20th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2025

To be baptised with the Holy Spirit and fire is awesome. It can be so amazing that at times nobody wants to stand close to us. The 1st Reading shows Jeremiah filled with zeal for the Lord’s Kingdom. It is fantastic that he was enthusiastically taken up by God’s cause and yet he was punished for that. Many do not like to stand next to a prophet because he or she can make us feel inadequate. Much like being in the company of “holy” people, those of us who are unholy will instinctively feel unworthy.

It is fitting that the author of the Hebrews in the 2nd Reading exhorts Christians to recognise the race for which they have entered and to persevere in running towards the final goal. And Jesus reminds His disciples that there will be frictions and rejections when one embraces His vision. It is a journey of faith for it is fraught with difficulties and rejection.

Human that we are, we have been trying to tame the Gospel. Christ’s warned the disciples that His message would bring about conflict. Christ did not come as much to establish a “new” Kingdom as to restore God’s values in this world. But we are innovative as well as resourceful. As a result, we try to mould or shape Jesus according to pragmatic and relevant criteria. In short, we need to bring Jesus up to speed to keep up with our times or to make Him more like us.

Chesterton was right when he pointed out a painful reality that “the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried”. As uncomfortable as that sounds, he hit the nail on the head. We continue to dumb Jesus down so that He becomes more palatable since we are unable to rise to the occasion. A saccharine Jesus is pleasant enough to swallow.

It could be true that we fear the cost of Christianity to be too high to pay. The highest price is paid with our lives. It is a known fact that true discipleship will lead to rejection. Jesus repeatedly warned His disciples that this was to be the case. “If they have treated Me shabbily, do you not think that they will treat you badly?”.

This is the objective reality of what it means to follow Christ and to speak His truth. But subjectively, there could be ways for a prophet who dares to speak the truth. Raining down fire and brimstone could be one way of doing it. We tell it like it is. Perhaps what is true and what needs to be said does not necessarily make us right. St Teresa of Avila, the great reformer of the Carmelites, apparently prayed to God to spare us from gloomy saints. Amongst the holy nuns she lived with, there were some who were serious with holiness that they had forgotten to laugh.

There must be a way to be prophetic that embraces both the seriousness of the message we stand for and yet at the same time not impose our righteousness on others. There may be a way to be authoritative without sending out an authoritarian vibe.

Perhaps we begin by not taking ourselves too seriously. St Laurence whose feast is in August held fast to the faith and for that he was martyred. According to his executioner, he was burnt on top of a gridiron. At one point, he told the executioner, “Turn me over, I am done on this side”. Whether or not he said that he embodied a spirit that was at once steadfast and yet cheeky. He was audacious as if he were in control but more profoundly, his brazenness came from a confidence that his story would not end with his death.

There is a Gospel waiting to be proclaimed. The Christian message is true and just living out our Gospel values is prophetic already. We will stand out even without attempting to. What has happened is that given the different ideological bents there are, when we believe that we own the truth, we may have to shout louder because everyone is dug into his or her position or we might apply pressure, overt or covert, in making sure that others toe the line of what we hold to be true. A good example is Laudato si. We may be facing a climate crisis of cosmic proportion. What is not helpful is the pressure, openly enforced or stealthily applied, for us to subscribe to all the climate initiatives that are put out and also the guilt-tripping for failure to comply. People can either be excluded or shamed for not embracing the ecological gospel.

To be prophetic, the question is how we inspire rather than shame people to action. In other words, how to keep our faith without compromising and yet without being self-righteous?

It is endurance with a spirit of joyfulness. A person with terminal cancer is visited by a friend. There is really a gloom surrounding a person whose death is imminent and it is easy to be sucked into the cloud of depression. Drawing a person out of that gloom does not cure the cancer but it can help the person not to waste whatever time he or she has left oppressed by the thought of imminent death but to spend every minute available joyfully.

Life is tough, and yet our faith calls us to live it heroically. However, this heroism does not have to be sad. The joy of the Gospel is such that maybe it is not the truth that attracts others. It is an ability to be joyful that gives hope to others who are looking for a reason to believe. The RCIA or OCIA has begun. It is a programme which centres on the truth of Christ’s Gospel. In itself, should that not be attractive enough? Do we not hold truth to be a paramount desire? And yet, what is most attractive for seekers is to encounter the joy of those who are taken up by the truth of what they believe in. We are naturally uneasy with judgementalism which is a form of being right that overbearingly makes others feel bad. Thus our genius is to hold on to truth but at the same time inspire others simply because we love the truth and are happy to live it to the full.

Assumption 2025 Year C

It sounds cliché or vacuous even to state that we live in the greatest era of human history. After all, is not every present moment or each “now” or “latest” supposedly the best that time has to offer? Maybe ours is the “greatest” age because we are poised to take off with artificial intelligence, that is, if we have not already reached that point of singularity. Much like when Google arrived at the scene, we have since adapted or inserted ourselves into ChatGPT or the likes without second thoughts and without resistance. In fact, like Pandora’s Box, the Genie is out of the bottle and there may not be any turning back.

The journey towards this singularity where machines can determine the future of the human race, did not start with the internet. In fact, humanity began this journey when alchemy became chemistry, magic gave way to science and mystery yielded its secrets to technology. The process of demystification corresponded to the distancing of God. Or more accurately, we moved away from God because for man to be big or for him to be great, God must be small.

Freed from the shackles of magic and mystery, man can now determine his own destiny and chart his own future. In order for that to happen, there is a need to cut God down to size. But the Assumption reveals to us what it means that our prominence and God’s eminence are not mutually exclusive, that one does not have to come diminishment of the other.

The Assumption shows how great Mary is only because she acknowledges God’s greatness. In the Gospel, Mary sings the Magnificat not just to glorify God but to illustrate that a confession and recognition of God’s glory does not come at the expense of man but instead God’s grandeur guarantees man’s dignity.

According to Pope Benedict, Original Sin came about because Adam and Eve felt that God’s presence is an intrusion into their lives that would take away their agency or restrict their freedom. But the Parable of the Prodigal Son may provide a solution to clear our misguided notion. Both brothers were not aware of the freedom they aboriginally possessed precisely because they were with their father. The older son felt unappreciated because the father welcomed and celebrated the useless younger brother’s return. In response to his resentment, the father replied, “All I have is yours”. The older brother did not recognise his exalted place as a son of a loving father. Instead he perceived himself only an obedient slave rather than a beloved son. The younger brother who believed his freedom could be expanded when he left the father, only found himself enslaved and his humanity reduced to the dignity or status of pigs.

Thus our freedom is rooted in the Father. The notion that freedom is independence from God is misguided. Today we celebrate the Assumption simply because Mary trusted in God fully. She never had to exercise her freedom away from God. Instead, in God she found the greatest expression of humanity’s desire to be free.

Human freedom expands when we remain in close proximity to God. John Paul II, who titled his first encyclical, Redemptor hominis, stated that Jesus Christ shows us what it truly means to be human by revealing man to himself and as a man, He brings to light man’s true vocation which is to be with God. The emphasis on Jesus’ humanity should be mirrored in Mary’s own humanity. Why? Through her total obedience and her sheer embrace of God’s will, her humanity was magnified rather than diminished.

In this sense, Mary is true man because she embodies the fullness of what it means to be a human person. Her fullness of grace was not of her own. Rather, her title as Mother of God embodies and models what it is to live fully and to act in a human manner as intended by God for us all. To err is human, we hear this repeated a lot but to be human is actually to be like Christ, that is, if we follow the inspiration of John Paul II. Christ reveals who we are supposed to be to ourselves. Hence, the Assumption is a confirmation that the highest degree of human freedom is reachable and achievable only when we give ourselves entirely to God.

I love the quote by William Wordsworth, the English poet whose remark points to Mary as our tainted nature’s solitary boast. It feels like we are saying to God, “Hey God, we have someone which can face you unashamed”. We can hide behind her and she is our pride. But actually, she is loved by the saints not because she is our boast. Rather, she is honoured because she is God’s greatest gift to us. No wonder Satan is fearful of her.

This Assumption, apart from celebrating Mary’s triumph, we should actively pray and petition the Lord that we may regain our true freedom which is to be found when we embrace God’s will. Freedom is not merely possessing the ability to choose as if both good and evil were equal in their substance and consequence. Instead, freedom is the ability to always choose the beauty of goodness and to always reject the glamour of evil. Mary’s ability to choose Godwas the expression of her true humanity. We who have been damaged by sin can also choose like Mary did. But for that, we need to pray not to be put to the test. And through the powerful intercession of the Mother of God and the man Jesus, we ask her to pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2025

We continue with the broad theme of conversion. The stewardship that we are called to embrace can only be sustained by a vision of heaven where the Risen Lord is. From last Sunday we have now arrived at a point where faith is necessary to sustain the conversion to a vision of Christ in heaven. It is impossible to be converted without faith, let alone find our way to heaven.

In the 2nd Reading, the author of the Hebrews charted out the journey of faith that Abraham and Sarah made by trusting God even when they did not know what to expect. There is always an element of uncertainty when it comes to faith in the Lord. But leaving their familiar homeland is by no means revolutionary when we think about it. Our ancestors who departed both India and China for these shores, they too would have had faith of some kind. They left optimistic that they will be met by fortune rather than misfortune. Perhaps we can appreciate how many undocumented migrants today also left their countries hoping that they might strike it big than remain wasting away in their homeland.

Faith grants strength to seize that moment when we have to take the first step. As the Hebrews remark, “Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for or prove the existence of the realities that at present remain unseen. It was for faith that our ancestors were commended”.

How do we get to that level of trust? One condition that creates the possibility of walking in faith is to change to the way we look at blessings. In terms of what we have and possess, the perspective changes when our focus shifts from a fascination with the gifts of the lover to the Lover Himself. Devotion to Christ is necessary for a life of faith. What does that entail?

We have always operated on the basis of “mine” or “ours”, right? But how about “His”? Last Sunday, I quoted Pope St Gregory the Great who declared that giving to the poor is not an act of charity, a merciful largesse on our part but rather a debt of justice we pay. Since we all work under the basis of “mine” or “ours”, it is easy to see why we view giving to the poor as an act of generosity for which the poor should be grateful.

Unfortunately, wealth has a corroding effect on faith or on how one trusts in the Lord. The conversion we seek is not a once-off event but rather a life-long process and it is mostly slow and incremental. Firstly, we need to realise that the idea of conversion is more than not sinning. The traditional Act of Contrition provides a clear window to what true conversion should be. “… I detest my sins because they deserve your just punishment but most of all because they offend you my God whom I should love with all my heart …”.

If our reason for avoiding sin springs from a fear either of being condemned to hell or of the loss of heaven, that is classified as an imperfect contrition. No doubt, it will help us get to heaven. However, since God has invited us into His life, should our motivation not come from our love for Him and flow from a profound sorrow for offending Him whom we should love with all heart. Conversion is always seeking the face of the Lord and faith is trusting that God will always be where we are.

Thus, watchfulness is important because we can be trapped behind a materialistic worldview. Our possessions can blind us to the reality of God’s presence. A glaring form of materialism is an expectation flowing from a familiar model that informs the pattern of our relationship. How many of us feel that just because we have sacrifice so much for God, should He not be bound to reward us? How many of us who have given time to the Church, which is considered a kind of rendering to God His due, feel dumbstruck when a tragedy hits us?

The common question raised is “Why me, Lord?”. The point is whenever bad things happen, we immediately feel done to or victimised because the basis for our engagement with God is based on a reward—punishment model. It is even reflected in the familiar Christmas carol: “Santa Claus is coming to town”. “You better watch out because God is making a list of who is naughty or nice”.

I am fascinated by the love that St Bernadette had for the Lord. She was given a great gift to share with the world but she herself was never to profit from the gift of healing. She suffered greatly from the tuberculosis of the lungs and bones. Imagine how she would have felt? For many of us, there will be a deep sense of betrayal, a sense that our God has no loyalty at all. It is a bit like how St Teresa of Avila felt when she was climbing out of the ditch in her religious regalia muttering about Jesus inconveniencing her.

How do saints love God?

They love God or rather their love for God has never been a matter of reward. There is, without a doubt, a reward that follows from our love for God. We will gain eternal life when we keep the commandments of Christ. And yet, this still falls within the realm of the “material” gain for the good that we are. To be rewarded should be, in other words, a by-product for loving God and never the main focus.

We live in an age where self-care is considered central to one’s mental health. How often do we hear that “health is wealth”? Or we should find space for rest and etc. In fact, some might hold a view that the Prayer for Generosity is really dangerous as it is inimical to self-care. “Lord, teach me to serve and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds”. The freedom to embrace such a life that pays scant attention to one’s well-being can only come from someone has fallen deeply in love with Jesus and are enamoured by Him so much so he or she is willing to pour out or lay down his or her life for Him. When St Paul stated this, it was not because the sacrifice of Christ was incomplete, but rather because he has come to live for Christ alone. “I complete in my body the suffering lacking in the body of Christ”. Here was a disciple in love with His Lord.

It makes sense that Christ asks His disciples to be watchful because His coming would be unannounced. This alertness carries with it an attitude of detachment and whilst the reward may be great, one remains attentive independent of what the reward is like. The faith that we are called to must be buoyed or supported by a loving relationship very much like a lover waiting for the beloved to return. In other words, in a time of uncertainty and waiting, what remains for the disciple is a longing, a kind of aching for the Lord to come. Come what may and even though nothing is certain, what is enough for the disciple is that Christ will come and that is sufficient for the disciple to keep faith and to love whilst waiting for Him.

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2025

We ended on a note that invites us to conversion last Sunday. There seems to be a continuation of the same theme today. A common notion of conversion is to conceive of it in terms of turning away from sin. It is, in a narrow sense, a call to repentance.

What is it to be converted? The Greek word “metanoia” can be translated as repentance or a change of heart. The word repentance suggests a turning away from sin but the notion of a change of heart is a bit more encompassing and wholistic because it is more than refraining from sin. A change of heart involves a profound transformation of a person’s perspective.

In the 1st Reading, the author of the Ecclesiastes decries the vanity of vanities arising from the fleeting nature of existence. It is not a matter of vain-glorious delusion per se but rather a kind of realisation that temporality is weaved into the very fabric of life. Nothing is permanent. In fact, the Psalmist reminds us that, like grass, we are here today and gone tomorrow.

From the Lord Himself, we catch a glimpse of what it means to be converted. In the Gospel passage, a man asks for a fair share of his inheritance. Rather than acting as arbitrator in a property dispute, Jesus responded by detailing the parable of the rich farmer who had more than enough. This man harvested a bumper crop thus granting him more than he needed. Instead of sharing his excess, and here it is not even demanding that he shared what he needed to survive, the man proceeded to build a far bigger barn to store his excess.

Unbeknownst to him, a demand was made on his soul. It could be a valuable lesson in detachment but more than merely divestment, it is an invitation to weigh in once again on our heavily materialistic outlook in life. There has never been an era in human history where we are awash in material abundance. We eat the best food and the enjoy the greatest creaturely comfort imaginable. Yet we are also the most unfulfilled and miserable.

Perhaps our misery is an eye-opening indication that we are caught in a vortex of unsatisfying materialism. In the Gospel, should the rich farmer give away his excess crop, it would not be a matter of charity. We think of charity from the view of generosity and that it is an expression of our mercy. But according to Pope St Gregory the Great helping the poor is not an act of mercy on our part but rather a debt of justice that we pay. Does anybody think like this at all? We always feel that by giving, we are meritorious when in fact, by giving, we are giving to the poor what is their due.

Just stating that is already quite upsetting, no?

This is where the conversion comes in. The Church has never declared that possession in itself is bad. Wealth is a blessing. However, hoarding can be considered sinful when we accumulate more than we need. The parable basically highlights the folly of greed and avarice. When we are unable to relate to others because we are overly obsessed with accumulation, we know that we are sliding down the wrong slope. In the narrative of Dives and Lazarus, the rich man was not condemned for his wealth. He was judged for not knowing how to use his riches for the greater good.

The conversion we are called to is to recognise wealth more as a stewardship than an ownership. We own nothing. Absolutely nothing. Instead some of us are blessed with more to govern and to make use of for the good of others. Stewardship is a great responsibility which has been placed upon our shoulders. A notion of stewardship because nothing is ours in the first place can help us appreciate better the idea of Laudato si.

In the 2nd Reading, St Paul urged the Colossians to focus on what is above. In terms of conversion, repentance is to reject sin. What is interesting is the so-called focus on the above. Essentially, we are incomplete and to urge that we part with what we perceive to complete us is akin to recommending that we “commit” suicide. By nature, we are armed with an instinct towards self-preservation. Nobody wants to die to himself or herself unless there is a higher purpose or a reason that can convince us to let go of this present life.

Thus, the conversion proposed is to recover a sense of what is to come after this life. Otherwise, stewardship makes no sense to so many people. The more obscured is our vision of the life to come, the less we would want to part with our wealth. A philanthropist is a lover of mankind. A person who has a great love for humanity might be able to use his or her wealth for the greater good, recognising that all that he or she owns is nothing more than matter of taking care of it. Finally, if a person can see that completion takes place in the afterlife, then there is a greater chance that one can change his or her world-view.

The way for this change to take place is to provide an experience of seeing God for who He is. Greed is a sin because it misses the point that to have a goalother than God is to leave us unsatisfied. As a result, we grab everything thinking that it will make us happy. But death reveals how vacuous earthly desires can be because nobody can bring what he or she owns across the threshold of death. Instead everything is left behind. I read somewhere that when Alexander the Great died, he was placed in an open coffin with both his hands outside showing that he came into world with nothing and that he, the conqueror of countries and continents, is departing the world with nothing. The only treasure that we can accumulate is found in heaven.

Once we recognise that treasure, we might have a greater possibility of loving our wealth only for the good that it can do and never for itself. Our greatest treasure is Jesus Christ. He alone can satisfy our heart’s desire. Conversion is to move from the gifts of the Lover to the love of the Giver. We turn to the Giver for He is our only treasure.

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2025

The common thread running through the 1st Reading and the Gospel is prayer. Abraham pleaded with God on behalf of many innocent citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. The exchange between God and Abraham revealed the generosity of God. Abraham kept lowering the criterion for redemption and God acceded until a point where He could go no lower.

Whatever was the sin of Sodom or Gomorrah, the point was God’s readiness to save. While the Lord is ever—ready, the question remains. What can God really accomplish or what can God not do? It is a weird question when one considers God’s sovereignty. He can do whatever He wants but in the interaction between Abraham and God, we need to consider that there may be limits to God’s “freedom”.

There is such a thing as the trajectory of sin. What the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was is not the point here. At present, some might dispute “sodomy” to be a sin but suffice to say that an unrepentant attitude puts a limit to God’s generosity.

God is not like Shylock who demands a pound of flesh. As the Responsorial Psalm goes, “On the day I called, You answered me”. In the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, even God Himself was searching for compromises against what was supposed to be the consequence of a trajectory.

A survey of our gastronomic habits might help us to understand the consequence of a trajectory. We are in the midst of a health epidemic. Firstly, our eating habits border on hedonism. We prioritise pleasure to the extent that the goal of eating is no longer nourishment but consumption. In fact, we eat more than we need. Our food is laden with additives and most of all with sugar. If a person were to eat, eat and eat, the result would be obesity with its attendant diabetes and a good measure of hypertension. Likewise, no matter what God could do and what Abraham hoped to achieved, both Sodom and Gomorrah were doomed from the start.

Success or failure, the experience of Abraham teaches us how important praying is. Our praying should be persistent. We should persevere because in the Gospel passage, Jesus in response to the Disciples requesting Him to teach them how to pray, cited the example of a persistent friend. Persistence paid off, for the man in house who had refused to be inconvenienced, finally responded to the friend’s persistent pleading.

In other words, God wants to answer our prayers as long as we are not shy in asking. But not all prayers can be answered nor all petitions be granted. We should temper our expectations which begs the question of Who this God is and what we should expect of Him. In short, what sort of relationship do we have with God?

For a few scientifically minded, God is like a watch-maker. This notion is closely associated with Deism. It emphasises a deity who created the universe and does not intervene in its affairs. Much like the creator of a watch who sets the time device into motion leaving it to run on its own. We are comfortable with this kind of a distant God because we can rely on reason and natural laws to explain the universe instead of resorting to religious texts or revelation.

The opposite of a watch-maker is a deity involved in the world. Closely linked to an involved God is a moralistic therapeutic deity who desires that humanity be good, happy and to feel good about themselves. In other words, God’s role is to make people happy and since happiness is paramount, then anything that makes demands on us should to be downplayed. The organising principle in life is convenience which translates into non-demanding, non-threatening commandments.

The idea of a therapeutic deity coincides with our sense of entitlement. We expect a god who bends to our will not realising that God may not be able to and that is not because He does not want to.

Why?

Pope Francis was right in his inspiration in highlighting the ecological crisis. We cannot continue in the manner we devour the earth’s resources. Our consumption is out of control and it is not a matter of environment destruction or climate change that is challenging. Rather, we have been careless but we expect the Lord to fix or solve the consequences of our ecological irresponsibility.

An area of great concern for us is health. Many are sick and it feels that God does not seem to hear our prayers for their healing. But think about the ease with which we “tapau” (take-away) our food without second thoughts. Have we ever consider the amount of plastic that leaches into our food due to the high heat of our soup and sauces? Can the Lord still hear our prayers even if we have no regard in the manner of our consumption?

God wants to answer our prayers but if we are consuming ourselves to death, there is nothing He can do even when we pray persistently.

The bulk of our prayer is petitionary in nature. We are perpetually petitioning God to intervene in a trajectory which we do not take responsibility for. The plastic we have ingested. The medication we have consumed. Ironically the prophylactic or preventative medicines we use to prolong our lives may also be hastening our death. It is a known fact that the long-term use of pharmaceuticals to solve a medical problem causes side effects which result in organ damage.

People ask, “Where is God in my prayers?”. Are we expecting God to do magic? On the one hand, Jesus asks us to pray and to petition the Father. We should. And yet within that petition, it is not supposed to be a gimme, gimme, gimme because we are entitled to. Rather, our prayers must also include the element of doing God’s will.

We may be living in an age of entitlement but salvation is not automatic. It cannot be imposed, because we must desire it. Hence, are we ready to pay the price? In the case of our petitionary prayers, the God who created us without our consent cannot save us without our consent. If we take the hint from the second reading, it speaks of entering into Christ death. Thus, salvation is ours but we must desire it. And therefore we must work for it. But not in a way as if we merit salvation through our efforts but rather, we dispose ourselves to God’s salvation.

The whole idea of salvation is therefore a call to the conversion of heart. If the heart is not involved, no matter what, the Lord cannot do much. Anyway, if you did not know it, petitionary prayer is also prayer for conversion. It is not just asking for God’s favour but also asking that we change to fit into God’s will and also carries with it an acute awareness that there is a price to pay for our sins.

It sounds rather negative to end with “paying the price of sin”. It is not but it illustrates the truth of our salvation. Recall the Calvary conversation between Christ and the repentant thief. It highlights the difference between forgiveness and paying the consequence of one’s sins. Christ promised the repentant thief that he would be in heaven. But He did not come down from His cross to remove the repentant thief from his suffering. Forgiveness was expressed through the promise of heaven. Whereas the repentant thief who was on the way to heaven still needed to do his so-called “penance”, that is, to be responsible for his actions and their consequences.

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2025

Memes of neologism can convey snippets of wisdom and I have a couple and they capture the zeitgeist in which we live in. One is basically “Cellfish” spelt with a “c” or “cell” rather than “s” or “sel” denoting that a person uses a mobile device in a rather rude and selfish manner, that is, listening loudly or playing a movie without care for others around them. It has become an accepted norm now in cafes, buses, aeroplanes etc. The other one is “textpectation” defined as the anticipation for a reply after one has texted. We demand our answers and solutions not today but yesterday.

Ironically we have machines after machines and “mod-cons” to simplify our tasks and also to buy us time and yet, we are frenetic or frantic, always having no time.

Today the Gospel invites us to slow down and to take time out from our busy schedules. Last Sunday’s Good Samaritan may also be seen from the view of slowing down. The other two were in a hurry to go somewhere whereas the Samaritan practically slowed down, took the time to nurse the injured. This week, we have Martha and Mary who had invited Jesus. Rightly so Martha was busy preparing to host whereas Mary was seated as she contemplated Jesus by listening to Him speak. The Samaritan was an outsider. Likewise, was Mary. She was truly unusual, for women were outsiders too, as they were segregated or separated from the main congregation. Mary broke with social convention by sitting at the feet of the Lord and Saviour.

It is life to sit and contemplate the Lord.

The earlier mentioned memes of neologisms reveal us, who we are, to ourselves. We are entertaining ourselves to oblivion and we are impatient and are unable to wait. Instead we feel entitled to having the answers at our fingertips. Anytime and anywhere they must be available to us. Furthermore, there is too much electronic noise in our lives. We have become so used to the humming and hawing that we seem to have accepted that peace or quiet is unavailable to us.

But digital detox might be what we all need. There is no way to detox except to take time off. We may be able to cram a lot but no matter how much we can fit into a frame of time, what remains is that certain things will need time to unfold. Just like baking a cake or ageing wine. Maybe one can be efficient in the use of time but time too has to behave according to its created nature. Time passes at the mercy and will of God.

In order to contemplate the Lord, there is no possibility we can rush the experience. In other words, there is no quicker way to heaven. What may be the common experience thus far is the fear of losing out. It is possibly a Malaysian or Asian trait that whenever a tour is organised, it is meant to achieve as much as possible for fear of losing out. Therefore, people want to fill up whatever activities as captured by this slogan—pack more life into your years, rather having more years in your life. A long life is preferable but for every year one lives, one must ensure that it is lived efficiently—quite the kind of philosophy we have these days.

It misses the point of what life is supposed to be. Right now, the trend is to jump onto the latest flow, Artificial Intelligence. Without reflecting on the ethical implications of unmitigated use of Artificial Intelligence, we are ushered into embracing it so that we will not be left behind.

Trend hopping has a way of distracting us from the flow of a contemplative life. The recovery of this dimension is central to our overall well-being. Nothing is more destructive to the human psyche than the uncontrolled stress of activism.

What has happened is that people are driven to search for that kind of connection with God which they seem to believe is missing in Catholicism or Christianity. They have sought alternatives in Buddhism or any one of those spiritual or new age movement which they think can overcome the lack in Christianity. Therefore Jesus was right. A prophet is not accepted in his own country. There are Catholics who fail to recognise the sublime gift of their faith which they had received in their childhood.

It is a shame and Mary’s experience sitting at Christ’s feet reveals that such a spiritual relationship cannot be manufactured. It can only be cultivated. Christ is the Prince of peace and sitting at His feet is the start of contemplation and spirituality. Spontaneity is truly over-rated. It may be creative, fun and novel but it can lead to indiscipline. No matter how exhilarating spontaneity is, life is basically rhythm.

Regularity establishes a sense of connexion far better than leaving things to chance. To sit with the Lord basically requires a regular schedule and in order to be with and desire Him, more than anything else, there is an urgent need to recover the notion of heaven. Without heaven and given that our vision is short-sighted we will be driven to look for quick-fixes and instant gratification. Heaven is beatific and there will be times that being with Him may just take us beyond this world. If the time is right, we arrive there through the portal of death. Whereas without a notion of heaven, the desire to be with Him will never be attractive enough. Finally, a point to remember for those of us who are constantly rushing is that being in a hurry to live is at the same time being in a hurry to die. In that case, what is death for? Who are we living for and who are we dying for, if not for the Lord.

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2025

During this period of Ordinary Time, we explore a theme that forms a part of Christian living. It is neighbourliness. In the case of the other two Synoptic Gospels, Jesus is tested on His priorities and so they posed Him the question on which the greatest commandment is. In Mark and Matthew, Jesus pointed to the Shema of Dt 6:5 on how one should love God and also to Lv 19:18 on how one should love the neighbour. Luke’s Gospel carries an interesting twist. A lawyer shows interest in eternal life and what he should do to merit or inherit it. Instead of answering directly, Jesus first draws both the biblical quotations from Deuteronomy and Leviticus out of the lawyer. In response to the man’s desire to justify himself, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate the full meaning of who or what a neighbour is.

The biblical background of the Samaritan shows that despite him being despised, he is even more law-abiding than the listeners, who are mostly Jews—symbolised by the Levite and the priest passing by and avoiding the injured man. In using a class of people whose status is questionable, Jesus intends to show that God’s love is not provincial, for it is blind or impervious to colour and creed, culture and class. To do good is godly or divine and the only criterion for action is that someone needs help.

When one thinks of assistance or being helpful, there are no good Samaritans in Japan. If there is a person of Japanese origin in the congregation, this might sound shocking to hear that there are no good Samaritans in Japan. Or even in Korea too. Before you pick up a stone, the statement is not meant to denigrate as it is to invite one to probe a little deeper. The word Samaritan is synonymous with a person who reaches out to others through acts of selfless behaviour. When a person does not care about himself or herself but sets out to do good, we are fascinated or inspired. But should we be amazed by a kindness that reaches out? Perhaps this is better appreciated when we look at the familiar experience of clutter-blindness, meaning that when everyone is good, then a person’s kindness or generosity will not stand out. We will basically take it for granted, just like clutter-blindness—that such “Samaritan” behaviour is normal and routinely to be expected. Apparently, in Japan, regularly, lost items are returned to their owners.

Call it is social values or religious up-bringing, the result is a culture where there is a high degree of human solidarity. Individuals behave in a manner which enriches society as a whole. Just as when the tide rises, all boats are raised or as the climate-change proponent would say, the islands disappear. The point is, when everyone is kind, then nobody’s kindness will in any way be exceptional.

Instead what we have is the proliferation of the service industry. The existence of such an industry is itself a tell-tale sign of why kindness should not be exceptional but ordinary. The very fact that we need to pay for someone to treat us better is really saying something about the state of our solidarity.

In the past, the Catholic Church ran one of the largest, if not the most extensive network of hospitals and schools. Prior to the advent of government-sponsored medical and educational services, health-care and scholarship were expressions of two priorities of the Church. Firstly, it was the out-reach of the Good Samaritan. Both educating the young and caring for the sick were expressions of this parable. No one was turned away from schools or hospitals. Especially so when you consider all the orders, congregations and institutes founded to provide health care and education for the poor. Secondly, our Samaritan outreach was not based on an ideology. To reach out to others is to reach out to Christ Himself. “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me”.

The question posed by the lawyer can now be turned on its head. Using the parable of the Last Judgement in Matthew 25, where the sheep and the goats are separated, the criterion for differentiating is based on what one has done or found to be deficient in so doing. The result is rather stark. One is either redeemed or condemned. Such a system where one is rewarded or punished can generate a sense of guilt. Sadly, one is driven to act only because one is fearful. Perhaps we can detect the same fear with respect to the Church’s obligations. We are left with the guilt of “go to Mass or else”.

Excellence or nobility demands that we go beyond the criterion of the Last Judgement, that is, to transcend reward or punishment. The question of who my neighbour is may invite me to look out or search for them. They are out there and I am supposed to find them. But if the question were rephrased as to whom I am a neighbour or to whom have I been a neighbour, the change in perspective is profound.

It becomes an introspective exercise inviting me to look more at my thoughts and behaviour. This is challenging because it now becomes a matter for the examination of my conscience. I become more conscious of the shadows lurking in my thoughts and reactions. I may be kind to someone and then the motive could be that I am just doing my duty and no more. Thus being kind to someone also invites me to purify my motivation.

What draws me to be a neighbour? The answer and motivation is Jesus Christ. Am I able to see Jesus in everyone. Or is my vision filtered? Do I see Him whom I should love and adore? Or am I driven by narrow parameters like race and religion or by selfish and material considerations. According to St Paul, Jesus is the image of the unseen God. By the same token of Matthew’s 25chapter, every man, woman and child is an image of the invisible Jesus.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan should make us look for Jesus. Slogans that inspire actions can only go so far. There is a quote floating around attributed to Mother Teresa of Calcutta where, it seemed, she was asked about what to propose to young people and her reply was “Give them Jesus, only Jesus, always Jesus”.

Her entire life was premised on Who Jesus was to her and for her. Every action of hers was never to fulfil a slogan nor to meet some indices of achievement or accomplishment. Instead, she saw Jesus in every person she came across. She was a neighbour to everyone because she loved the Jesus in everyone she met and served. Maybe we can follow her example.

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2025

This Sunday’s theme calls for a story that is familiar to many of us. It is the story of four people who are simply named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. It flows into the narrative of today’s focus—the task of evangelisation.

You may have heard this before but it bears repeating that there was an important task to be carried out. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it. But Nobody did it. Consequently, Somebody got angry about that since it was Everybody’s job. But then Everybody thought Anybody could do it. Nobody realised that Everybody would not do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

Last Sunday, we celebrated Ss Peter and Paul. The Pope may have an important duty but it is not his alone. In the past we had an army of priests and religious. Apart from their pastoral duties, they also took care of our religious formation. Some of us are old enough to remember the strict discipline of the Brothers or Sisters in our schools. We were content to accept their ministration. Today, we still have that kind of complacency—meaning that in terms of faith formation, we tend to wash our hands off our responsibility.

A good example of taking up responsibility can be found in a neighbouring parish. Our Sunday School population has somewhat exploded due to “migration”, not immigration from Singapore but migration from a neighbouring parish. Why? The Sunday School programme there is pushing parents to take a more active role in imparting the faith in their children. In other words, faith is caught at home more than it is taught at catechism.

Our culture is increasingly louder, figuratively speaking. We are together alone meaning that we may be together but in actually we are more alone than ever before. The Pandemic’s social distancing may just be the outward expression of what we have been doing ever since the advent of social media. Ironical that it is called “social” media because it is supposed to connect us socially through electronic media when in fact it has increasingly locked us behind the walls of idealised expectations. We do not interact with each other in a real world but communicate in such a way that leads us to fantasise on more ideal connections. Idealised fantasies make for loneliness because reality often fails to meet one’s expectations.

The result is “louder”. Our speech is no longer intended to connect us more closely but it has to be louder because “I need to shout in order to convince you”. The evangelical enterprise is much harder to carry out because we are trapped behind the walls of our own thoughts.

With such a challenge, the story of the Fourbodies become real for us. The description of the Church as synodal may just be a way of escaping this prison of our own making. We are prodded to take responsibility for the Church by being accountable for our beliefs. What is negative is that we might just be swayed by present currents.

What sort of winds blows?

Firstly, it concerns a short-sightedness in our spiritual vision. Because we cannot fathom heaven’s rewards that come after a life of surmounting challenges, we try to turn the vision around to make the world more like heaven or rather to lower heaven’s goal to fit our vision. In that way, we focus more on the rewards that the world can give. We struggle to put aside or delay our gratification believing that reward has to be in this world.

Thus we shy from struggles and suffering. Why suffer when pleasure is readily available.

Secondly, we have to adjust our reward system. Admittedly, the 72 came back rejoicing that even demons submit themselves. They have power over the forces of evil. So, they rejoiced because they could see the result of their work. How often have we been disappointed by the lack of fruits? We labour in the Lord’s vineyard and sometimes we might not see the fruits of our blood, sweat and tears.

The lot of the labourers is to trust in God for He is the Lord of the harvest.

Secular culture proposes a system of reward which is this worldly. It only knows this world and thus it is a material form of reward. But life eternal is another reward which we should work for. Christ Himself did say, “Work for treasures that do not fade”.

However, to propose a system of reward that is other worldly is still to be trapped in a way which is basically “materialistic” even though it is located in a spiritual realm. Reward must come from a kind of satisfaction provided by God Himself and there is no measure to it. In a recent retreat we were all posed this question. “Am I driven or am I drawn?” Even spiritual reward can carry with it a certain drive. One is driven to work and driven to succeed etc. But drawn is another matter altogether. Can I be drawn by God for Himself. I am drawn to follow Him to the ends of the earth for no matter where He is, there is home.

In a way, this “home” is alluded in the experience of the 72 as they enter houses. Give peace, eat and drink whatever is set before them. There is a certain placidness in this posture which shows that one is at “home” for where Christ is preached, there is home. Bringing the Gospel to the world is definitely challenging and it can be lonely but it makes sense of what St Paul says in the 2nd Reading. The marks of Christ’s Cross on one’s body is not a curse but it is the greatest witness to the truth of the Gospel, the good news that a world is longing for.

Solemnity of Ss Peter and Paul 2025

We are quick to react and it is possibly fuelled by our crave for dopamine—the neuro-transmitter chemical in our brains that creates a temporarily high which that makes us feel good. Why do we react? We are accustomed to having quick fixes or immediate solution and since we are surrounded by uncertainty, it is not surprisingly that we react instantly to news that upsets or runs counter to our expectation. Left, right and centre, we are bombarded by the “latest” news and usually of the sensational type. They call it “click-bait”.

Imagine in April the betting world was speculating on who the next Pope would be. In fact, experts are everywhere interpreting every gesture or utterance of his. When Pope Benedict gave the Regensburg’s address, it sparked an immediate outrage because he allegedly insulted the Muslims. Pope Francis’ “Who am I to judge?” was taken to be his accommodating nod to behaviour contrary to Catholic teaching. Whether conscious or not, our news cycle is a constant roller coaster ride of dopamine-fuelled knee-jerk reactions.

Today we celebrate two Apostles, both pivotal in the Great Commission given by Christ before the Ascension. They are so central that they even supersede the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time. This is what the Preface says of them.

“For by your providence the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul bring us joy: Peter, foremost in confessing the faith, Paul, its outstanding preacher. Peter, who established the early Church from the remnant of Israel, Paul, master and teacher of the Gentiles that you call. And so, each in a different way gathered together the one family of Christ; and revered together throughout the world, they share one Martyr’s crown”.

They are both celebrated together because one Great Commission is executed in a two-pronged approach to evangelisation. While both Apostles do the same work, one ranks higher in terms of authority.

The Gospel Reading today revealed the primacy of Peter because upon him, the Rock, Christ wants to build His Church. It is a mighty responsibility for one man to shoulder. In the passage, Christ asked the central question which the Church must answer from Peter until the end of time. For as long as there is time, he and those who hold his office, on behalf of the Church, must supply this answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”.

We can appreciate Peter’s primacy, if we survey the three elements of creed, cult and code that inform any religion. Firstly, in terms of creed, we profess a faith that has not been invented by us. Instead, we received it from the Twelve who through Apostolic succession handed it down to us. Secondly, our cults unite us in the worship of God. Admittedly the word “cult” is negative but in our case, the worship that we give to God is expressed through the different rites of the universal Church. Last count, we have 21 rites throughout the Catholic-verse. Thirdly, the code denotes the moral principles that govern our ethical behaviour. There is a central authority under whom we are governed and it is here that the Primacy of Peter resides.

Peter is central to the unity of the Church. Catholics and Orthodox are separated because the Orthodox Churches lack the Petrine principle. They do not accept the primacy of Peter and his successors. Yet, the Orthodox are rightfully Churches because they profess the same faith or creed and are united in their worship or cult.

Since they maintain a worship legitimised by Apostolic Succession, we are allowed to received Holy Communion in these Churches. The only thing is that they may not like it, since for them, Catholics in the “West” are heretical.

The centrality of Peter and the authority of the Pope is a good for the Church. It might help to be less reactive and maybe to be more engaging in terms of praying for the Church, most particularly for the Bishop of Rome who holds the primacy of charity or love for the whole Church founded by Jesus Christ.

The Pope’s authority over the universal Church is not a lordship. Authority is a service, just like Christ who washed the feet of His disciples on Holy Thursday. The Pope’s authority is to maintain both creed and cult so that the faith received, while expressed differently, is still in continuity with the faith of the Apostles.

The previous Pope, Francis tried to lead the Church along synodal path to becoming a Church of service rather than a hierarchy that lords over the laity. The pace of change is slow but St Pope Paul VI who on the 80th anniversary of the teaching of Rerum Novarum reminded the Church that people listen to the teachers not because they teach but because they live their teaching authentically. The Church has a long way to go in becoming more credible in her preaching.

More than ever, in a fractured world, the office of the Pope is to hold the Church together because he is the guardian of unity in faith and morals for the Church. Peter the Pontiff is the bridge, sturdy and strong, whose ministry is to help the sons and daughters of the Church along the path to eternity. In that sense, the Pope is powerful.

What does he need? If we take the example of the US President, we may discern what is to be done. The POTUS too is powerful for he holds the key to an arsenal powerful enough to reduce the face of the earth into a perpetual nuclear winter. The owner of Tesla is also a key player in the development of the future of Artificial Intelligence. For a while both are willing to share the spotlight but at the pinnacle of power, there is little room for inflated egos. If that sends a shudder, perhaps we should find a way to deal with power. Of course, we may have the intellect or even the wisdom to see reality for what it is and even call it out. But what did Jesus do?

According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus, at the Last Supper, prayed for Peter that he would not fail but if he did, when he repents, he should strengthen the faith of the brothers and sisters. It is easy to pontificate and pass judgement but not easy to pray. Each Mass, we mention Pope Leo’s name. Rather than react because we know everything, it is better to pray for the Pope because he is a powerful man. For the Pope, he needs our prayers for wisdom to build bridges and the steer the barque of Peter along the sure, strong and steady path to heaven. For us, the sheep led by the shepherd of Christ, it is better to pray than to pontificate.

Corpus Christi Year C 2025

Holy Thursday should be the proper solemnity for the Body and Blood of Christ. But since we have the Rite of Washing of Feet for that evening, the spotlight should naturally shine on the Christ who came to serve. Thus, it is left to Corpus Christi to tease out the profound impact of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary because His passion, death and resurrection become present to us each time we celebrate the Eucharist. In short, we get a first-hand view of what Christ did on Calvary, albeit, in an unbloody manner.

Every Eucharist is truly a privileged window to the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. If Easter showed us that Christ came to save us, then Corpus Christi reminds us that His desire to redeem and save is an ongoing operation. On this day, it might be a good time to ask what we truly believe in because small things mean a lot. For example, on Trinity Sunday, you were made aware that the replacement of just one word in the formula of baptism can have catastrophic consequences. The change from “I baptise” to “We baptise” invalidates a baptism and consequently nullifies the effects of subsequent Sacraments. Most devastating is felt when one of those invalidly baptised men becomes a priest.

In my previous posting as parish priest, when a host drops onto the floor, either the communicant or the minister nonchalantly picks up the host, either to consume or to “dispose” if it appeared to be soiled. “Nonchalantly” as if it were nothing. Over here in Sacred Heart Cathedral, the minister steps aside, covers the spot with a purificator and usually someone will go to the area where the host dropped, with water and purificator to purify and dry the place. Honestly speaking, when I first encountered this, it felt rather stupid or unnecessary.

Let me clarify where the feeling of non-necessity is coming from. We are lined up to receive Holy Communion and it is no big deal for a host to drop on the floor or ground. Simply pick it up and get on with life because life is short, life is busy. Do not make a big deal out of it.

But science makes us look stupid while it also helps us. How so? A surgeon in preparation for surgery goes through a stringent sterile procedure of hand-washing, vesting, putting on the gloves and masking. In this exercise, he or she is meticulously diligent that there should be no possibility of contamination traced to the process. What is the big deal? Imagine the surgeon half way through a surgery removes her mask, rubs her nose and blows it and then continues to operate. What is a few bacteria or viruses?

But when we watch the NCIS series, observe how painstakingly careful the laboratory technicians are when it comes to the collection of evidence. Even a micro-fragment can be used to prove a case. Like for example, paint transfer, no matter how light the contact between two vehicles—invisible to the eyes but not to the microscope, can yield evidence to convict.

Now it makes a bit more sense that purification takes place after a Communion mishap. It highlights the reality of not “what” we receive but “Whom”. I have read somewhere that a Protestant pastor expressing to his Catholic counterpart that if he were to believe what we Catholics believe in, he would not be kneeling but would fall flat on his face.

Why? Because small things matter.

At the end of the Eucharist, there is a purification that takes place at the credence table. Ordinarily, the priest should conscientiously purify the sacred vessels ensuring that all particles of Holy Communion are swept into the chalice which is rinsed with water and then consumed by the priest. Such minutiae indicate how important the Eucharist is to us but more than that, it expresses our deference and reverence toward Whom we consider to be our Lord and Saviour.

As I face you, what is behind me is the Sacristy. The name itself indicates a place where sacred vessels and holy vestments are stored. Within the Sacristy there is a sink called the Sacrarium. It leads nowhere because whatever water that flows into the Sacrarium, enters the ground beneath where no one steps on.

In the past, this was how they purified a chalice. It was rinsed first with unconsecrated wine which was poured into the Sacrarium. Then, it was rinsed a second time with water and again drained into the Sacrarium. The care that we put into the purification of our sacred vessels is indication of how highly we honour the Lord—that the bread and wine are truly the Body and Blood of Christ

Such a devotion is not alien to us. The Chinese have a term to describe a precious child. “寶貝” [“băo bèi” in Mandarin or “bou2 bui3” in Cantonese]. Whenever a precious child is hurt, the mother or the father will feel the same hurt and in terms of caring for the “bou2 bui3”, the parents will go out of the way to ensure that nothing should injure the child. Was that not the very temptation which Satan proposed to Jesus on top of the parapet? “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down; for scripture says: He has given his angels orders about you, and they will carry you in their arms in case you trip over a stone”.

If we believe the Eucharist to be the Body and Blood of Jesus, should our behaviour not mirror a parent’s protection of a “bou2 bui3”? In a way we ought to modify our behaviour according to our conviction. We should endeavour to move in that direction as you may be aware that at each weekend Mass, the first item for announcement is to invite you to the Thursday evening or 1st Friday 24-hour Adoration. Our devotional life is a concrete expression of what we believe of the Eucharist as the source and summit of the Christian life.

Perhaps you might understand why in the Cathedral, we have not made any announcements about a person’s choice of clothing. Not that that is not important. I sometimes remark crudely that I am not bothered by indecent dressing. There is a reason. The Parable of the Merchant and the Pearl highlights how a person would sell everything to acquire the pearl of great price. Jesus is the only treasure worth our lives and our sacrifices. When we have discovered Him to be the soul of our lives, our behaviour, which includes dressing, will slowly conform to what we profess in. A time-tested path to encountering or discovering Jesus is through beauty in our architecture and our liturgy. The embrace of beauty sets the soul on the road towards excellence in behaviour and nobility in spirit. Such a change can only be achieved through captivation and not through coercion, through conviction and not through compulsion. If a person is forced to dress up for Jesus, what happens when there is no force?

The Eucharist can only be the source and summit of Christian living because Jesus Himself is the source of sustenance for the ascent to the summit of eternity. Through the most sublime gift of His Body and Blood, He is not merely the food which nourishes our spiritual life. Instead, He is the only food Viaticum, that is, the singular sustenance for the journey to our eternal homeland. In conclusion, while the Solemnity of Corpus Christi highlights the centrality of the Eucharist as the presence of Jesus, truly, really and substantially, the reality is that He is the only food that can transform us to resemble Him. We are the only ones who can receive Him and benefit from receiving Him. As St Maximilian Kobe said, “If angels could be jealous of men, they would be so for one reason: Holy Communion”.

Trinity Sunday Year C 2025

There were days that I had to take bus when I was studying theology in Dublin. I avoided the upper deck of the bus because the Irish, in the slums where I lived, were like some Malaysians. “No smoking” was just a meaningless sign. There were times I was forced upstairs and the scenery on the way to or from college looked different.

Like today’s Trinity Sunday. A different perspective can deepen our understanding of who God is. The lower deck of the bus represents our everyday life. When we face a reality, day in and day out, the landscape can fade into the background. Those who are clutter-blind know the experience.

Our liturgy is basically Trinitarian. We take it for granted. The common formula at the end of the Collect sounds like this: Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen. Since all our prayers are Trinitarian, do we need Trinity Sunday at all.

Trinity Sunday is like the upper deck of the double-decker bus—a reminder to step away from the everyday grind that sometimes reduces a mystery to nothing. Firstly, the Trinity is not our invention. It is a revelation from God on which our faith is based. We believe in one God even though He revealed Himself as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. While we need to be faithful to this revelation, the question remains if the formula is dated or out of touch with progress.

For example, when in the 50s or 60s under the aegis of liberation, equality, feminism, it was felt that language was inherently oppressive since its structure was patriarchal. There was a movement to neutralise language through a process of de-masculinisation or maybe emasculation. In the past, the word “everybody” carried with it a masculine pronoun, “he”. “Every Malaysian knows at least two languages and that is because ‘he’ lives in a multi-lingual country”. Today we phrase it as “Every Malaysian knows at least two languages and that is because ‘they’ live in a multi-lingual country”.

This “neutered” English crept into our liturgy. It was felt that our prayers should also be “gender neutral”. The word “neutered” is terrible because it seems to emasculate or “defang” language. Anyway, the trend was to update our liturgy to suit this linguistic development. The challenge is that we have a given formula. It is not a construct that the Church invented. Instead it was handed down to us by the Apostles.

The received formula is “I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. It became inclusive when “We baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” OR better still, “I baptise you in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier.

Three points to note about these ancient and modern formulae. Firstly there is an agreement in the singular “name”. We are baptised in the NAME. There has never been any baptism done in the NAMES which directs our attention to the given. God’s revelation is a given and on that mount before His Ascension, Christ gave us the formula to baptise in ONE NAME and not three names.

Secondly, it is Christ who baptises. The use of the singular pronoun “I” signifies that the person or the minister who baptises, acts in persona Christi. It is the person and not the “assembly or congregation” that Christ is acting through.

Thirdly, the usage of the formula “creator, redeemer and sanctifier” arises from a confusion between personality and the job description. Whenever God works, God works as one. However, we ascribe creation to God the Father but the Son and Spirit are also working because it is through the Son that creation came to be and it is in the Spirit that life flourishes on earth. There is a relationship between the Father, Son and Spirit which is marked by unity. However, when we speak of Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, what is missed out are the relationships between these three descriptions. What sort of relationship exists between the Creator and the Redeemer? Between Father and Son, there exists a relationship because words like Mother and Child, Father and Daughter are relational terms. The relational nature of these words are clarified when we ask this question, “Who comes first? The mother or the son”? Our logical framework is based on age in the sense that between an adult and a child, the adult has more years and therefore he or she should take precedence but in reality, no one can be a mother without a child. The minute a woman is pregnant, she is already a mother.

Coming back to the formula, creator, redeemer and sanctifier, the updated formula even though it is progressive, it cannot do justice to the relationship inherent in the revelation of God. In fact, a priest in the recent past, that is, in 2017, had his (not theirs, ha, ha) ordination invalidated and consequently, all his sacramental acts too. The Deacon who baptised Matthew Hood used this formula “We baptise you”. The clever Deacon was trying to be more inclusive. Apart from the so-called Fr Matthew Hood’s ordination being invalid, his absolution in Confessions were also not valid and subsequently all the marriages he conducted too. In the Diocese of Toowumba, Queensland, Australia, the same happened.

Just recently, we also changed a formula in the English language to better reflect our understanding of the Trinity. It is the formula used to conclude the Collect. The change took place on 17th Feb 2021. It was Ash Wednesday. “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, ONE GOD, forever and ever” became “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, GOD, forever and ever”. Why?

The previous formulation undermines the uniqueness of the Trinity because the translation can suggest that there are three gods. Firstly, the prayer is directed to God the Father and therefore the reference to “One God” is not a reference to the Trinity. Perhaps a rephrasing might help. “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, for He (Jesus Christ) is God for ever and ever”. The conclusion is affirming the divinity of Christ and not referencing the uniqueness of the Trinity.

Jesus Christ is God. He is not One God for if He were One God, then we have three Gods. Our language about God has to be faithful because God chose to reveal Himself to us as Father Son and Spirit. How do we want to deal with this? In the past they dealt with it from the perspective of one and three. They had to grapple how three are not three but one. We are no different. We may not wrestle with three in one but still we may be worshipping three Gods without knowing it. Take the Taize hymn. “The Lord is my light, my light and salvation. In God I trust”. If my memory serves me right it used to be “In Him I trust”. Once again, the de-masculinising of our liturgy which in the end begs the question of whom we are worshipping. If we were to follow the trajectory to its logical conclusion, perhaps the hymn should be fully de-masculinised as “The Sovereign (gender neutral) is my light, my light and salvation” otherwise we might be pointing to the Lord and then affirming that the God we trust has no connection with the Lord whom we had just affirmed.

Language has become less a servant of speech, of unity in the search for truth. Instead it morphed more into a means of manipulation serving ideologies to influence thought, perception and social interaction. Somehow a criminal is less a “criminal” when he or she is labelled a justice-involved person. I am well aware that we live in a world where there are approved narratives and we are expected to toe the line. Woe to those who disobey this diktat.

This homily tries to talk about the Trinity in the context of a changing linguistic landscape. Expressions of speech can change and they do but there are realities which we have received and they are beyond us, no matter how we feel. The dogma of the Trinity is the foundation of creation. All created reality came to be through the Trinity. Every prayer of ours has a Trinitarian motif. While our prayers may describe the workings of the Trinity ad extra as the Creator or the Redeemer or the Sanctifier, what is also needed is to appreciate the inner life of the Trinity ad intra because all created reality came to be through their relationship with one another—as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We would do well to remember that.

Pentecost Year C 2025

There is a scientific axiom which states that nature abhors a vacuum. If we take nature in its totality then it would make sense that man does not like the unknown. We do not sit comfortably with the unfamiliar which explains the dismal state that humanity is in right now. Eve could not accept mystery’s hidden or shrouded nature and consequently took up Satan’s suggestion that promised her unlimited knowledge.

Man has this insatiable quest to know more. When rockets were launched into space, it was supposedly the final frontier but that was not the only frontier we have been trying to master. The inner thoughts and processes formed the other frontier that we have been trying to map out. The process of “conquest” continues. Just like St Thomas Aquinas in his days who speculated on the number of angels dancing on top of a pin head, in our days, we try to cram as many bytes as we can onto our ever-miniaturised data storages from the first floppy discs to the latest solid state drives. Right now we are familiar with terabytes. Soon we will be introduced to petabytes and the beyond.

Man has been trying to breach every boundary imposed by nature in this endeavour to control his destiny, to be autonomous, to be like God. Even if we have gone beyond the limits of outer space, we will still want to know what lies behind the beyond. Wise St Augustine recognised this desire to be nothing more than our hunger for the Creator, who had at the inception of creation, moulded into man’s heart a longing which can only be satisfied by the Maker.

This so-called drive or hunger can be unruly. In a way, the desire or drive mirrors a particular perception of how the Holy Spirit behaves. The scene at the descent of the Holy Spirit seems to confirm that. It was almost chaotic when we consider the rushing winds and the loud noises. This unpredictability at the appearance of the Holy Spirit lends itself to an association of freedom with spontaneity. This idea of freedom here is more of an unfettered autonomy. The arbitrariness or the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit may support or justify a perception of human freedom in the area of thought and behaviour. All of us like to do what we want and none of us likes to be told what to do or what not to do. We value individual autonomy.

What might escape our notice is that the descent of the Holy Spirit is also synonymous with the birth of the Church. Nothing is more permanent or steadfast or “boring” than the creation of the Church, for in this newly established entity, the Spirit animates the Body of Christ. The members of the Church are inspired, led and empowered to fulfil the mission that Christ commanded before His ascension—go make disciples of all the nations. In the work of transforming the world, the Holy Spirit is powerfully at work in the Sacraments that Christ bequeathed to His Body. He is reflected in the teachings of the Church. He assists the members of the Church through His gifts so that every Christian may bear fruits.

In a world where individual autonomy is sacrosanct, all the more we must be reminded that the Holy Spirit is tied to the Church. In the last 60 years, greater emphasis has been placed on discerning how the Holy Spirit works “extra ecclesiam”, that is, outside the Church. We must be open to discover where God’s Spirit is working. However, correspondingly, there arose a tendency to “liberalise” the Holy Spirit, that is, to set the Holy Spirit free, partly because we have failed to convince others that the Church, founded by Christ, is His instrument of salvation. In fact we are bogged down by our inability to convince others that we are reduced to searching for commonality in terms of the good we can do. It is as simple as “Since I cannot convert you, let me see how we can cooperate to bring about good”.

In no way is this a demeaning of the other religions. The stress on respect for experiences outside Christianity has given rise to certain theological strands that supports the speculation that Jesus Christ is not necessary for salvation “extra ecclesiam”. This is our conundrum. If every religion leads to God, what role does Jesus play in salvation and how relevant is the Great Commission in our present climate of religious plurality? The unspoken reality is that many Catholics believe that all religions are the same.

The Holy Spirit works “intra” and “extra ecclesiam”. The failure of evangelisation is not the failure of the message but the failure of the messengers. The Holy Spirit can work outside the Church but He cannot work without the Church. In fact the Holy Spirit’s task is to draw all people to God and the chief instrument that He does so is through the Church, the Body of Christ.

Thus, the Holy Spirit did not come to confirm our “inspiration”, that is, the way we want to organise or structure reality. Instead, the Holy Spirit confirms the desire of Christ for His Church through the gifts we receive. From these gifts, we bear fruits to offer to God our Father. The point is not to tie the Holy Spirit down. There is a trend these days which is captured by a concept bandied around. We hear of “paradigm shift” as a process of renewal and transformation.Latent within this concept is the idea that old is to be discarded because the new has arrived. Coupled with novelty is spontaneity—freedom, carefreeness or even “disobedience”. My novice-master once said to a fellow novice—do not use the Holy Spirit to sanctify your disobedience. If I do not want to obey what the Church teaches, I can easily use the Spirit to rationalise or justify what I want to do. While novelty is inherently exciting, the Holy Spirit is also boring or predictable because He has His work cut out—in the Sacramental economy of the Church. In the work of redemption, we need the Holy Spirit to ensure that we have full access to the Sacraments of Jesus Christ. If we celebrate the Spirit’s work “extra ecclesiam”, all the more we must give thanks to Him for the work “intra ecclesiam”. Come, Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love.

7th Sunday of Easter Year C 2025

Next Sunday is Pentecost. We are just a few days after the Ascension and the Disciples are hanging around waiting. However, the Gospel is taken from before Christ’s ascent to the right hand of the Father’. The central teaching of Christ is on the unity of the Church expressed through a communion of faith and love.

Recently I suggested, at the morning Mass of the memorial of St Bernardine of Siena (20th May), that the congregation should buy “empat nombor ekor”. The number was 8647. It seems that 86 is the code for killing and 47 denotes the current US President.

The background of this lottery number is that it was spotted by the former head of the FBI while he and his wife were walking along the beach. He posted it on X and it created a political kerfuffle. Those who hate Trump supported Comey’s claim of blissful ignorance. Apparently he did not know the real meaning of 8647. Those who love Trump felt that it was yet another incitement to assassinate the President.

There is an unprecedented level of hatred arising from a political fissure that is rending that country apart. Sadly, it is not only a land far away. Hatred is also something which we may be familiar with. The whole election of the Pope was rife with speculation on who the next Pontiff would be. The betting that took place merely indicated the cracks and crevices that we have been experiencing.

Liberals wanted a Pope who will continue the pace of change so that the Church can keep up or conform to societal norms. Conservatives preferred a Pope who can roll back the perceived deviations that we had made under Pope Francis. It is lamentable that there exists such a sad division in the Church where opposing parties simply disdain the other.

Sadly, our division is sign of forgetfulness too. We have forgotten who the Church is supposed to be. Instead of praying for a Pope that we need, some have hoped for Pope to mirror their philosophical or theological stand. Right or wrong may not be the issue here. Forgetfulness is. The Church belongs to Christ. Rightly so, that before the descent of the Holy Spirit, Christ prayed for His Church to remain united.

There are two great sins against the Body of Christ. The first is the sin of heresy. Heresy is a sin against the unity of faith. The second sin against the Holy Spirit is schism. It is a sin that breaks up the Body of Christ.

Perhaps it is fortuitous that we have a son of St Augustine who has ascended the throne of Peter. Divisions are aplenty but charity must trump all else. Politics which is supposedly the art of friendship, of negotiation, of compromise has become, for many of us, a poisonous chalice. We not longer enter into a conversation but instead we are on the look-out for weaknesses to exploit, in order to gain the upper hand. Ultimately this does not serve the people because the politics of poison cannot build up the community. It destroys and renders the community even more fractured than it should be.

We are living in an age where our philosophical persuasion or theology tendency are divided and fractured which makes reaching across the aisle rather arduous. The result is that minds alike tend to create bubbles or echo chambers where tribes of the same bent can hear their biases confirmed or even amplified instead of being challenged. These safe havens provide security rather the promote self-reflection. In the end the good that we want to achieve and hope to gain is negated by the divisions we have.

Christ was correct for He prayed for the unity of his followers or of his disciples. Anyone who claim himself to be a Christian must be an apostle of love and of unity. It is true that that things can be wrong. It is true that we need to say things as we know it. In other words, we are held accountable by what we know to be true. But it is also possible that we speak the truth with love.

The challenge we face is that “truth” is now a servant of an economy hinged on material wealth geared towards entertainment and amusement. Thus we have billionaires and celebrities lecturing us on how we should organise our lives. To be fair, possessing wisdom and being a personality, a celebrity or billionaire are not mutually exclusive. A billionaire or a celebrity can also be wise in the ways of the Lord. But by and large these so-called elite have arrogated upon themselves a platform which they believe is theirs by virtue of their status or they feel themselves entitled to, to berate us on how we should live. Yet, we know that some of their private lives cannot even muster a simple scrutiny of morality.

The ability to speak truth must come from a position that recognises that we are in the world but we are not of the world. Thus, it is not wealth or fame that allows one’s voice to be louder. Rather, whether we be richer or poorer, what is crucial is that we are united in the love of Jesus Christ and animated by a faith we profess in Him. The world is diverse and plural. If there is unity to be forged, it must come from persuasion rather than pressure, conviction rather than compulsion. Differences or diversity do not have to result in division whereas imposition of uniformity will not result in unity. Instead, it will foment divisive resentment. More than ever, in a world diverse and divided, what is needed is charity and in a quote somewhat attributed to St Augustine which we might take note of: In all things inessential, let there be diversity. In all things essential, let there be unity. Above all, let there be charity.

Ascension Year C 2025

I would like to start with Napoleon and check-in with him towards the end of homily.

Apparently Napoleon threatened a Cardinal of the Church. “Your eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” According to tradition, the cardinal was sanguine in his reply. “Your Majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the Church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you”.

“I will be with you always, until the end of time” is the explanation for Cardinal’s response. Christ promised just before He was taken up from the view of the Apostles that He would be with His Church until the end of time. No power on earth will prevail against her.

Christ has kept this promise. He may have ascended but we have never been alone. Sometimes we hear or read this, “He has left us the Church”. The fact is, He did not “leave the Church with us”. Instead, He has been present in His Church. At each Mass, He is present in the people gathered. He is present in His word proclaimed. He is present in the priest who acts alter Christus. Finally, He is present in the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine after consecration. This intense and abiding Presence is felt in tabernacles across cathedrals, churches, chapels or oratories that many choose to spend time in.

Either we forget this truth or Jesus has been ignored.

In these last few decades we have witnessed the explosion of news and commentaries that are very much in our faces. Politics is beamed directly into our living rooms. Even this statement sounds outdated. Events are streamed onto our devices so much so that we are experiencing an immediacy which has never been felt before. But this proximity is not entirely positive or life-giving. Given that information is power, the flow and dissemination of news and the prevailing narrative is dependent on who is in control. You may have heard of brain-washing, green-washing and now gas-lighting. More than proximity, the result is actually an increase in anxiety. A good example of an anxiety-inducing news or information is climate change. Any inclement weather is now attributed to global warming.

Whether or not global warming is real is debatable because our prevailing social or cultural narrative is dependent on who or which group holds power. The masses are just caught in the swirling eddies of prevailing political winds. How not to be depressed?

In an age of information and disinformation, a lie told one time too many becomes the “truth” and people stake their lives on whatever they want to believe. Depending on your philosophical persuasion, the Church is this or the Church is that. For some, this is a time of great trial or tribulation because their ideas are not embraced by the majority whereas those who are enjoying power believe that whatever is developing is all part of God’s will. Either way, we fail to recognise that the Church is not ours. We belong to the Church and the Church belongs to Christ.

Here we come back to the story Napoleon and his quarrel with the Church. On the side of the Church, we had Pope Pius VII who resolutely refused to submit to Napoleon’s demands. Resigned to the inevitable conflict with Napoleon, Pius VII wrote: “If our words fail to touch Your Majesty’s heart, we will suffer with a resignation conformable to the Gospel. We will accept every kind of calamity as coming from God.”

So, Pius spent 5 years in captivity until Napoleon’s final defeat and imprisonment in St Helena. There Napoleon complained to the now freed Pope of his ill-treatment and he asked Pius VII for the assistance of a chaplain. Napoleon wrote: “I was born in the Catholic religion. I wish to fulfil the duties it imposes and receive the succour it administers”. In the end, when Napoleon died, the first line of his will declared, “I die in the apostolical Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years since”.

Politics will always be with us. In ecclesial context, politics reveals the human side of the Church. We can be distracted by the power changing hands failing to recognise that compassion makes the Church feel more divine. The Church as adivine institution is very much the presence of Christ in the world. Even if there are actors or players trying to destroy or annihilate Church within or without, our faith is in Christ who leads and guides His Church. The entire Sacramental economy manifests His compassion, mercy, redemption and salvation. While the Church may be powerful as an institution, she is animated not by might but by mercy.

Funny that we judge the Church through contemporary lens meaning that we tend to view the present as the worst of times. Noticed how no leader today is ever free from the inescapable phenomenon of their every word and action analysed, interpreted and explained. Everyone is an expert and everyone is a critic. For Catholics, the Pope is not immune to criticisms but we are assured that the Church has been preserved from error by the promise of Christ and despite bad popes in the past, the Church continues to survive as only a divine institution can. In her human side, she is slow and sometimes clumsy but she has never been defeated. Experiencing the human side of the Church, we can easily confuse and conflate it with temporal society and when there is failure, we also slip into despair. There is an important distinction that can prevent us from despair. The Church is not just the Body of Christ; she is forever the pure and immaculate Bride of Christ. Only we, the sons and daughters, are the sinners.

In conclusion, the Ascension signals Christ forging the path ahead for us. Through His Spirit present in the Church, we are guided to arrive where He is. Mary our Mother was the first to have reached where He is. The martyrs and the saints have followed behind. Nothing can separate us from this destiny. The Ascension is not a description of absence but a promise of Christ’s perpetual presence—a promise fulfilled at Pentecost. Hence, even if the Church weretested severely, we are not afraid but with the strength of the Holy Spirit, we fix our eyes upon Jesus so that we can run the race in which we have entered.