26th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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