to having children. Maybe one can appreciate why the Church has taught that contraception frustrates the life-giving grace of God witnessed through a couple’s sexual union that is open to life.

Further into the sacrament of marriage, we see how Christ can never be unfaithful to His Church. Likewise, the Church is considered pure and holy simply because she is the Bride of Christ. This image of heaven is to be reflected here on earth and thus, amongst all human institutions, the only one which best reflects this reality is the marriage between a man and a woman. We all know how imperfect marriages are but that is the beauty of a life marked by love and sacrifice. We marry never for ourselves but for the other. The most profound love of a man or a woman is to lay down his or her life for a friend. In marriage the closest friend one has is one’s spouse. Sacrificial death is life-giving and children born of a loving couple are fruits of such a love.

We can only make sense of this if we believe that there is heaven and an afterlife. If not, there will always be attempts to tailor God’s perspective according to the reality of earth. Without heaven it is easy to “force” God to behave according to our will. Was that not what Jesus told the Pharisees? You are head-headed and that was why Moses permitted divorce. Christ has not lied on the teaching on marriage and the Church must never shy from voicing a perennial truth for humanity to embrace.

Divorce is not a modern curse. It is humanity’s revolt against God. During the time of Jesus, imagine that all it took was just bad cooking or even body odour to initiate a divorce proceeding. Thus, the Gospel is not a condemnation of our times. Instead it is a challenge to our culture, most especially in the 100 years or so. We seemed to have forgotten the commands of God and the instructions of Christ with regard to marriage, its stability and its effects on civilisation.

Marriage is a good for civilisation. Without marriage, there is no family and without the family, where is civilisation? The recovery and the renewal of the family remains an ongoing task of the Church. Each marriage here is part of that endeavour. If your marriage is good, praise and thank God. If your marriage has been a struggle then look for help and do not wait until it is irretrievably broken down. If you have been hurt by marriage seek healing through the means available—counselling and therapy.

Finally the crisis of the last few decades within the priesthood is a reminder to us. While the celibacy of the Catholic priesthood is a matter of discipline imposed by the Church and it is not a doctrine, in practice, it is related to Christ teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. A priest remains unmarried personally because he is married to the Church, that is to the people of God. When marriages fail for Catholic couples, one can be certain that defection in the priesthood is not far behind.

Christ sends His Disciples into the world. Two Sacraments denotes this one sending—Matrimony and Holy Orders. These two sacraments are complimentary because failure in one weakens the other. On the one hand, the downfall of the priesthood is symptomatic of the dissolution of marriages. Broken marriages undermine the priesthood. On the other hand, the fidelity of the priestly vows encourages the faithful in their marriage. While focusing on the family is crucial, paying attention to the quality formation of the priestly vocation is equally important. Strengthening these two sacramental vocations enriches and energises the Church’s witnessing.

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

How nice if all leaders have the spirit of prophesying. At least that was Moses’ wish for his leaders. The inner circle of Moses was concerned that some, notably Medad and Eldad, who were outliers, could even prophesy. The same scenario is repeated in the Gospel. People were using the name of Jesus to exorcise and the disciples were disturbed, after all, they who have been with Him from the outset, may have felt a proprietary claim to the power of Christ.

Interestingly, this outside-the-fold experience proved the power of the name of Jesus. Those trying to relieve others of sickness or to rid them of possession or to raise the dead used the name of Jesus because they were literally invoking God to save. No surprising because Yeshua or Jesus means God saves in Hebrew.

The openness of both Moses and Jesus highlights two connected themes that we can delve into. First, it is the value of hospitality. Second, we might want to give a thought to how hospitality or welcome may breed the deadly sin of jealousy.

Today’s lens, through the phenomenon of diversity, makes hospitality an even more compelling quality. The fact that both Moses and Jesus exhibited a kind of openness to others paves the way for us to rethink, widen and deepen our sense of hospitality. Words associated with the attitude of welcoming are inclusiveness, diversity, acceptance, tolerance etc. These words related to hospitality can make truth sounds rather judgemental and condemnatory.

Why?

Because truth draws boundaries and we have become uncomfortable because boundaries exclude. Remember that the gift of prophesy is directed towards God and the power to exorcise is directed to salvation which means hospitality cannot be anything and everything.

Ironically, the type of hospitality pushed on us is rather “exclusive” in the sense that people can be excluded or cancelled because they fail to meet the criteria defined by the “establishment”. Two examples. First, the entertainment industry. It is packed with an elite glitterati who have set themselves up as our moral guides. In fact, entertainment has become edutainment. We are being talked down to by jet-setters on how to reduce our carbon footprint. Second, the tech illuminati. They corral our knowledge by limiting our search results shaping our views through the content we consume unwittingly.

At present, there is a concerted drive, all in the name of good, to control, shape our thoughts and our lives. On one hand, the basis for hospitality or exclusion should not be based on whether we think alike or not. On the other hand, hospitality cannot be a blanket inclusivity. We necessarily exclude because not everything possible can be permitted. Such a judgement opens the dialogue on the morality of our behaviour or action. Is it permitted to abort a baby in the womb, for example? For some, the argument is already set by those who hold the power to patrol thoughts and behaviours. For others, our behaviour should be guided by God's revelation and an appreciation of creation’s purpose as intended by Him. In that sense, hospitality or inclusiveness is never a value in itself. Instead, it is a value that must serve the will of God and also be directed to salvation. Hospitality while welcoming is also discerning because it is focused on the salvation of souls.

Secondly, the hospitality shown by Jesus or Moses seems to allow the sin of jealousy to rear its ugly head. Were the disciples of both Moses and Jesus jealous because both their leaders were welcoming? Maybe. Much of Church’s division stems from jealousy. Last week, Christ chastised the disciples because they were arguing about who was the greatest amongst them. Even those who were indignant about the two brothers vying for the places of honour beside Jesus could also be acting out of envy. In today’s Gospel, the desire to exclude can be a form of jealousy for how God can choose to work outside of the disciples of Jesus.

The fear of losing out is a compelling drive to be the first, to be at the forefront. For those behind, envy can creep in. But inequality is fact of existence because God created us differently. Imperfection is not a defect to be eradicated. For example, pedigree dogs often have genetic weaknesses because there are no variations in their genes. Even a bad gene that gives rise to Thalassaemia allows for survival of victims of the disease in malaria-infested areas.

Our challenge is an inability to celebrate “inequality”. We desire uniformity forgetting that differences give the opportunity to celebrate God’s goodness and kindness. Two priests who do the same work. One is better than the other. It is a moment to enjoy another person’s success and take comfort that God is great but instead how often have priests engaged in murderous envy, gossiping and talking bad about other priests.

Imagine both Jesus and His cousin, John. The attitude of The Baptist models a discipleship especially for those who are co-workers in the vineyard. Some of us are just sowers. Some of us are just reapers. If we are able to enjoy our ministry, we might be able to give glory to the Lord for the great ministration of our co-workers.

A good leader is someone who knows how to celebrate the wonders of a God who dispenses His grace according to our needs. The Church would be so much more powerful in witnessing if only we learn how to keep the green-eyed dragon at bay. It does not help that advertisements feed and augment our envy. We are constantly made to feel less than others because we do not have the prerequisite paraphernalia of life—a gadget, a car, a house. The more we need to fulfil our wants, the more unhappy and envious we become.

The Gospel today is truly an invitation to enjoy others by admiring rather than by envy. My deepest sense of who I am is not defined by what I have, what I do and how people think of me. A proper or ordered sense of who we are grants us the grace to be discerning in our welcome. The hospitality we are called to is not a free-for-all type. It takes into consideration God’s view of humanity which we can glean from Sacred Scripture and through the long-standing teachings of the Church. If we call ourselves Christians and Catholics, it is good to know that God did not leave us to reinvent the wheel each generation. He gave us His Son who left behind a Church assisted by His Spirit and guided by Scripture and Magisterium. We do have a standard to live up to personally, a measure to welcome others and a principle to engage the world.

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

From the Cross last week, we move to servitude. After the Transfiguration, Jesus makes His way to Jerusalem. The journey passes through Galilee, a Jewish territory where Jesus had encounters with the Pharisees. It may explains why He wanted to keep His messiahship a secret while preparing the disciples for His impending passion. Still, the disciples do not have a clue that Christ’s mission leads to the Cross. They argue amongst themselves about who would be the greatest.

Our world has its own metrics for the measurement of success. The 1st Reading speaks to our current standard of achievement. Sometimes we experience this during a funeral. In fact, there is a demand for the eulogy in some services. There appears to be a need to sing the praises of the deceased in order that he or she be remembered for the things that they have done. But the Book of Wisdom reminds us that the greatest memorial is not a mausoleum. It is to be remembered by God.

If anything, we should behave in a manner that God can celebrate us. Thus, the Gospel also challenge our thinking when Jesus holds up what He considers to be the standard of success. The disciples wanted to stand tall in society. In a way, success for them is achievement-centred. But for Jesus success is not ambition but rather servitude.

What is significant is that Jesus took the example of a child to be the standard of our service. A child is powerless because he or she stands outside the legal framework that offers him or her protection. The servanthood that Christ wants His disciples to know is that we serve those who are the most unwanted in society.

There is basically no comparable reward for the work we do. The remembrance by the Lord is the reward we should work for. St James warns us against the ambitions of the world. The desire to be successful in the measurement of the world frequently leads to jealousy and selfishness. It makes sense that all our advertisements are targeted towards massaging our envy. “You need that house, this car, those travels, and etc., if you want to be counted”. There is a cafe nearby here and it is popular. The cars parked outside clog the road leading to Jalan Serampang. The food? No comments but it is the location, it is the place to be seen at.

Christ is often seen in places where those in the know will not frequent. He came to serve rather than be served. Within this framework of ministry, St Peter asked a perfectly valid question. What is in it for us who serve? We happens to us if we have poured out our lives for others and have nothing left for ourselves. It is not selfishness but rather a question of trust. Nobody wants to disappear. Nonentity is not a great option. Everyone longs to be loved. Everyone wants to be complete rather than dissipated.

Maybe it is the blindness of the modern world to believe that one’s existence or presence is predicated upon one’s self-definition. It means that “I alone” determine who I am. It is an amnesia which fails to remember that one’s personhood is dependent rather on God. “I am” only because “God is”. It is not “I am” and only then can I serve but rather “I am because I serve”.

This is important for the fear of losing oneself is real. For those who have placed their trust in God, they can never be lost. It is a wisdom that exudes peace since we know that we can never be lost because of God.

It is this personhood that is built upon God that allows one to spend an entire life in servitude. Two examples in the last two hundred years are helpful. St Damian of Molokai. After a while, he realised that the only way to continue serving Christ in the poor was to become a leper himself. St Teresa of Calcutta who left the cushy comfort of her convent in order to embrace Christ hungry and poor. In fact, over a period of years, her life was markedly dark and devoid of consolation from God. Yet, she continued to put her trust in the Lord as she continued to serve even when not feeling it.

Another word for this service is to lay down one’s life. As Jesus Himself said, “Those who want to save their life will lose it. Those who lose their life for my sake will keep it for eternity”. It is another way of telling us that we risk losing ourselves if we try to protect ourselves too much. It is when we are not afraid to lose ourselves that God will remember us. That is a way for us to dare to lay down our life.

The psalmist says, “Our life, like a bird, has escaped from the snare of the fowler”. You may have heard of this. We can transfer this to the movies. It is an accept fact that history is written by the victors. I grew up on a diet of British war comics. Remember those barbershop comics that detailed the exploits of the British Army during WWII? What about the stories of the losers? The Germans. Here, in our context, the Japanese.

There is a movie called “Taking Chance” starring Kevin Bacon. Quite a boring movie but it centres around accompanying the remains of a Marine fatally wounded, from the airbase to his hometown, to be buried. For that one story of a soldier who died, imagine the thousands of forgotten Iraqis whose bodies lay unclaimed and rotting in the sun or buried in Mass graves. Who remembers them? For everyone memorialised in Arlington national cemetery, there must be many who are unremembered. They only have God.

It is a kind of certainty knowing that it is dependence on God who gives us the sense of who we are. It is the same for who unloved souls, in the aborted and in the unwanted embryos stored in many of the IVF fertility facilities.

Likewise, for every saint who is officially canonised, there must be countless martyrs and confessors who are not known to us but known to God. If you can imagine a candle. Its purpose is only to be burnt. It is best only when it is burnt. Likewise a Christian. He or she is best a servant and the basis is Christ. For if God can care for the uncared for, perhaps we can find strength to embrace the Cross or even be forgotten. Our service is often a Cross. For those who find it burdensome, it will weigh down like a ton. But if we are filled with love, then the service, even if it be a Cross will also be a joy.

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

It feels like a repetition. Yesterday was the Exaltation of the Cross. The Gospel today seems to echo yesterday’s commemoration as the focus is on the Crown and the Cross. Actually, it is more than a repetition because it feels like a mini-Passion or Holy Week.

The 1st Reading points to Christ the suffering servant. The reason for enduring pain and difficulties is faith in God’s succour or assistance and we dare to be unafraid because God will always come to the aid of His servant. This assurance is truly the joy of saints. Imagine being wiped out or being made redundant. People no longer respect and no longer recognise you. Even when one endures injustice, one is unafraid because of God.

The experience of the Suffering Servant is a guarantee of God’s faithfulness. He will not allow His servant to be annihilated and this becomes the basis for accepting the suffering Messiah. Jesus foretold His impending suffering. He did not sugar-coat the troubles that lay ahead. But Jesus promised them that their sacrifice would not go unrewarded. The Evangelist presents this sort of Saviour as the model to follow. Are we going after Him and if not, what prevents us from following?

The answer is partly determined by the world because the world’s expectations is different from Christ’s. He asks for a discipleship that is radical and resolute—to lay down one’s life without fear. But we have loud voices coming from the world. One of the counsels given is prudence. We are advised to temper our radicality. Furthermore, radicality is also tarred with the brush of extremism and no one likes to be called a fundamentalist—a word that suggests of imprudence and uncompromising hard-headedness. More than being labelled, radical discipleship is also considered to be “fool-hardy” and no one likes to be deemed a fool.

Instead, worldly prudence demands that we be even-headed, even-tempered or level-headed. Idealism is the foolishness of the young. But what undergirds this “prudence” is basically fear. Many of us are afraid. We fear rejection and so we do not try. We fear failure and so we compromise. We fear scarcity and rationalise our greed. Fear is a prison that dampens the fire of our desire to love the Lord and to follow Him closely.

But we are not alone. Even as devout a Jew as Peter would have heard of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah. After this revelation of Jesus about His future suffering, Peter tried to temper Christ’s resolution to carry out the Father’s will. The idea of a great God is almost incompatible with servitude and suffering. We want an omnipotent God who displays His power for all to see. The idea of a powerless God scandalised Peter that he began to remonstrate with Christ.

Peter only began to understand more of his vocation after Christ’s death and resurrection. It proves that growing into a radical discipleship of Christ might be for some of us a life-long pilgrimage. Sometimes when a person is young, he or she will never contemplate the after-life. They have a lot to live for. But for many of us, whose past stretches in a long shadow behind us, we have little time before death to think of our legacy and how we will be judged.

The logic of the world does not allow us to embrace Christ’s invitation. “If you want to be a disciple of mine, you must deny yourself, take up your Cross and follow me. And whoever wishes to preserve his life will lose it and he who loses his life for my sake will keep it”. This is not easy to embrace but it is not impossible.

Present society is pain-phobic meaning that we avoid pain at all costs. In fact, we numb ourselves through drugs of all kinds. Even food is a form of narcotics. But St Paul, through the grace and power of Christ, tells us that he completes in his body, the suffering lacking in the Body of Christ. It is not impossible to carry the Cross because of the grace and power of Christ. Martyrdom, be it red or white, is a grace of Christ. It might not feel like it but the true shape of love is cruciform. Without the Cross, love will don the cloak of convenience. There is purpose in our pain and sorrow, not that we deserve to suffer. Instead, in Christ, suffering takes on a salvific role for in Him, suffering saves.

This Sunday’s Gospel in the midst of nowhere is a reminder to refocus and fix our eyes on Christ and His Cross. We are invited to clasp Christ carrying His Cross for the salvation of the world. Many of us will struggle because it is natural to desire the crown minus the Cross. But if we follow Him, the Cross will cast its shadow over us. The credibility of the Christian conviction rests on the crown of the Cross. The Cross is indeed our victory and glory forever.

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

We have returned to Mark’s Gospel since last Sunday and today he captures one of the few Aramaic words possibly used by Jesus Himself—"Ephphatha”. Like “Talitha kum” Christ is engaged in the act of restoration. He restores a man to hearing.

The first reading mentions deafness as it highlights the signs and wonders that accompany the Jews returning from their exile. The blind shall see, the deaf will hear, the lame will leap, the mute will sing and streams in dry lands will burst forth with life. These are concrete signs that their oppression has come to an end. By restoring the man’s hearing, Christ not only ended his isolation from society, He also fulfils the Messianic longing expressed in the 1st Reading.

What is interesting is that the Lord performed two great sacramental acts. Later in the Gospel, Jesus will heal a man born blind. Whether it be deafness or blindness, Jesus not only uttered words of healing. He also used matter and gestures to complete the act. Fingers in the ears and spittle on the tongue are both sacramental matters and actions. The use of matter accompanied by the formulaic prayer to accomplish healing is reflected in our Sacrament of Anointing. Oil on the forehead and the palms coupled with the formula of healing and salvation, forgiveness and restoration.

What this particular healing revealed is how profoundly social the sacraments are. But, deafness, like blindness, is more than just a physical condition. It goes beyond physical deficiency. In fact, restoration has universal dimension as we witness Jesus making His journey through the Decapolis. St Paul may be the great Apostle of the Gentiles but Christ Himself had already forged that path ahead of St Paul.

In a way, “ephphatha” is truly a powerful invitation by the Lord to open our ears, our eyes and our hearts. It makes sense if we read it from the perspective of St James’ epistle. He admonished the Church not to be partial or prejudiced in community living and communal arrangements. Maybe we are not as deaf as we are unwillingness to hear. In other words we may be wilfully deaf and not only that. We may be wilfully blind too. We cannot hear God even if He were shouting at us. We cannot see Him even if He were to stand right in front of us.

The word “wilful” sounds condemnatory or condescending. Judgemental even. Could it be that we are not as wilful as we are unable to distinguish where God is speaking to us? The discordant voices we hear are confusing and we have difficulty trusting. A good way to appreciate how we have arrived at this unwillingness is the phenomenon of scams. There are so many scams going around that we have become paranoid. For example, some will never take a call from a number not saved in their mobile’s address.

Top that suspicion with our sense of betrayal. We have been dismissing the so-called far right conspiracist theorists but imagine that Mark Zuckerberg has come out recently to say that Meta or Facebook was forced by the present US administration to censor contents during Covid and also suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story. In other words, governmental cover-ups are real. So too Church leaders have been known to hide the truth of the clerical scandals over the years. When people are lied to one time too many, trust level goes down and people cannot be faulted for not believing even as they steadily grow cynical. We tune off not because we do not want to hear but because we do not know which voice belongs to God.

How do we sift through all these conflicting voices to hear God speaking to us? Where do we find the authentic voice of God?

Firstly, to hear God, we need to have a connexion to Him. Many forget this important criterion. Prayer is an essential element in establishing a relationship with God. How do we hear Him if we have no relationship with Him? Elijah went to the cave and there He encountered God in the silence of the breeze. It is a reminder to each one of us, how noise has pervaded our airwaves that we are easily distracted.

Secondly, God’s voice is also interpersonal. We have become so wrapped around the pole of our individual autonomy that we forget that truth is interpersonal. What do I mean by this?

Truth is not just what I determined. In the past, we had a lot more taboos. They are like invisible boundaries which serve to prevent members of a group from straying too far away from approved behaviour. Today, we have by and large removed social taboos that are linked to religion. We have replaced taboos with personal preferences. Except for the protection of minors and the vulnerable, everything else is possible.

In effect, all kinds of taboo behaviours are accepted or they are being normalised except the more “traditional” behaviours demanded by religion. As long as there is consent, the norms of morality is basically reduced to personal choice. If there is accountability, it just means that one should avoid being caught. For example, it is said that the 1MDB debacle would not have seen the light of day if a fat woman did not flaunt her Berkin bags. Plausible deniability is the escape route from accountability.

But more than that, we are children of rampant relativism. You may have heard of the “apparent agreement” that people arrive at, that is, “what is true for you is true for you and what is true for me is true for me”. It appears to be an amicable compromise but it is the fertile breeding ground for who has the greater power to exert the “truth”. What is true for me is true for me but what is true for you is labelled as misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. One man’s truth is another man’s extremism. Today, sources of information, otherwise known as “news” have become more partial and partisan because they push certain perspectives. Relativism reduces God’s voice to just one perspective or it makes it difficult for Him to break through.

Where do we find and how do we hear God’s voice? Amid this melee of noises Christ’s voice remains constant and dependable through His Church. We need to make a distinction between the validity of truth and the personal failures of individuals. Current model of morality is rather tied to personal “sinlessness”. We are unable to process the that being right is not based on what is widely accepted or that truth’s credibility is not dependent on multiple failures to live up to it. Just because everyone has a mistress does not make it right and just because everyone cheats on the spouse does not make monogamy less true.

This is where the Church comes in. Whether we like it or not, the certain source of God’s voice remains His Church. Personal prayer and proper formation in the Church’s moral and social teachings help to shape our conscience. It is the voice of God speaking to us. There are some who commit spiritual suicide because of what they perceive to be hypocritical behaviour of those who proclaim the Gospel. But the faith and morals of the Church is based on Christ’s promise before His Ascension: I will be with you until the end of time. The age of the experts is no replacement for the Church’s teachings. Most importantly, the failure in the leadership of the shepherds does not invalidate Christ’s teachings through His Church.

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

I once lived in a formation house with a person who was unique. Fellow scholastics had two descriptions of him depending on one’s communal relationship with him. Living with him is a tragedy. Not living with him is comedy. Most fascinating was anything he did not understand was considered stupid. And since he was not from Ireland, you can imagine the number “oirish” customs and norms that were stupid for him.

Today we enter the arena of laws and given that some of them are not easy to understand or to accept, we might also be tempted to judge them as stupid. The 1st Reading is pretty clear as Moses admonished the Israelites entering the Promised Land to uphold the laws that have held the community together because they had come from God and no one was to add or subtract from them.

But we are also familiar with the term, “man-made laws”. It was exactly what the Pharisees did. They identified 613 commandments or mitzvah complete with customs and taboos. The philosophy behind all these promotions and prohibitions is a God whom we can bargain with. I do this or I refrain from doing this and because you are a just God, you must reward accordingly. St Paul fought against these obligations and taboos by asking the people to be formed interiorly by the Spirit, to be inwardly transformed so that we may know the will of God.

Christ had many encounters with the Pharisees who had no problem piling on guilt upon the masses without themselves being subject to them. Today such a spirit thrives in those who insist on the “rules for thee but not for me”.

The Second Reading of James gives us a clue for what it means to keep the law. He or she rushes to assist the poor and needy. That is the nature of the pure religion. As Christ railed against the Pharisees, it begs the question of the purity of heart because one can cling to the rules or rites without the heart in it.

One of the challenges we face is this. A person attends Mass every day; runs from one Novena to another; prays the Rosary at every opportune moment; fasts three times a week; makes a pilgrimage every year. Is that person a better person? Is he or she automatically closer to God? Or what if the person still sins. He visits prostitutes. She gossips relentlessly.

Modern man looks at this break between belief and behaviour and concludes that religion is ineffective but more than that, hypocritical. An easy target is a Pharisee. Somehow we cannot run away from conflating hypocrisy with a fuller religion. It appears that the more one is religious, the more there seems to be incoherence in practice. What is the problem? What is the solution?

The solution does not lie in getting rid of religion although it is a modern and natural reaction. Since religion harbours hypocrisy, the natural solution to reducing hypocrisy is to rid ourselves of religion. A better response would be to take a closer look at Christ and His challenge.

Ritual purity is not about us. It is never about how “clean” or how “pure” we are before God. It is not a case of making myself “clean” so that I can face God. The presumption is that I am on par with God and that it is up to me to perfect myself in order to face a perfect God. The truth remains that no matter how pure we are, we are never worthy of God. Thus, the answer is to look at the purity of Mary, namely her Virginity and ask what that is all about.

The Church has taught since the beginning that Mary remained a Virgin. Why is it that important? Virginity expresses dedication rather than purity. She was whole-heartedly dedicated to the Lord. The analogy is the tabernacle in every Church. It is reserved only for the Blessed Sacrament. Nothing and not even diamonds can be kept there except the lowly consecrated bread. Why? The tabernacle resembles the womb of Mary. She remained a Virgin because there is no place in her womb for anyone else except her Lord and Saviour. There is no one in the heart of Mary, except her Lord and Saviour.

Likewise for us. Laws are the structures whereas the heart is the flesh. The solution is to cultivate a heart for God. That is why Jesus said so simply to the Pharisees: Nothing from outside can make you unclean inside. What is unclean comes from your inside. If you are filled with evil and violence, you can be sure that your demeanour will exude that.

A true love of the laws must bear fruit in our behaviour. Sometimes we can get caught in discussions about how much we are observing a rite. On the other hand, there are those who react to the perception that there are too many rules and regulations to the point of stifling one’s creativity or desire to serve.

What is missed out is this: where is the heart in all these? To those who love, no distance is ever too great. Anyone who has fallen in love knows this. You will go out of the way, and not only that, you willingly embrace suffering because of love. But to those who struggle to love, even a step is an inconvenience. As the Malays say in their proverb. “Mahu seribu daya. Tak mahu, seribu dalih”. Translated, it literally means that “if you want, you will deploy a thousand attempts. If you do not want, you will table a thousand excuses”.

A simple test for us is the obligation. How many of us find ways of escaping any regulation? We do the minimum in order to fulfil what is required. But amazingly the Church is fantastic because she does not disdain this attitude. Like Christ, she never stops inviting us to a higher plane of love. Look at the contrition in our repentance. Imperfect contrition is the fear of hell. Perfect contrition is sorrow because I have offended God whom I should love with all my heart.

The world will not change if we add more rules or structures of “goodness”. The “globalists” believe they can force people to respect “rules” of engagement, that is, to accept diversity, equity or inclusion. Compulsion can only go as far as the heart is willing because without the heart, those compelled will pay lip-service. What is needed is more love in our hearts for God. The more we love God, the easier the laws are from Him.

Finally, those of us who value freedom associate the exercise of the faculty with choices available. The more choices the greater the freedom. But in truth, there is no absolute liberty to do as we wish because true freedom is to be free for excellence and never to be free for licence. Those who opt for personal licence will always find God’s laws to be burdensome. Those who opt for excellence will always search for the spirit that guides our laws. To those who love God, they will delight because His laws serve as a lamp to their feet, and a light to their path.

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

We are accustomed to our distilled water that we forget what ordinary government-supplied water tastes like. “Distillation” does that to most reality. It is somewhat akin to the way we hear Jesus. We distil His message meaning that we process it. In most cases we accept the Jesus who speaks like us but try to ignore the Christ who speaks unpalatable truths. It is a kind of distillation.

It is the last Sunday of our excursion into John 6. The full truth of Christ’s teaching has to be reckoned with. Those who think His language intolerable reacted strongly to Him. How could He? How dare He?

We can appreciate the Jews’ reaction because we also have a similar experience. We are more and more conscious of past injustice and the world has embarked upon a noble quest to redress historical wrongs. Coupled with the need to right past wrongs, we seem to be in a state of being offended by the past. Recently an actor remarked that it is no longer possible to make comedies because they would offend people. These days, nobody can say anything without somebody being offended.

Remember the scene where Jesus He drew in the sand? He was surrounded by a horde ready to stone an adulterous woman. He looked up and saw no one except the outcast. He comforted her gently by saying that since nobody dared to cast the first stone neither would He condemn her. But most crucially, He did not simply let her go. Instead, He challenged her to sin no more. In short, Jesus comforts but He also challenges.

This is important because we have a Jesus who tried to convince the crowd against crowning Him King. Instead of providing earthly strength, He would grant them the stamina for eternity. The only criterion was for them to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. They could not accept Him. But Jesus was not offended that all but the Twelve abandoned Him.

Christianity is a religion of the cross-roads. We have to choose. And in some cases, our choice will offend even the gentlest of people. A good example is the teaching of St Paul in the 2nd Reading. According to the Apostle, the glue that holds together a couple is the love of Christ. In this relationship, a wife is to obey her husband. A husband is to love his wife. In this era, what many would find objectionable is the instruction for a woman to obey her husband. In an epoch where equality is everything, how dare a priest preach this?

The barrier to appreciating this Pauline teaching is the word “obey”. Many are unable to see beyond such a subjugating connotation of the word. What if the obedience is actually one side of the coin only? If a wife is to obey a husband, the reciprocal demand is that the man should sacrifice himself for the wife. Obedience and sacrifice are two sides of the coin of mutuality. Both are engaged in mutual self-donation. How cool is that? If a man demands obedience from the wife, he should be the first lay down his life for her. A man whose idea of life is to sacrifice for his wife is not going to be a tyrant.

In the 1st Reading, Joshua presented the people of Israel the option of how they want to live. It was no longer Moses who headed them but as they were poised to enter the Promised Land, the people must choose. Our challenge today is not really about choice. The word “choice” suggests that one can choose. Closer to the truth is not that we choose or can choose but rather it is God who must choose.

Apart from being easily offended, our ultimatum to God is that He should acquiesce to our lifestyle. We determine how we should live and God’s role is to be the rubber stamp. Remember how Jesus who sent the woman away also challenged her not to sin.

But look at opening act at the recently concluded Paris Olympics. They parodied the Last Supper of Christ in the name of diversity and inclusion. The last time, a cartoonish made fun of another major religion, cities got burnt in Europe. To add insult to injury, the spokeswoman gave a press release where she seemingly “apologised” to those who felt offended. Judging from this episode, God is supposed to accept the way we live and not the other way round. God gives us commandments and I am quite certain that they are not DEI, that is, diversity, equity and inclusion. The commandments may support the values of DEI but make no mistake that they are not the diversity, equity and inclusion of sin. In fact, all the commandments exclude sin of any kind from our behaviour.

It was not just the crowd who found Christ’s language intolerable. His Disciples too. Many of them could not stomach the truth in Christ’s command to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. All of them abandoned Him. Jesus did not run after them to correct their misconception. Instead, He turned around to Peter and the Eleven and asked if they too would like to depart from Him.

Peter spoke for the Eleven and thereafter, through the centuries, his voice rings out for the Church: “To Whom shall we go, you have the Word of eternal life”. The Church has stood and continues to stand as the instrument to make present Christ so that those who receive Holy Communion regularly, might have access to eternity. The reality remains that each one of us might not always make the decision for Jesus Christ. We will fumble, fail and fall which means the decision for Him has to be made again and again and again. To choose Him is an act we must renew on a daily basis. This last bit of John Gospel is no longer about the establishment of the belief in the True Presence but rather it becomes our reckoning. Where do we stand? With God or without Him?

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

What can the world promise? It only has progress and novelty to distract us. Wisdom is enduring because it is consistent whereas novelty is temporary because it is capricious. One day formal and next day casual. When we are in a constant state of flux, it makes those who value consistency feel old and associated with it is the feeling is decrepitude. Nobody likes to feel old-fashioned.

Today, the 1st Reading stresses on wisdom. However our notion of wisdom is coloured by prodigy or enormity. Why? We are drawn towards the notion of more or abundance. Is it not true that the more data, details or facts a person knows, the more he or she is thought to be wiser? If you like, our idea of wisdom is encyclopaedic—to have such information literally like Wikipedia at your finger-tips.

Perhaps the wisdom we are chasing has less to do with the acquisition of facts. Rather, wisdom is acquiring a perspective which is divine, that is, to see the world as God does. Thus, the conversation between the crowd with Jesus today is one where the crowd could have gotten wiser. Sadly for them, it was a struggle. For us, we still have the grace to grow and ground our wisdom.

Since the Church has defended her teachings on the Eucharist for nearly 2000 years and because we want to enter more into this Eucharistic wisdom, we might survey what it means to truly eat the Bread of life.

According to Jesus, the Jews’ ancestors ate the manna from heaven but they had died and were long gone. Whereas the crowd was promised that by eating the flesh of Jesus and drinking His blood, they will live forever. The interesting feature about the promise is the act of consuming and the description used by Jesus. In fact, there is a physicality involved when the Evangelist John used the word for eating. He spoke of it as “trogon”. The translation of the verb is to “gnaw” or to “chew” which suggests that it is a more deliberate and intense exercise. The change from “eating” to “chewing” elicited objections from those who had heard Jesus. Furthermore, the instruction to drink blood went totally against the prohibition of Deuteronomy 12:23. They could not stomach the literal sense of Jesus’ commands.

Eternal life is premised on truly eating (chewing or gnawing) the flesh of Christ and drinking His blood. For us, it is indeed a confirmation that His Flesh and Blood are the necessary food for eternal life. The 1st Reading now makes more sense. The feast prepared by Wisdom has a Eucharistic overtone. What is pointed by Wisdom is that the person who lives, lives in God and lives for God. In other words, to exist, as all creation does, is to be directed towards the Lord. Wisdom provides the banquet for this direction, this orientation or this journey. Thus, the wise person is one who recognises the food that Christ desires to give to us.

The food that is associated with the notion of eternity is even more compelling when we realise that the entire world is seeking to live forever. Look around us. There is a proliferation of the commerce or industry dedicated to wellness. The water that we drink is not good enough to be purified by public authorities. Somehow we need an extra step in purification provided by Amway, Cuckoo, Coway or Diamond. How many slimming down diets are there in the market? What about the various lotions and potions we apply to make us look younger. This is not a criticism of the wellness industry. To be hale and hearty is good. What we should be aware of is that the worship of youthfulness plus our desires to be healthy are indicators of this deeper search for eternal life, whether we know it or not, whether we accept it or not.

Man desires to live forever and as proof, we want to be perpetually healthy so that we may squeeze or pack as many years as possible into this earthly life. In fact, our vision is so bodily and this is fascinating. Christ alone gives us His Body to eat and His Blood to drink so that our vision of longevity can be fulfilled and it is not an earthly eternity. What He proposes is a change, a kind of bodily transformation that makes us copies of His perfect self. As the anaphora of the EPIII points out “when from the earth, He will raise up in the flesh those who have died and transform our lowly body after the pattern of his own glorious body”.

The long Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel challenges us to look further into the horizon so that the care and maintenance of our physical health must always be accompanied by our concern for our spiritual well-being. Thus, wisdom is not the accumulation of knowledge. It is to know where to search and to source for eternal life. This is where we may be stumped. Meaning? We are challenged because the act of knowing and recognising is stymied by our lack of consistent effort in reaching out for eternal life. Even if we know what is good, we do not always reach for it. It is the classic Pauline dilemma. We do what we should not and do not do what we should.

Thus, we must not think less of the Jews who murmured against Jesus when He asserted the necessity of eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood. We are not unlike the Jews when we claim to believe in the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ and yet our behaviour or rather our absence speaks volumes. Failure to attend Sunday Masses or shying away from the Adoration Chapels in many parishes belies a blindness that impoverishes our faith in the True Presence.

A 5th century saint, John Chrysostom remarked, "How many of you say, I should like to see His face, His garments, His shoes. You do see Him, you touch Him, you eat Him. He gives Himself to you, not only that you may see Him, but also to be your food and nourishment”. As the wise Psalmist urges us, “Taste and see that the Lord is Good”. Jesus is with us in the Eucharist. He longs to be there for us. Are we with Him in adoration? If not, what are we waiting for?