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.