4th Sunday of Easter Year B Good Shepherd Sunday

The 4th Sunday of Easter is also called Vocation Sunday. In the Gospel Jesus calls Himself the Good Shepherd which lends itself to the theme of vocations. In general, it is a chance to promote vocations but in particular, the spotlight falls on the idea of priesthood in the Catholic Church. Even though I am a Religious, it is an opportune moment to draw attention to the call to be a priest.

To better understand the Sacrament of Holy Orders and its relevance in the life of the Church, we need to ask two questions. Firstly, what is the Church? Secondly, what does Christ have in mind for His Church?

Is it the desire of Jesus that the Church be a gathering of like-minded do-gooders? To be fair, being good and doing good are taught by all religions and not just restricted to Christianity. Buddhism, Hinduism or Islam command their adherent the same too, do they not? Or should we flow with the trend that since all religions teach their followers to be and to do good, then it matters not which religion one embraces except that one should be and do good?

The idea that all religions are the same raises the question of what membership in the Church is for. After all every religion leads to the same end of being and doing good, membership is irrelevant. Thus it is essential to know what Christ has in mind for the Church. Membership has to be more than being and doing good. The famous chapter of the multiplication in John 6 is instructive.

In the subsequent conversation after feeding the 5000, Jesus invited the hearers to consider the supernatural food and drink He would offer. The attainment of eternal life is premised on eating His Body and drinking His Blood. In the exchange with the crowd, Jesus did not mince His words with regard to the necessity of consuming His Body and imbibing His Blood for eternal salvation. The crowd was so aghast because the proposal of Jesus tended towards cannibalism that everyone abandoned Him. Importantly, He made no attempts to stop them. Even though John’s Gospel carries no account of the Institution of the Eucharist, this episode leaves us without any doubt that Jesus was serious about eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood. If that be the case, then Jesus must make available the food and drink required for salvation.

He has kept His promise through His Church and very specifically through the Sacrament of Holy Orders. The Church is the ordinary instrument of salvation willed by Christ, making the priesthood the means for Him to ensure that eternal salvation can reach His Body. The Priesthood is His bloodline to the Body.

The Church is variously described of as the People of God, the Bride of Christ or the Body of Christ. The last description provides an organic sense that joins the Church to Christ. If Christ is the Head, then the Church is His Body. It is in and for this Body that the priesthood makes the greatest sense as the Sacrament of Orders is necessary for the proper functioning of the Church.

The Head looks after His Body through His priests. But there is a crisis in vocation number. This crisis challenges our understanding of the Church and the necessity of the Sacrament of Eucharist for salvation.

Do we need the Eucharist or not? We already know that eating His Body and drinking His Blood is not a figurative suggestion but a real command. We are speaking here in the context of ordinary salvation. We accept that Holy Communion is sine qua non for salvation, which means that the Lord must provide the means for the availability of the Sacrament. Thus, the lack of vocation poses a problem which highlights the problem not on God’s side but ours. If Holy Communion is Christ’s lifeline for our salvation, then God cannot have stopped calling. We have stopped responding.

The lack of response is possibly the painful reality that we do not believe Holy Communion is indispensable for the salvation of our souls. In other words, while we believe that God saves ordinarily through His Church, our practice is that God saves extraordinarily. It means that Holy Communion is not really that essential for salvation.

If we do need Holy Communion to gain eternal life, then the lack of vocation should spur the young men of the parish to give the Catholic priesthood a serious thought. To be a priest is to be another Christ so that he can give to the Catholic faithful, the Body and Blood of Christ. The priest does not need to be anything else. His only use is to confect and give the Sacrament of Sacraments only because he alone can.

We have to pray for more vocations. Get this into our heads that without the foundation of a ministerial priesthood, the whole Church will crumble. This is not clericalism at all. It is a statement of fact. Priests are sinners no doubt. Presently, our false sense of righteousness is hyper-focused on the weaknesses of the priesthood forgetting that Christ did not choose powerful men to be His apostles. He chose these weak men so that they can represent Him to the world. A priest does not have to be a great preacher, a brilliant theologian or a charismatic leader. Anybody can be those but no everyone can be a priest and only a priest can stand in the person of Christ.

The young men of the Cathedral should consider a life of service as Christ’s instrument to make sure that His Church is fed with His Body. Think about the bees. The female worker bee and the queen bee both have the same genes. The difference is the diet. A female worker larva is fed with royal jelly and it will develop into a queen bee. Likewise, eating the Body of Christ prepares us for eternal life. Who to feed the Church the Bread of Angels if not Jesus Christ Himself through His priests, the alter Christus? I leave you with two questions. 1. Where have all the young men gone to? 2. Right now, you still have the luxury of changing parishes. Do not like the priest, the politics or the liturgy, run to another parish. But how far can you run and for how long? Until you run out of priests?

3rd Sunday of Easter Year B 2024

We continue with the appearances of Jesus to His disciples. However, the post-Resurrection experiences of the disciples is reminiscence of Deborah Kerr in The King and I, singing “Getting to know you”. In each encounter with Jesus, there is a feeling as if the disciples do know Him but they are still getting to know more about Him and to know Him intimately.

Today, the Gospel is the aftermath of the encounter of the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus where they, while at table, recognised Jesus at the Breaking of Bread. In these post-Resurrection experiences, they are often startled or terrified by His appearances or just plainly dumb-struck which questions what they really know of Jesus and the Resurrection.

In each and every encounter, He had to assure them that He was not a ghost but that He has come back to life and is therefore the very fulfilment of all the hopes that they had inherited from their ancestors. All those who came before them had been looking for the Messiah and Jesus was the answer to that search.

Two questions for reflection on these encounters. Firstly, what does it take for us to recognise Him? Secondly, what happens after we have recognised Him?

Food was essential or central to the interactions of Jesus with the people. He was often described as having meals with people. While He was labelled a glutton by the Pharisees, the truth is He has always shown concern for those who lack the necessities that bring joy to communal gatherings. In John’s Gospel, at the behest of His Mother, He changed water into wine to save the marrying couple of embarrassment. And on the mountain, by multiplying the loaves and fish, He made sure that the hungry crowd did not go empty stomach.

But food and drink were never for themselves. They were provided in order to enrich relationships. The context that food is primarily relational can been seen in St Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians. The early Christians were gathered around the Eucharist. And as such, there was food prior to Holy Communion. The scandal arose because the wealthy ate whilst the poor went hungry. The critique was not against consuming food. The issue was not that the rich ate but that they ate while neglecting the poor.

The providence of food and drink is in the context of the Eucharist as we see in John 6. Jesus had fed the hungry but they were still looking for more to satisfy their physical hunger. More than material satisfaction, Jesus proposed a food and a drink that would fulfil all their spiritual hunger and thirst.

Today the story continues from the encounter of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. These two had RECOGNISED Him at the breaking of bread. The action where Bread is broken is the other name for Holy Communion, the Blessed Sacrament and the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is the primary place to recognise Jesus. Even though the rite or the manner of celebrating Mass, as we know it today, is not recorded in detail in any of the Gospels, the outline of the Eucharist was already captured by Luke’s narrative of the Road to Emmaus. The second part of the Mass which the Church terms as the Liturgy of the Eucharist is enumerated by the four actions of Jesus as He sat down with these two Disciples after their walk where He took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them.

We hear this “retelling or recounting” from the Last Supper in a lyrical manner. “On the night He was betrayed, He took bread, said the blessing, broke it and gave it to His disciples saying”, is a formula which directs our attention to the Offertory (took), the Eucharistic Prayer (blessed), the Fractio Panis (broke), and the distribution of Holy Communion (gave).

Interestingly, notice the attention paid to the “taking, blessing and giving”. Frequently enough, the action of “breaking” is missed out, either because the priest does it rather nonchalantly or the congregation is too engrossed with exchanging peace with everyone to miss out a key component of RECOGNISING the Lord.

They recognised Him at the BREAKING of Bread. As the Host was broken, they remarked, “Did not our hearts burn within us as He had talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?”.

This is where we join the two disciples whom, “as they recognised Him, He had vanished from their sight”. Immediately, they set off returning to Jerusalem so that they could tell the story of their encounter with Jesus on the road.

This is what should happen after we have recognised Him. The message of Easter is always about one running to another. The ladies at the tomb, upon knowing that Christ had risen, ran to tell the Apostles about His Resurrection.

The Eucharist of the Resurrection is never meant for “private” consumption. It has tremendous benefits for the soul, for the person who receives it. He is the answer to our spiritual hunger but it is never meant to stop at the personal. It has always been an interpersonal reality. When we have seen the Lord, our hearts must tell of His wonders.

This is the good news of the Resurrection. When the Jesus whom we have recognised is not made known, then it begs the question of whom we have really come to recognise. To eat Jesus is always to proclaim Him in and through our lives and if we keep quiet, the rocks will cry out. Our Cathedrals, Churches and Chapels, old and new, are rocks shouting out the Gospel of the Resurrection. Better not let these stones shame us.

Divine Mercy Sunday Year B 2024

Jesus Christ is Risen and yet the Gospel describes a situation we can resonate with. It is the experience of uncertainty. Ambiguity, confusion and doubt can corrode the mind and imprison the soul in fear. Issues of health and wealth, freedom and security can sow unsettling doubts in our minds. A concrete example is the fear of the Ringgit dipping below 4.00 vis-a-vis the Singdollar which devalues one’s savings.

The same startling scenario applies to the Disciples hiding in the Upper Room. They were afraid and unsure for they had left everything behind to follow this compelling leader but now, what to make of their charismatic leader’s death. He who walked on water, multiplied loaves and raised the dead was Himself powerless against death.

Into this turmoil and fear, Christ appeared and greeted them, “Peace be with you”. The Risen Lord’s greeting is so powerful that it is manifested in the liturgy. At the beginning of every Mass, the celebrant has a choice of three salutations plus “one more” to greet the congregation. The “one more” is what you heard in the Gospel just now. “Peace be with you”. This particular greeting is personally associated with Jesus which explains its reservation for use only by Bishops when they celebrate the Eucharist.

The person of the bishop expresses the fullness of the priesthood of Jesus Christ. In the hierarchy of the Sacrament of Orders, the bishop stands for the Lord, par excellence. Thus, as the Sacrament of Jesus Christ, the bishop greets the congregation as if the Lord Himself is present to say: “Peace be with you”.

To hear the salutation, “Peace be with you”, is to recognise Christ in our midst. The context of this greeting was of a man who, having suffered death, came back to life. Bearing the wounds of our sins on His Body, He returned to greet those whom He loved and bestowed upon them His peace. Even after betrayal, denial and abandonment, He did not come back to castigate or chastise. Instead, He unreservedly poured onto them His peace and breathed upon them His Spirit. Christ in the midst of their fear revealed the quality of His mercy. He loved them even when they did not deserve Him.

Thus, it is fitting that right after the Resurrection, we celebrate Divine Mercy. However, our grasp of the notion of God’s mercy can be skewed. What we think of as God’s mercy is closer to indulgence. One of the greatest acts of mercy that Christ illustrated is seen in the woman caught in adultery. The crowd that prided itself on being on the right side of the law, paraded the adulteress to humiliate, shame and also to force Jesus to prove His religious credential. He showed mercy by not condemning her but neither did He confirm her behaviour because He told her firmly to “go and sin no more”.

Just about 10 days before, Jesus hung on the Cross between two thieves. One was repentant and the other not. Yet both suffered the same consequence of their punishment. They both had their legs broken to hasten their death and Jesus who had promised the repentant thief heaven did not come down from the Cross to relieve Dismas of the consequences of sin, judgement, punishment.

Mercy is indeed an expression of God’s generosity to us. We are undeserving but He is nevertheless excessive in His forgiveness. As the woman caught adultery has shown us, what is written into mercy is always a profound invitation to correct our lives and to enter into a deeper filial relationship with God where we are also called to be merciful like God is. Mercy joins us to God and to other human beings because it breaks down the walls separating us from God and prevents us from the peace that flows from trusting God’s infinite mercy.

In 1927, a Jesuit priest, Miguel Pro, stood in front of a firing squad. Was he fearful? Maybe. Was he at peace? Definitely. As the shot rang out, he shouted out Viva Cristo Rey. It sounded like a cry of defiance but it was more a proclamation of trust in God’s mercy because mercy flows from a heart that is at peace, a heart that is sure that beyond temporal life, there is Resurrection.

Without Christ’s peace we will struggle with mercy. Without mercy we struggle with forgiveness because our idea of justice is heavy-handed. Our sense of justice is possibly closer to revenge exacted. To give an example, there are talks and whispering that a shameless kleptocrat and his scheming rapacious wife will be pardoned royally. Many still suffer the damage that these thieves have done to this country’s economy and how the future generation will continue to pay for the price of their greed and rapacity. Our idea of justice is that they should be locked up and the keys thrown away. If they were pardoned, many who hold dear to the principles of justice would be devastated and hopes shattered.

It is true that there has to be a balance between mercy and justice. As St Thomas Aquinas rightly pointed out, “Without justice, mercy is indulgence. Without mercy, justice is cruel”. While not forgetting the necessity of justice, our hope must be tied to the Resurrection. It means that both mercy and justice do not necessarily find their resolution in this world. When we are convinced that there is Resurrection, we are at peace knowing that no evil will go unpunished and no good deed will go unrewarded in the after-life. Even if these two kleptocrats were freed, while deeply disturbing, we are at peace assured that their justice will be meted out not by us but by the Lord.

What possesses a martyr to face death peacefully or to accept the grave injustice of our kleptocracy, is a firm belief in the Resurrection. Without the peace of the Risen Christ poured into us, we will struggle to show mercy because our hearts will always be buffeted by the winds of revenge, not justice. The Resurrection gives peace to a martyr facing death and grants knowledge that beyond death both justice and mercy will always embrace. That was the reason Miguel Pro shouted “Long Live Christ the King”. He was at peace because he was convinced that the Lord’s mercy and justice extend beyond this world. Mercy flows from a heart filled with the peace of Christ because it is no longer fearful that justice will not be served in this world.

Easter Vigil/Sunday 2024

Cinematic thrillers capture our imagination because they skirt at the edge of excitement. How about visualising this dramatic movie scene? A man or a woman buried alive in a coffin. And the police and the loved ones are frantically trying to locate the trapped victim before the oxygen runs out for the buried person.

Hell is that buried coffin with souls trapped within. Souls held captive in hell’s bowels have no chance of escape until now. When Christ was brought down from the Cross on Good Friday and His Body ritually prepared to be entombed, we might think that He was laid in the sepulchre where lying there passively He awaits for the third day, His Resurrection. However, the Apostles’ Creed states that “He descended into the hell”. Tradition calls it the Harrowing of Hell and it refers to Christ descending into Hades to free souls trapped there from the beginning of time.

The idea that Christ entered into Hell makes a hell of a sense. Anyone born before the Resurrection of Christ does not stand any chance of going to heaven at all. They may have been righteous. People like Abraham, Sarah, Aaron, Miriam, Moses, Elijah, all the Patriarchs and Prophets of old and even Joseph the father of Jesus. They still need the grace of God which comes only through His Son, our Redeemer. This grace of redemption gives meaning to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Christ saved His mother at the moment of her conception precisely because every soul needs justification, either through Christ’s harrowing of hell OR Christ’s redemption won through His resurrection from the dead.

Just visualise Joseph, the father of Jesus, a man of honour, on Holy Saturday meeting His Christ as He descends step by step into hell to draw souls and allows them to be taken up into heaven. All righteous souls were not damned to hell but neither were they redeemed until Christ’s Resurrection.

During the hours after His death on the Cross, Jesus was not relaxing but was relentlessly busy with the mission of salvation. Take a look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Christ descent into hell was not an insignificant moment because the “Gospel was preached even to the dead” (1 Peter 4:6). In Hell, Christ “brings the Gospel message of salvation to  complete fulfilment. This is the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ’s redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption” (CCC 634).

Tonight/today, the tomb stands empty. It is a sign of the Resurrection. Christ's bodily resurrection completes His victory over sin and perpetual death. The empty tomb stands as a symbol of our faith in the Resurrection. Faith begins with the senses but it does not end there. This faith in the Resurrection calls us to grow more and more comfortable with the reality of dying, of actual death but always in the light of rising to new life.

It is a life long journey and who better to represent us than Peter. He did not start as Peter the martyr. He started as one eager and later became a bit of a show off and when faced with difficulties, failed the Lord catastrophically by denying Him. Now all Peter sees is the empty tomb and he believes. This coward will soon gain the conviction to even die for the Lord. In Peter we have hope that our weakness may through the grace of Christ’s Resurrection be converted into conviction that courageously holds onto Christ until the end.

The truth of the Resurrection is found in the Harrowing of Hell and it teaches us that Christ died and rose from the dead that we might have a firm faith to know deeply that death cannot hold on to us forever. Our old and unredeemed history ends with the Cross. Our new and redeemed history begins with the Resurrection. Alleluia, let us rejoice for Jesus Christ is Risen.

Good Friday Year B 2024

There are three parts in this one long service today. The first part is the Liturgy of the Word where we endure an excruciating enactment of Christ’s agony in Gethsemane, His dramatic arrest and shameful trial, culminating with His passion and death on the Cross. The second part centres on the veneration of the instrument of salvation and not of death. The third part is the distribution of Holy Communion.

The English-speaking world calls today Good Friday. In Slavic countries, it is the Great Friday. For the Hispanophones or Francophones, it is Holy Friday. Rightly so because at the heart of “Good” Friday is saintly and salvific suffering. Mandarin is true to what “Good” Friday is. It is literally named as “Jesus receives suffering” day.

Like the famous Simon & Garfunkel hit “Sound of Silence”, we have come to “talk to saintly silent suffering”.

We learn from science that nature abhors a vacuum. The nature of our challenge is not the abhorrence of vacuum but rather an addiction to its opposite. Our noisy world is unable to stay with silence. Do not even mention endure suffering since we have found it increasingly impossible to stay still. What we have done is to successfully drown every possible waking moment with electronic and entertainment noises because we are afraid of our own thoughts. Have you ever laid in bed, unable to sleep and scrolling through YouTube mindlessly and often tempted to go to sites which are more titillating? I have. We are afraid of what we might find in ourselves. Or we are afraid of hearing the Lord speak to us. As social creatures, we seek to interact and we crave connexion. We trawl the net, we scroll the tube, we “book our face” or “Face our Book” (internet, YouTube, Facebook). Thus, we run away from being with or facing ourselves or worst, run away from facing the Lord and in running away, we also want to escape from suffering.

Why?

As Isaiah poignantly pointed out. “There is nothing beautiful about Him. Nothing to draw us unto Him”. Just look at the Cross—a bruised and bloodied Body.

The only language we can have when facing the broken Body of Christ is silence for without silence we cannot understand suffering. With noises that constantly envelope us, our agitation will not allow us to contemplate and embrace suffering. For us suffering is a pain to be avoided at all costs. Yet on the quiet mountain Elijah heard God’s voice in the gentle breeze. In the silence of Gethsemane, Christ heard the Father’s will. In our silence we can hear Christ’s love for us.

On Good Friday, the only day in the whole year when the Eucharist is not celebrated, we hear God’s first language. His silence. Heaven is silent because speech loses its meaning in the face of the fullness of God. Perhaps it is why we now find heaven to be an impossibility because we have come to desire a heaven that echoes our clamour and our clang, our cacophony and our commotion. The silence of the Cross powerfully reminds us that whatever administrative adjustments we can achieve, whatever pastoral programmes we push, whatever political projects we perform or whatever social solution we can set up to save the world, they will all come to a standstill because we are in the presence of the Only Person who can save the world. Evil can destroy everything including the human Body of Jesus but it cannot destroy His silence. Evil dies before a Christ who suffers in silence to reveal His love for souls.

Before the battered, bruised and bloodied Body of love and salvation, we stand in utter silence so that our emptiness, devoid of din and disquietude, can truly be filled with the saving love of Christ. Right after this, we unveil and venerate the Cross and then we will partake of Holy Communion. As Saint Teresa of Calcutta says, “If you look at the Crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you then. When you look at the Host, you understand how much Jesus loves you now”. Come, let us adore our suffering Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ. He died to lose none but to save all.

Holy Thursday Year B 2024

There are two Holy Thursdays. Or better yet, there are two Corpus Christi celebrations. The first is this evening. The second should be 2 months later. The English title Maundy Thursday, derived from Latin “mandatum” highlights specifically that at the start of the Easter Triduum, Christ instituted the most sublime of all Sacraments. Yet, the liturgy this evening shines a spotlight on another aspect of THE Sacrament of Sacraments.

The focus lands on service. We are accustomed to preachings about Christ’s humble service as a model for us. After all, He bent low to wash the feet of His disciples. But is the humility of Christ’s service as King still a selling point for us?

To be fair, humility flies in the face of a culture built on consumption. How so? To keep up with consumption, companies depend on branding and marketing. If people do not know a brand or a product, how to consume, right? Even humans are considered “brands” or “products”. For example, priests also need to “market” themselves by rubbing shoulders with the Nuncio or the powers that be if they ever aspire to higher office. Given such an aggressive self-promoting philosophy, humility or self-effacement will surely struggle to survive in a market-driven environment. In fact, humility could often be regarded as weakness.

Beyond marketing or hard-selling a brand there stands a more profound challenge. When you think of online shopping like Lazada or Shopee or any of the platforms, they seem to be more our “saviours” than Christ can ever be. Why? Almost everything of what we want can be purchased online nowadays. Whatever material cravings we have can be satisfied because these platforms pander to our desires. But the satisfaction usually lasts until the next desire grips us. When we swing from one satisfaction to the next, it can also lose sight of eternal salvation or it ranks rather low on our list of priority needs. These momentary excitements top our agenda and not really salvation.

Hence, a “humble” King saving us is not really a saleable idea since society does not seem to care that much for salvation. I am not referring to this particular Mass because there is only one today and it is bilingual which means it is a bit more packed. But have you noticed that every Sunday the Cathedral is never full? It is sad that post-pandemic, salvation seems to be even less needed. So, when Christ bent down to wash the feet of His disciples, He may have modelled for us a way to be humble and to serve. Yet today, service is almost entirely based on money and as a general rule, we do not really trust free service. Somehow, written into our calculation, what is more expensive should be better. For many, the first thought of a hospital is never Sultanah Aminah or Sultan Ismail.

The care for salvation is central to what Jesus did for the Disciples. We need to know what salvation truly is so that we may understand why we need it. Here, our shopping experience can be instructive. Nothing can fully satisfy us. Is it not true that when we have acquired something our happiness is always short lived. The reason Rosmah and Najib or any of those kleptocrats like Marcos and Imelda are considered greedy and grasping is because after an acquisition or conquest, it is never enough. For those of us who do not breathe that kind of air, we are surrounded by things which we want but do not really need and the thrill for many of us is possibly in the buying or the unwrapping but never in the possessing. How much can we consume? How much can we enjoy? And most importantly, will we ever reach a point where we say enough and are satisfied and want no more?

Chasing after the temporary highs is like breathing but not living. A person can be breathing but not alive. Likewise, to have everything in the world but still dissatisfied proves that we have an existential hunger that cannot be fulfilled in this world. We hunger for the completion which only Jesus Christ can give and that is the meaning of salvation. Remember the multiplication of loaves where Jesus fed the thousands. He told the crowd who was still looking for tangible bread to satisfy their physical hunger, “I will give you the Bread which you will eat and never be hungry again”.

Tonight, the Institution of the Eucharist was meant for salvation. The focus on service is important because there is a link between Christ as the Bread of eternal life and Christ as the humble servant. In washing the feet of His disciples Jesus makes the link between grace and action. Through His action, Jesus lives out the great commandment which marries His Word with His action.

To love one another is to reach out and serve but we must always remember that when Jesus bent low to wash the feet of His disciples it was because He wanted to save each one of them. He was and still is prepared to go to the ends of the earth to save each one of us. In the face of His salvation, the question is this: Do you need Him? If yes, then you are in the right place. Why? When Jesus fed the 5000, the crowd wanted to make Him the bread King. He was not interested in that because He is the King of Bread who gives us His Body, the Bread that saves and leads to eternal life.

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord Year B 2024

Palm Sunday marks the start of Holy Week. It could be the “whole” Holy Week itself because of the two Gospel passages. One is read earlier before the Procession. The other narrates the Passion of the Christ. Together, they encompass the entire drama of our Holy Week journey where we begin with a cheering and end with a condemnation. We mark the triumphal entry into the capital and end with the tragic execution on Calvary. The placement of the ase two Gospels is rather jarring but the readings can help us appreciate what we are celebrating today.

We are actually proclaiming the Kingship of Christ. Stating this does not make much of a sense because we already have the Solemnity of Christ the King at the end of the liturgical year. Given the surrounding drama, the theme of Christ’s sovereignty is easy to miss. The question is how to discern the Kingship enacted through these two Gospel passages?

Palm Sunday’s liturgy feels very much like a continuation of our Christmas narrative. As Jesus began His ministry in Galilee, the 3 Synoptic Evangelists present that moment as the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah 9. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”. This verse is what we hear at Christmas. Now as Christ is near the end of His earthly ministry, He is presented as the fulfilment of the prophecy of Zechariah 9. Israel would be restored by a King, the promised son of David, who will enter Jerusalem on the back of a donkey.

Riding an ass, Christ now enters Jerusalem to reclaim the city for His own. His entrance is both a religious experience and a political manoeuvre but not in the manner we conceive politics. He was not entering to liberate Israel from Rome let alone wrest the kingdom from Herod.

The kind of kingdom brought about by Christ is both personal and social. In His person, as reflected in the 1st Reading. He will be a King treated badly. His beard will be torn because upon Him will be laid the chastisement of the world. He suffers grievously because He carries the sins of the world upon His shoulders. But that is not unexpected. The 2nd Reading provides the template to appreciate this King. “Even though His state was divine, He did not cling to His divinity but chose to enter into slavery on our behalf”. He frees us from the clutches of sin so that we can live a holier life.

To embrace sanctity, Jesus Christ cannot be only a personal Saviour. Our holiness, even though personal, has both social and political impact. The socio-political aspect of His Kingship challenges us to overcome the deep fissures caused by conflicting philosophies that currently divide society. It is easy to squeeze Christ into a smaller manageable concept in which He becomes my personal Saviour. Since no man is an island, the question that remains is “what” Christ should really be and where should He be apart from my “personal” space.

Christ as the universal King must pervade our social and political space. This is the challenge we face if He is not to be conceived narrowly as a Saviour of Christians. It does not make sense that He is simply the Saviour of Christians. Why? When God created, did He create the entire cosmos or did He create a narrow band of Christian space? The Creed clearly states that God is the Creator, presumably of all that is, which must mean He is also the Saviour of all and not just Christians. Therefore, we may have to ask ourselves if the neat notion of a personal Saviour may have reduced Jesus Christ to simply a “personal” butler, albeit, an exalted one. Perhaps it is the adorable, cute and pleasant idea of Jesus as personal Saviour that makes it so much harder for Christ to be proclaimed and accepted as the Ruler of the universe.

Many of us would know first hang what it means to be betrayed by family or friends. Palm Sunday’s liturgy with the two Gospels of triumph and tragedy illustrates for us how fickle the human heart can be. One minute Christ is exalted as King and the next, the world is ready to crucify Him. The idea of waving palms to welcome Christ and spreading cloaks for the King’s donkey to tread on should symbolise our desire that He be enthroned in our lives and more. The jarring placement of the two Gospels not only highlights the fickleness of the human heart but also a disposition towards the “pacification” of the Christ where we desire Him to be what we want but not really the universal Christ who stands for something more.

The exaltation of Christ on the Cross is not the narrative of a tragic end but rather a proclamation of Christ’s victory over all creation. Yes, the Cross may be a symbol of utter defeat for the Romans but for Christian it is the ultimate sign of victory. The King on the Cross shows that His sovereignty and His rule is achieved not through subjugation but through selfless service, not through conquest but through His crucifixion. He is truly the King of all creation which means that nothing is outside the domain of His salvation. He descends into Hell in order for man to ascend into heaven.

In summary, when the crowd shouted, “crucify Him”, it was meant to destroy Him. But we dare to acclaim “crucify Him” because we recognise the power of the Cross. From His victorious throne, grace abounds. Laws may prevent us from proclaiming Christ but cooperating with His grace our belief can blend with our behaviour, our conviction concretised through our conduct, we make His Kingdom can come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. All domains should come under the dominion or the Lordship of Jesus Christ for the only manner that Christ chooses to rule the world is through the Cross. In His flesh hanging on the Cross, disorder, sin and death come to die. Through His Cross alone, we stand a fighting chance that our travails through this world will not end in a hopeless defeat but will culminate in a glorious victory because Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat. Christ conquers, Christ reigns and Christ commands.

5th Sunday of Lent Year B 2024

From Laetare Sunday, the pace will now quicken toward the solemnity of Easter Triduum. Last week, we covered the topic of God’s love for us. A profound recognition of our sinfulness is a necessary prelude to appreciating the salvation brought about by God’s only Son, Jesus Christ. If salvation is free but not cheap, then, the more aware we are, the more we may be able to cherish this hard-earned redemption.

To better appreciate salvation, we need to ingrain into our consciousness that to approach Easter, we go through Good Friday. In other words, we reach the Resurrection by going through Calvary. In Year A, both the themes of Death and Resurrection are covered through the story of Lazarus. In Year B, we cover them through the parable of the grain. “Unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and died, it remains only a single grain. But if it dies, it yields a rich harvest”.

What lesson can we learn from this?

Firstly, it is natural and part of our survival instinct to preserve ourselves. We are by nature not suicidal. Normally, we fear death and nobody in the right frame of mind wants to die. However, the recent pandemic seemed to have heightened our fear of death to the point where we took measures to avoid death at all costs. Again, this is not advocating the wanton waste of life. But the death which Jesus refers has to be more than the “death” which no man can escape from. Not even Lazarus or the son of the widow of Nain. All those whom Jesus raised from the dead had to suffer death again. So, the grain that must die does not refer to the inevitability of death.

Rather, the death of the grain refers more to the kind of dying in which we must undergo as part of life after the Fall. This type of death is far from the drama surrounding the end of life. Instead, the death best exemplified for us is dying daily. The notion associated with this daily dying is called self-sacrifice.

To a certain extent, the people of this great city of Johor Bahru know first-hand the experience associated with sacrificing. Children get up when most civilised people are still asleep in order to get to school across the “Longkang”. The same for parents who daily leave home for work only to return late in the dark. They brave the congestions at immigration check-points both sides of the divide. Of course, JB is by no means unique as there are other major cities in this Federation where suffering citizens run the same gauntlets of traffic congestions. People suffer just to put food on the table.

However, such sacrifices revolve around the self. Sacrifices, even if linked to one’s self-benefit, can teach us to die to oneself. But what is crucially needed is a kind of sacrifice which goes beyond self-advantage. It is a kind of dying which benefits others.

Earlier it was mentioned that the Pandemic may have fostered a certain fear of death. This fear could very possibly be a symptom that our generation have lost the stomach for selflessness. Think about it. Daily we are challenged to die to our selfishness, to say no to our self-centredness. In our culture which is big on self-promotion, it could simply mean we become less self-referential. As C.S Lewis said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less”. Like fasting from having to be right in every pronouncement we make. Whatever I say is right and fasting from that is dying to pride.

When death terrifies, maybe it is because we have forgotten to embrace the daily difficulties and the inconveniences of life. We do not just “die”. Instead, we learn to die through self-sacrifices. It is this daily dying that gives us the freedom to follow Jesus closely.

One of the challenges Jesus issued to the Disciples was to take up the Cross and to follow Him. It sounds noble until we realise that it does not come from out of nowhere. Life presents us with countless chances to die to ourselves. Can you imagine Peter remonstrating with Christ when the Lord predicted His own death. “How can, Lord?”. This denial could have stemmed from not making the connexion between daily life and the inevitability of death.

Perhaps we can visualise this better with the image of a candle. To be useful, that is, to provide light, the candle must necessarily burn itself out. In summary, a candle is only as good as it is being burnt up.

To follow Jesus is to follow Him to His death. Martyrdom is not restricted to the shedding of blood. White martyrdom consists of the kind which is inescapable in life and which to a certain extent takes its toll on us. But we plod on because inherent in suffering is the very sense that we are not alone. It sounds too easy to state it because those who are suffering can feel terribly lonely. But our suffering makes sense because we, in Christ, endure it for the benefit and the sake of others.

Finally, the saying, “unless a grain of wheat should fall and die” refers to Jesus Himself. He is the supreme model of word and deed. What makes it better is to pair it with another great saying of Jesus. “No greater love a man has than to lay down his life for his friends”. Indeed, the Christian notion of life is premised on death but precisely because it is a death that gives life to others. Christ died so that we might have life to the fullest.

Laetare (4th) Sunday of Lent, Year B 2024

The colour rose is up again at this mid-point of the season of Lent. It is an anticipation, a sort of looking forward to the salvation that Easter will bring.

What can the readings teach us?

Central to these readings is the Gospel of the Gospel, according to Martin Luther. “For God so loved the world that He gave us His Son so that anyone who believes in Him may not be lost but have eternal life”. John 3:16 is the Gospel in miniature. The principal message to humanity is God’s love which is cause of our rejoicing.

How should we rejoice when the Readings are taken from the Book of Chronicles and Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians?

In the Book of the Chronicles, sin upon sin was the experience of the Israelites which resulted in suffering. The people had abandoned God and the consequence was exile and subjugation by the Chaldeans. Only when they recognised their sins were they brought back. When we abandon God, He does not forsake us. Rather He allows the consequences of our actions to take their course. However, when we turn back to Him, He shows His mercy as He did through the pagan ruler Cyrus who allowed the Israelites to return to their homeland.

The recognition of sin is the key to God’s merciful love for us. Two things to be noted here. Firstly, exile is a powerful symbol of sin’s consequence because sin destroys relationship. God does not cut us off because we have sinned. Rather our sin cuts us off from God.

 
Secondly, why is recognition so important? Without acknowledging sin, how can we appreciate God’s saving mercy? St Paul in the 2nd Reading clearly states that nothing of ours can ever merit salvation. We are saved through grace and not through our own merits. Yes, the Catholic position is that grace saves through our cooperation. Without our cooperation, even God cannot do anything for us. That makes the recognition of sin so important.

Nicodemus’ conversation gives us a clue about how God saves. Through Jesus Christ the Son. In fact, the name of Jesus saves. The ancient symbol of the serpent lifted up will now be replaced by the Son of God Himself on the Cross. As St. Augustine puts it: “God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love”.

With God desiring to save each of us, our challenge is therefore to deepen the knowledge of our own need for God. The inability to recognise sin makes us all less of a sinner which makes our rejoicing rather superfluous. What does it mean?

Imagine food, good food. We are at a dinner and the food is to die for. The only problem is we are not hungry. When the stomach is so full, pleasure derived from eating will instead be anti-climactic. Instead of joy, it becomes a chore because we are full and not hungry. Better still. Can you visualise taking a shower when you are already clean or be admitted into hospital even though not sick.

Perhaps this is the curse of living in a therapeutic society that is controlled by the urge and the need to feel good. Our therapeutic mentality believes that as human civilisation progresses and that living conditions have improved dramatically all these correspond to the idea that we are actually a better people. We do not need salvation as much as we need to feel healthy. Interestingly, the words “salvation” and “health” are related because true healing is found in salvation.

Soon our beloved Elect will be going for their baptism. It is the bath of regeneration. The question to ask is this: Do they need to be washed clean? If so, their baptism begs a further question: So how can we be more acute in knowing that we are sinners? How to grow in the awareness of our sinfulness so that our joy of being loved and saved by God can be manifold?

We need to wean ourselves from a therapeutic God, the idea that God’s love is to make us feel good. God’s mercy is reassuring as today’s Gospel tells us. But that love for us must be based on an acute awareness of the need for redemption and forgiveness. The role of religion is not merely therapeutic. Its objective is salvific leading us to recognise the dark corners of our hearts that need the light of Christ. We easily hide in our sins rather than let the Light shine upon them.

For Christ’s light to shine, we have a duty to reclaim our moral conscience. It is not a clarion call to self-righteousness as if one were holier than the rest. But so far, we have abdicated our responsibilities and have outsourced our morality to social media—television, radio, journals, books, computer games etc. All these media freely dictate how we should think, see, hear and enjoy. They offer a worldview that is at best neutral or at worst, they are downright evil. Daily we are presented with evil as good and good regarded as out of touch with what is “acceptable” morally.

This is the darkness that has obscured our relationship with God. Without God, there is no foundation for our moral sense or compass. Also, we sort sins into categorie big and small. Ordinarily, we equate big as bad and small as “excusable”. Everybody does it, so what is the problem? But the burden of sin is not big or small. Rather, the crush is that anyone who sins does so because he or she is unable to stop the behaviour. The meaning of sin is to be caught in a trap in which one is powerless to flee. It is this inability to save ourselves that we must embrace and know. Our impotence in escaping makes our reaching out to God all the more urgent. God mercy may be infinite but the sobering truth is that we have a greater chance going hell than to heaven if we are dead in sin.

Few people believe this truth but instead choose to remain with the comforting notion that Laetare Sunday celebrates the joy of God’s love. However, we cannot just desire God’s love without first acknowledging that we are utter sinners who need His redemption. According to St John, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us". What is there to save if we were sinless which means we would have no need of Jesus and His salvation. Therefore, what are we doing here? Without the admission of our guilt, the constant stress on God’s immense love becomes an empty gesture. This is not unhealthy Catholic guilt. Salvation is free but it is not cheap. If we desire to saved, acknowledging our sinfulness is necessary. The price paid for our salvation is none other than the Son of God who laid down His life for us sinners.

3rd Sunday of Lent Year B 2024

Last Sunday, at Tabor, Moses and Elijah appeared and spoke to Christ. Today, the 1st Reading provides an account of Moses giving the Law to Israel. The event on Tabor indicates that the Law and the Prophets who embodied the spirit of the Law find their highest and fullest expression in Christ. This is confirmed in the 2nd Reading, but not in the way the world perceives nobility and excellence. Christ crucified is indeed a stumbling block for those seeking proof of His divine pedigree and foolishness for those seeking wisdom. They have ears but do not hear. They have eyes but do not see.

In a way, we are no different from the Jews or the Gentiles during the time of Jesus. They were unable to grasp or fathom a Messiah who could die. For us, a mortal Messiah is not a scandal. We are used to seeing a Corpus on the Cross. Maybe too used to it because what challenges us is not the dying Christ on the Cross but the tendency to separate law and its spirit. Law constraints whereas the spirit enables.

This tendency ties in with the age of achievement where autonomy is a coveted value. No one likes the restrictions imposed on personal freedom as “laws” often do. Freedom is understood as the ability to exercise our individual autonomy without external restraints. Is there an opposition between restriction and freedom? Given this type of tension, how do we reconcile restraint with autonomy?

Firstly, recognise that relationship is at the heart of the Law. The Gospel is a good example. Christ drove the traders out not because they were trading but because they had not fully appreciated the centrality of God in the Temple. The Temple is not only sacred but also a restricted space where God comes first and the traders defiled its sanctity by prioritising commercial dealings over man’s relationship with God.

Secondly, to understand the commandments in the context the spirit, we must survey the connexion between laws and punishment. Penalty is a measure of the value of whatever, be it a person, a thing or a concept, that a law is protecting. The more we esteem a reality, the greater the penalty is attached to violating the law. A good example are the laws surrounding a woman’s honour. They are highly punitive because a woman is highly esteemed. Perhaps one can understand why the laws against rape are harshly draconian in some countries.

Thirdly, there is a correlation between sin and suffering meaning that the consequence of sin, apart from punishment, is suffering. Before we delve into their association, what needs to be clarified is that there is no suggestion that the person who suffers is a sinner. The prime example is Jesus Christ crucified. Suffice to say that there is a price to be paid for our sins which Christ took upon Himself.

With regard to suffering as a result of sin, we have come to expect that a merciful and forgiving Deity should also be understanding and accepting. In the past, God’s commandments were accepted as literally written on stone. The best illustration is Moses depicted as carrying the two tablets. Since they were carved in concrete, Man simply obeyed. But today, those who follow the letter of the law literally would be as “fundamentalist” and generally they are lumped together with “right-wing, conspiracists and nut-cases” etc.

Take the case of what happened in the 80s. When AIDS arrived at the scene, the notion that the disease is God’s punishment for aberration in sexual behaviour, notably between same sex, was unaccepted. This rejected view was considered to be so out of touch with the idea of a God who is gentle and merciful. God is not that type of a God.

The Gospel gives us an aspect of God which might come as a surprise to us. Christ’s zeal for the Father’s house reminds us that our relationship with God takes priority. He who emptied the Temple did so because there are times and spaces that we protect. In other words, if relationship is at the heart of today’s Gospel, then the question should not be centred on “this” law or “that” law but instead, the focus is on how our relationships are circumscribed by time and space.

What sort of time do we give to God? Do we give Him enough time or merely left-over and tired time? Take the Sunday obligation. As a duty, it sounds more legal than relational because we are compelled to make space and give time to our relationship with God. How is that a relationship? To appreciate the legality involved, we need to understand that the nature of time is not just passing but it is also sacred. The Christian measure of time is markedly holy.

No matter how much we tried to change AD (Anno Domini) to CE (Common Era), time remains sacred because we measure it “In the year of the Lord”. The birth of Christ is the measure of all time—before His coming and after. We live, move and have our being in God’s time. Time is holy when translated, it means we give God the best. The Divine Office, the Church’s official prayer allocates periods of time to communing with, time to raise our minds and hearts to the praise and glory of God. Midnight, morning, mid-morning etc.

However, the reality is that the Church is not at all that demanding. Church law states that there are holy days of obligation where Catholics are bound to attend Mass. In practical terms. 52 Sundays in a year added with 4 other days of obligation. Less if one of them, like Christmas, All Saints, Assumption or Ascension, falls on a Sunday. The trouble is, when we condense that which is most central to our being into a law, we will be reduced to quibbling about how much or how little we can get away with in order to fulfil a “requirement”.

No matter what the law does, it cannot capture love. It might provide space and time for a relationship to flourish but it cannot compel. Time and space are important in any relationship. For example, why do we need to be married in Church after all, the argument is that God is everywhere. So should we not be allowed to be married at a beach? Right? Would your toilet be a suitable place for a wedding. Or perhaps the best of all is to have a cemetery right in front of your gate. Space, and not only time, is also an important marker for our relationships. Some spaces are sacred and some are not.

Time and space are markers for the proper conduct of human behaviour. Lenten penances are basically directed towards the right ordering of our relationships with God, others and ourselves. Law draws boundaries in time and space so that relationships can flourish. As Christ drove the traders out of the Temple, we should ask ourselves what traders reside in our hearts that we forget to prioritise our relationship with God. May our Lenten fast, abstinence and penances help us to do just that.

2nd Sunday of Lent Year B 2024

From the desolate desert of deception, this Sunday we scale the top of Tabor to witness Christ’s Transfiguration. It is like spanning the two extreme ends of human experiences. Christ showed us that from the depths of deception we can scale the heights of heaven.

The context for this event is important. Firstly, the three Synoptic Gospels carry this narrative. It happened after Peter’s Confession that Jesus is the Messiah that was followed by Jesus predicting His own passion to come. Jesus’ inner circle of Peter, James and John were brought up to the mountain and there in their presence, He is transfigured. Secondly, as Jesus was resolutely making His way to Jerusalem, this episode was an encouragement to the Disciples. Enveloped by the cloud, the three heard a voice that affirmed once again that Jesus is the Son of God and they were commanded to listen to Him. The matter to consider is that woven into discipleship are both a price and a prize.

The 1st Reading does suggest a heavy price to be paid for discipleship. Abraham was asked to sacrifice his only son. God’s demands feel as if He will always ask for more than we are prepared to give. But that is not the case. God does not ask what He Himself is not able to deliver. Central to Abraham’s experience is faith that God Himself will supply. Isaac symbolises what was dearest to Abraham—his continuity and God asked that Abraham trust Him with his most precious treasure. Abraham becomes the father of faith because he was prepared to trust in God’s providence. The subsequent sacrifice of the ram symbolises God’s greatest Providence. God modelled the way of trust by giving up His only Son to be the ultimate sacrifice.

Even if discipleship is often thought of as a call to action, it is truly a journey of faith. Ultimately it is a journey to the Resurrection. Perhaps, we can better understand this from the perspective of those who are journeying to join the Catholic faith. Why? We who have been baptised long ago might have lost the sense of wonder because our vision is a bit more blurred and our attitude more blasé.

Why do people seek baptism? Does it confer on them material benefits? Maybe. Is there more to material gain in conversion? The answer to the question why the Elect choose to join the Church is Eternal Life. We are baptised into eternal life. The Transfiguration is therefore a Resurrection experience of the disciples. Peter, James and John caught a glimpse of the prize at the end of their discipleship.

As a journey to eternity, discipleship does not settled on what is passing, important though that may be. This is perhaps one of the challenges we face in a consumer society. We may have been promised heaven here on earth. The “Great Reset” proposed at the World Economic Forum operates from a space of responsibility for creation and our common home is noble but it might hide within its philosophy a promise of “eternity” which this temporal and transient world cannot support.

We are not meant to live forever here. For example, the eradication of hunger, diseases and injustice is not eternity because eternal life is premised on death. We need to pass through death before reaching the Resurrection. While discipleship is exercised in the world, still its objective is eternity. The Transfiguration is therefore a kind of foretaste of what is to come.

Any mountain experience is exhilarating. It is wonderful to be able to witness glory but it is a different matter altogether to follow it. In the end, after all the firework display has died off, all that remained was Christ alone. Continuing the journey to Jerusalem, He will go to His death. The glory of the Transfiguration passes through the summit of Calvary.

As Christ was preparing the disciples for His Passover, so during this period of enlightenment, our Elect too are reminded of the price of discipleship. They are not alone. We who have been baptised must count that cost too. We also have to follow Christ and keep our faith until the Resurrection.

The culmination of our faith journey is the Resurrection. Speaking of this reality can feel like a meaningless exercise because it describes an experience that is so out of this world. How do we desire something that we cannot really put a finger on? And moreover, we are continuously promised “eternity on earth”. What may be helpful is the Greek word for the experience of the Apostles. In Greek, Transfiguration is “metemorphothe” or in science, we know the process as “metamorphosis”. Remember how an ugly caterpillar morphs into a dead chrysalis (pupa) before it transforms into a beautiful butterfly.

Our cosmetic industry is basically mimicking for humanity what metamorphosis does for the insect kingdom. We all want to be beautiful and we are prepared to go to great lengths to beautify ourselves when in fact discipleship is the process whereby the beautification of the soul takes place. If physical beauty is our objective, then the Resurrection is the ultimate spiritual goal of the transformation that we desire.

In summary, the Transfiguration is an important symbol of the Resurrection; a foretaste of what is to come. The part of the Eucharistic Prayer III used in a funeral Mass reflects this reality. “…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”. Placed early in Lent, the Transfiguration reminds searchers and believers not to lose sight of the Resurrection, no matter how good life can be here, for eternity is truly the prize we win after paying the price of discipleship.

1st Sunday of Lent Year B 2024

We have entered rather hastily into Lent. Right at the beginning, related themes in the Readings and Gospel are highlighted for our consideration. This is also a period where the journey towards Calvary is intensified and in way, it is reflected in the Catechumens’ experience.

The Rite of Election is usually celebrated on the 1st Sunday of Lent. The Catechumens who have listened to God’s word, responded to His invitation and participated in the life of the faithful community are sent to the Bishop for their election. From now on, their journey of faith is deepened with enlightenment and purification through the three Scrutinies.

Appropriately St Peter mentions in the 2nd Reading about the Sacrament of Baptism that we are saved through the death and resurrection of Christ. Such a statement sounds cut and dried but it is linked to an article of our faith which refers to the “harrowing of hell”. In the Apostles’ Creed, we usually read it as “He descended into hell” but St Peter stated it as “He went to preach to the spirits in prison”. In the context of Christ’s descent into Hades' domain, the rainbow at the end of the Great Deluge, mentioned in the 1st Reading, makes sense. It symbolises that God will no longer use water to destroy mankind. Instead, two points to consider. First, Christ’s descent into hell reveals the distance and the depth the Lord will go to save us. Second, beyond the rainbow, the covenant is now enacted through the Sacrament of Baptism.

The deluge of death will now become the bath of rebirth. Baptism is the new covenant expressing God’s intent to save everyone. For the Elect, the logical conclusion to their Lent is the Easter Vigil where they will receive the Sacraments of Initiation. But for those of us who had been reborn through baptism, Lent becomes a season of renewal. Baptism may have washed away all sins, original and otherwise, yet many may be bogged down by present sins. Thus, renewal is the chance to walk with a God who first chose to walk with us.

Christ walks with us and the Gospel at the start of Lent, narrates His Temptations in the desert. While all the three Synoptic Gospels tell the same story, Mark is rather sparse with details. He merely mentions that Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the desert to be tested and tried by Satan. We know details of Jesus’ temptations via Matthew and Luke.

The temptations are important. Describing Lent as a season of repentance, renewal and revival, suggests that something is not right. Is there a process of renewal for the sake of renewal? For example, whenever a newer product comes online, it is always marketed as a better iteration. Remember the "best ever iPhone" model? The older model may have been good but the latest offering is always better. Otherwise, what is the “newest” for, right?

Likewise in terms of “renewal”, that is, being made new, either through baptism or reconciliation, it is always in terms of leaving behind what is considered to be less good. In other words, no one is baptised if there is no need for a change in direction or no one goes for confession if there is no need for forgiveness.

It is vital to reflect on this because we are speaking of salvation. We are saved from our sins which are the results of our caving in to temptations. Everyone yearns for salvation which is a natural inclination that arises from our brokenness. Yet, we do not give much thought to the role that temptations play in frustrating our salvation.

Satan tried to find weaknesses in Jesus which means that He will try to exploits ours too. But Christ overcame Satan and thankfully in our Lenten arsenal, the three devout practices of the Jews can aid in overcoming temptations. For long as we want to follow Jesus we need to be prepared for we will not be spared Satan’s wrath. He will aim for us the more we desire to follow Him. If you find yourself in a lot of troubles, then you must know that you are in good company with the Lord. For He was not only tested in the desert but throughout His earthly life.

Firstly, during Lent, we fast. A most basic temptation is our desire for instant gratification. Christ was tempted to turn stone into bread. While it is difficult to give up something good for something better, self-denial actually gives us strength to counter Satan’s assault. Secondly, we give alms. Christ was tempted to exercise His status by lording over the angels. He could have thrown Himself off the roof for the recognition that would surely help Him in His ministry. Instead He served by giving Himself to others. Christian charity which flows from the principle of stewardship becomes an imitation God. This brings us to the third Lenten practice. We pray. Christ was tempted to vain-glorious independence but He chose dependence on the Father. He pointed out to Satan that true worship is directed to God alone.

In every temptation we face, Jesus walks with us because He Himself had experienced them. Through fasting, almsgiving and praying, He gives us the grace and strength to overcome Satan’s wiles. By nature, temptations are relational and we are always tempted against relationship. Praying, fasting and charity are intended to foil not only temptations, nor only to gain strength to resist the Tempter himself. They are meant to strengthen our relationship with God, with oneself and with society. The temptations in the desert remind us that Lent is not needed by the saints. Rather the season is God's gift for sinners to become saints.

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

The popularity of Christ’s healing ministry is brought to fore through the healing of the leper. Beyond the act of restoring the leper to his place in community is Christ in the mission to further the Kingdom’s boundary.

Man being a finite creature naturally needs boundaries. He is not made up of pure spirit but instead is a composite of spirit and matter. Finitude by nature requires definition. To be known, we need to be known as someone and not just anyone. Anybody here who is organising lunch or dinner knows the frustrating feeling when the answer to the question “What do you want to eat?” is met by the response “Anything”. In terms of knowing, we generally want to describe or define things right down to its minutest details in order to be precise.

The act of separation is also a form of definition. For example, racial identity is so important in this country. The forms that we fill in always have this question: Race. Sometimes when we hear a crime committed. The next question we ask is: Race? And almost instantly, if the “correct” race is identified, the racial stereotypical markers will kick in. This race is like this or that race is like that.

In the Gospel, leprosy was a major social marker. The taboos surrounding leprosy not only function as a form of identity but they act as a boundary to secure the general population from the infected. The instructions regarding lepers were draconian. The diseased had to tear off their clothes and shout “unclean, unclean”. This form of isolation or segregation might just remind us of our own experience when Covid exploded onto our scene. Remember the drastic measures taken against those who came into close contact with the infected? They were treated like they were the infected. Recall the “two lines, two lines” of our Covid tests?

When Christ approached the lepers, He did two things for us. Firstly, in crossing prohibited boundaries and entering into the disfiguring territory of the “Leprosarium”, He enlarged the Kingdom. Think about it, the Kingdom that Christ came to proclaim, is not limited by our narrow notions of “wholeness” and “security”. Moreover, we confess that He came to gather all nations unto the Father’s Kingdom. It is another description of the idea of recapitulation. In other words, He did not come to gather only the saved. He came to redeem also the unsalvageable or the unlovable.

Secondly, He deepens our appreciation of the full impact of His Incarnation. When we recite the Creed every Sunday, we can just glide over the fact without grasping the true meaning of the Incarnation. Soon we will enter into Lent. The journey of Lent leads toward Calvary. Again, such an idea sounds quite run of the mill. But when Christ entered into the territory of the lepers and touched the leper, He made Himself unclean. In other words, He became like a leper Himself. He really took our sins upon Himself which means that in the enterprise of recapitulation, nothing, meaning that no one is outside the realm of salvation.

Today we have lines that we do not cross or breach. Uncrossed lines often fade and this is where our challenge lies. They fade or disappear into the background. Or simply we become insensitive that they are there. To give an example, EVs or electric vehicles. Governments around the world are pushing EVs and even Laudato si is pushing for the transformation of our environmental engagement. We have to diminish our carbon legacy, meaning that we must make sure that we leave as small a carbon footprint as possible. All these initiatives are good for the planet. The “uncrossed lines” that may have faded into the background, are the destitute in poorer countries who have to pay the price for our “environmental concerns”. The raw material, like rare metals, are mined from these impoverished countries. The poor often never benefit from this carbon initiative.

Our social exclusion extends further than just the medical outcasts. The reconciliation that both Laudato si and Fratelli tutti are aiming for calls us to a greater consciousness of the frontier, to grow more aware of the walls that hem us in. Our sight must cross into the socially discriminated of today. Social media for example is a divide between those who are “saved” and those who are not. There are many who are left behind in the chase for digital proficiency. In our rush towards electronic integration, imagine those who are not tech-savvy. They become victims of scams and frequently they suffer quietly because they do not want to be seen as stupid or electronically illiterate.

The poor we will always have with us. This is not a canonisation of the poor but rather one way of thinking about them. Meaning that we must never forget them. A thought that might help us to bring to fore what may have become hidden from us is to remember that when we give it is not because we have more. When we help it is not because we are more capable. Rather, every endeavour we take on behalf of the poor, or the socially outcast, it is because we need them. We need them to help us go to heaven. Sometimes we think of the poor as deserving of our pity. It is like a one-way street but the truth is that the poor teach us to rely on God. They show how to be compassionate. They help us enlarge the border of Christ’s Kingdom.

Finally, the extension of Christ’s Kingdom, the enterprise of recapitulation often goes further than what we are comfortable with. We are creatures of habit and when we are comfortable in our blindness, we become complacent. However, if last Sunday, Christ by praying showed that prayer is not an extra duty laid upon our shoulder, then today, in crossing boundaries, Christ shows us that He is truly the Saviour of all and not just a few. We cannot be complacent about our blindness if we want to follow Him.

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

The exorcism of Jesus last Sunday continues this weekend as He is sought by many. Moreover, the new-found Disciples also acted like intermediaries. The good example is Peter bringing Him to heal the mother-in-law.

Last Sunday a mention was made about the vacuum created by the absence of God. This Sunday we begin to appreciate that preaching, healing and exorcism belong to the one mission of Christ to extend the Kingdom of God. In other words, Christ came to reclaim creation back for the Father. Interestingly, from the perspective of sacramental theology, the different healings and cures conducted by Jesus laid the foundation for the latter institution of the Sacrament of Anointing. Restoration, whether it be physiological, psychological or spiritual, is a sign of the Kingdom to come. Recovery from sickness and sin is the beginning of the Kingdom’s rule.

In establishing the Kingdom, we can already discern two Christian doctrines right at the start of Christ’s public ministry. The first is the central notion of the Resurrection. We see it in the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law. He held her hand and the elderly woman was literally brought back to life and to service. Her post-recovery ministration of Jesus and His apostles is reflected in the 2nd Reading where St Paul wrote of the apostolic service of the Lord.

The second doctrine is a less heard concept of recapitulation (see CCC518). The furthering of the Kingdom is not merely an extension of geography, meaning that it is not just to enlarge Christ’s dominion territorially. Rather, recapitulation is the logical conclusion of our profession of faith where we confess that the Word was made flesh and that through Him all things were created. Recapitulation flows into the Great Commission to go and baptised all nations using the Trinitarian formula. Thus, Creation, the Fall, the Great Commission all come under the mission of Christ to lead us back to the Father as He restores us to our original vocation. In other words, creation, from its inception until the end of time, is always headed by none other than the Word through Whom all things were made.

Therefore, anyone who claims Christian heritage is enrolled in this endeavour of Christ to reclaim all creation for God the Father. In that case, evangelisation is not merely to preach the Gospel. It is not even to increase membership in the Church. Rather the Good News is proclaimed in view of the total ministry of Christ who leads us back.

Leading creation back to the Father is an enormous task. In today’s Gospel, an important facet of Christ’s life is inserted into the mission of recapitulation. Mark introduced the idea of Christ praying. He does not give many details but enough for us to know that recapitulation is not merely actions on our part. It is also a life of prayer. Despite the success of his work and the authority with which He had over the crowd, Christ still found time and space to retreat into the quiet and silence in order to pray.

Jesus prayed always in order to do the will of God. In Luke’s Gospel, He spent an entire night in prayer before choosing the 12 to be His Apostles. In raising Lazarus from the dead or in multiplying fish and loaves, Jesus prayed. All through His ministry He engaged in prayers, both formal and informal. His most famous prayer took place in the Garden of Gethsemane where He struggled to choose the path less travelled.

When we embrace the task of recapitulation, the fact that Jesus prayed is something for us to think about. Perhaps our idea of evangelisation is filled with boxes to tick especially of the things that need to be done in order to bring the Good News to those who are waiting for it. Our yardstick for evangelisation is largely action. Many cannot stomach the “NATO” rhetoric, the type who is “No Action, Talk Only”. Our measure of success is achievement-focused to the point that we become afraid of inactivity and prayer often feels like wasted indolence. But Jesus prayed because the idea of “recapitulation” was more than just a task to be accomplished. Yes, He was bringing creation to its proper fulfilment but it was always in light of reconciliation and restoration of creation’s filial relationship with God the Father?

As followers of His, we too need prayers in our lives. Jesus may come across as someone who prayed spontaneously. But in fact, He would have been a man of ritualistic prayers. The word “ritualistic” itself may sound pejorative in our casual free-spirited world but for Jesus ritual was important. Our notion of freedom is an ability to engage in prayers as and when we want but for those who care for relationship, ritual suggests of fixed time for and forms of prayers.

If we look at how life is organised, spontaneity is overrated because 99% of our lives revolves around formality rather than informality. People work and it is not exciting. Doctors schedule their operations. Pilots follow time-tables. In reality, formality signals relational obligations. If rituals denote importance in relationship perhaps we should also recognise why going for Mass on Sunday is so central in our Catholic ethos.

Most of all, we need to get away from a mentality which prizes or values prayers as “effective” to one which is more “affective”. What is the difference? Effective praying views prayers in terms of results, that is, getting what we want from God. In itself, the prayer of asking is not a bad thing. Jesus Himself taught us to ask from God in our prayers. But those who are in relationships know the degrading feeling of utilitarianism. When someone only looks for you when he or she needs something, that is not relationship. Even though we should always ask from God, He is not a sugar daddy type of a deity.

In terms of asking, Christ Himself modelled a relationship based on embracing God’s will rather than bending God to ours. The Gethsemane experience was definitely “affective”, filled as it was with anguished and yet it revealed the depth of the filial relationship between the Father and the Son. In terms of the mission of recapitulation, prayer is not an extra duty enjoined upon us. It highlights that the more important a relationship is, the less we would leave it to chance. Since the task of reconciling creation is a priority in Christian discipleship, Christ by praying led the way by showing that if we want to follow Him, we cannot NOT pray. To pray is actually to live in the presence of the Father to whom all glory and honour belongs.

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

From last week’s exhortation to repent and to believe in the Gospel, this Sunday Mark records Christ’s first public action. While teaching in a synagogue, Jesus freed a man bound by Satan’s yoke. Any act of exorcism can beguile and bewitch the modern mind because, let us face it, some of us are fascinated by horror and are drawn towards the grotesque. Many of our traffic jams are caused by curiosity as to how bad the accident is on the other side of the highway. In focussing on Christ’s performing an exorcism, we can miss out on a crucial aspect of His ministry. His teaching, while it made an impression on the crowd, was also liberating. Thus, He was not just freeing the demoniac. He was also freeing the minds of those whom He taught.

It is significant that we witness right at the start of Christ’s public ministry, the extent of His authority both as a teacher and as an exorcist.

There is no doubt that He was a teacher par excellence. A good teacher always draws the students towards enlightenment. Many of us have cherished memories who our good teachers were in school. Through the mazes and labyrinths of raw information, they help us organise our thinking and knowledge, inspiring us to greater freedom and integrity. In the Gospel, beyond the authority to teach, the crowd was also attracted to Jesus’ authority over nature.

At the heart of Christ’s exercise of authority, He battled with the forces of evil. In fact, many of His encounters were with spiritual forces. Without second thoughts, we are used to glossing over the accounts of Him spectacularly sending a legion of devils into a herd of pigs plunging off a cliff to their death, silencing a shrieking spirit or simply casting out a demon and we think nothing of them.

Yet, a major feature of Mark’s Gospel is a Jesus who was a prolific exorcist. The problem is with the notion that exorcism was central to Christ’s ministry always feels antiquated. It explains why we pay scant or little attention to this aspect of His ministry. His exorcisms are not as significant as viewing Him under the light of our current focus.

What does this mean? We resonate with a notion of a revolutionary maverick—a political kind of Christ who came to set us free. Liberation is often measured in terms of political progress and material improvement meaning that our standard of freedom is calculated in terms of a better social standing. A good life is basically seen through the lens of material comfort which means we seldom equate Christ’s liberation in terms of exorcism.

Fascination with the horror genre in broadcast and print media could be an explanation because evil is reduced to sensational entertainment. More than fascination or entertainment, we may have also banished the reality of satanic possession to the margin. Since such a spiritual reality cannot be explained scientifically, it is consequently translated as non-existent. In fact, science already does not look too kindly on spiritual realities like God or angels let alone spiritual infestation. For example, how many people ask for house blessings, especially in the West?

Mark records many actions of Christ freeing people from the oppression of evil. The span of His pastoral activities covers quite a lot of spiritual warfare where He is seen fighting against forces inimical to the Kingdom. Yet, this important ministry forms less than 1% of a priest’s life today. Of course, what was described of as demonic possession may simply be psychological from the perspective of modern medicine. For example, what could be considered possession in the past could very well be symptoms of a chemical imbalance. A person suffering from bouts of seizures would be considered to be a person possessed when in fact, he could just be an epileptic. The miracles associated with healing could be also psychological. The case of the mother-in-law of Peter is instructive. When Christ visited Capernaum, He went to Peter’s house and all He needed to do was to assure the elderly woman and she got well.

The danger arises when we try to explain everything away under psychology forgetting that evil is a spiritual reality at work in our world. Our scientific mindset may have driven the devil into oblivion with the last witches of the Dark Ages. We are at east that evil remains portrayed in movies—the sinister and menacing type whose function is to scare us. But such an attitude may be too naïve and trusting. The forces of evil are at work and because we have rationalised evil to almost non-existent, we may fail to recognise it even if evil has been staring us in the face. It may not be hideous, as portrayed in the movies but it is nevertheless effective in holding us hostage.

We are comfortable that Jesus taught with authority. But we do not share His concern about evil forces that try to subjugate humanity. It is a kind of naïveté to focus solely on Jesus who taught authoritatively without also appreciating His battles with the forces of Satan’s machinations. We ignore this central aspect of Christ’s ministry to our eternal peril. However, this is not to suggest that every nook and corner is infested or that every abnormal behaviour is sign of demonic possession. Not at all. When a case is presented as demonic, the first thing to do is to rule out that it is not psychological. The point to note is that Christ wrestled with Satanic forces and we must not lose sight of this reality.

Taking the scientific axiom that nature abhors a vacuum, we should be aware that scepticism creates a kind of emptiness. When we no longer acknowledge the reality of evil presence, then we have created a vacuum. When God created the world, His Holy Spirit roams about it. But when God is absent by our choice, that is, when we do not admit the reality of evil, then we have in a way created a vacuum for Satan to wreak havoc. The devil becomes powerful when we make God absent.

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2023

The Gospel is a repeat of last Sunday’s vocation of the first Apostles. If last week, Andrew and another disciple of John curiously sought Jesus out and was invited to follow Him, today the Lord actively summoned Peter, James, John and Andrew to be His disciples. The craft of priesthood or prophecy is connected to repentance as we read in the 1st Reading. Jonah, the most reluctant of all prophets was at the same time the most successful. He managed to convert an entire city, thereby averting a catastrophe of divine destruction.

This leads to the 2nd Reading where St Paul placed or contextualised the challenge of conversion in terms of the shortness of time. Vocation and redemption are closely linked and there is not much time to waste when it comes to the call of salvation. How are we to grasp this sense of urgency?

The notion of urgency can drive us helter-skelter because we are fearful that we may lose out--the kind we know as “kiasu”. But a famous productivity guru advised that we should not allow what is important to become urgent. It means we accomplish what needs to be done without letting a situation to deteriorate into a panic that makes us run like “kiasu” headless chickens.

Instead, repentance is a matter of importance because it deals with our eternal salvation. It should not be left to deteriorate into an issue of urgency. A good example would be to wait until an elderly or an invalid becomes so incapacitated only then to request for anointing. We often have ways of procrastinating which reduces an important matter into an urgent task. This takes us closer to our lived experience. Here are some points to consider.

Firstly, life is contingent. The recent experiences of deaths of loved one, especially during Covid and now the deaths of a few priests can help us appreciate how important it is to not allow conversion to “wait” simply because we think that there is still time. This false sense of security that time is on our side fosters a procrastinating attitude. Untimely deaths remind us that time is not ours and we should not presume. For example, do not wait until it is too late to show your appreciation to those whom you love or to forgive while you still have time. It is not easy but one should take heart and this brings us to the second point.

Life is also a series of slow conversion. Many of us who go for regular confessions will lament that we have not or have barely changed. What is most frustrating is to gain a step forward only to fall two steps backward. Sometimes after a retreat or a seminar or confession, we gain strength to make the necessary changes in our lives, only to relapse after a short period. This is frustrating not to mention demoralising. What we should recognise is that conversion is a life-long journey. Change often happens imperceptibly and over a long period of time. It is like getting fatter. We suddenly realise that our trousers no longer fits when they fitted a month ago. What is central to the journey of conversion is constancy and not time.

Constancy or consistency requires that we regularly hone our good habits. A good example is replacing our curses with blessings. If we are habitual in cursing on the road, we can begin by replacing that swearing phrase with a benediction. “What the….” becomes “The Lord is great” or something to the effect. Slowly and without realising it, the new habit will become who we are.

This weekend, we celebrate the Sunday of the Word of God. For the harvest to be bountiful, the Word of God is like seed that should fall on fertile ground. That fertile ground is not passive. In other words it is not a given. For soil to be fertile, it requires tilling and turning over in order to prepare it to receive the seed sown. Likewise, if we want to hear God’s Word and pay attention to Him, we must prepare our hearts to receive Him. This requires good habits. Sadly, we tend to focus on our failures feeding our hopelessness and despair. Teresa of Calcutta reminds us that God does not require us to succeed. He only requires that we try.

The Lord’s desire that we never give up trying explains why He continually calls each one of us. Our response to Him becomes our journey of salvation. Prayers with patience are needed because not every path is straightforward or is headed heavenward. In the end, the Lord will judge everyone not because we have failed but because we have not made any attempt to receive Him. The 1st Reading which recorded God’s intended punishment of Nineveh was stayed or put off, conjures an image of a God waiting to pounce on our mistakes and punish us for our missteps. He does not. Pope Francis expressed a hope that hell is empty because such a sentiment rhymes with an image of God who is merciful. But God is both merciful and just and if our trajectory in life consists of making the same mistake of turning away from Him instead of responding to His overture, punishment is ours by just dessert and not by God’s active will.

In summary, by calling Peter, Andrew, James and John, Christ enrolled them into the vocation of repentance and redemption. He continues to invite us to join the same enterprise. Interestingly Christ’s first words in His public ministry were “Repent, believe in the Gospel”. His exhortation shows us the close connexion between the acceptance of God’s Word and repentance. We cannot do any better than to listen to, believe in Him and be converted.