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In general, if we follow the mind of the Church, ideally, a Catholic should marry a Catholic. It is preferable because complications may arise from a union known as a mixed marriage or a disparity of worship. The law does not prohibit a Catholic from marrying a baptised non-Catholic, that is, a Protestant, in which case, the union is called a mixed marriage. The law also does not prohibit a Catholic from marrying a non-baptised person, in which case, the union is known as disparity of worship or cult. In both these cases, for a marriage to be contracted, dispensation has to be sought.
At the prenuptial enquiry, I often remark to the non-Catholic party (Protestant or otherwise) that he or she is “sway” (unlucky) to marry a Catholic because he or she has to be “subjected” to Catholic laws. It is unfair but there is an explanation for it.
Today’s Gospel may help us understand this unfairness. Christ tells us that the road to salvation is via a narrow gate. This requirement suggests a Catholic or anyone who claims to be His follower is called to a higher standard. Easy discipleship is not our vocation. At times, people believe that conversion, that is, baptism is the doorway to a better or “blessed” (material-wise, that is) life.
It is not. Baptism is just a decision to follow Christ. There is no easy way to take up the Cross and to follow Him. The vocation to follow the Lord must be seen in the larger context of the 1st Reading. God intends everyone’s salvation. He will gather into His fold, humanity from all the nations to witness to His glory and be saved. The 2nd Reading also makes sense in light of the universal vocation to move towards God. Human that we are, we are subject to the struggles of being faithful to our vocation. Right now we are bombarded by imageries of the conflict and hunger in Gaza. They are graphic and shocking because they are visible. But there is a battlefield far more latent or hidden and it is the human heart where the true struggles between good and evil take place.
Thus the 2nd Reading addresses this truth of our struggles. The author of the Hebrews looks at punishment from God as a form of discipline and rehabilitation. Sadly we have an aversion towards punishment and this distaste arises possibly from a mistaken notion that love should be permissive tolerancecoupled with the absence of prohibition.
What might not be apparent for most is that within the Church’s legal system, punishment or penalty is actually an expression of love that balances both the criteria of justice and mercy. Justice requires that we be accountable for our actions. Mercy is articulated through compassion for those who have fallen.
Excommunication for example. It sounds forbidding and even punishing. But it is not as condemnatory as it is to allow one to recognise the wrong, the sin or the evil committed and to seek reconciliation through the Sacrament of Penance. It is never meant to be a complete or utter separation of a person from the community. It allows sinners to repent, to restore relationship and to return to the community. In fact, an excommunicated person is still under obligation to attend Mass on Sunday, just that he or she is prohibited from receiving Holy Communion.
Love is not permissive. The system of sanction in the Church is medicinal for aperson to come to his or her senses because the true nature of love is that it draws boundaries. It is not tolerance or acceptance of anything and everything. Boundaries are created by love because there are behaviours which are harmful to the lover as well as to the beloved. A man loves his wife and in order for his love to be true, he draws lines which he will not cross. The love he has will never visit upon another woman.
It is the same for how God loves us. He desires our good which allows us to look at His salvific will for humanity. It is universal and as such the Gospel does not discuss or label who will be saved except that salvation depends on a person following Christ. Our behaviour should mirror Christ in the acceptance of God’s will. It means that we will follow Him closely without counting cost or reward.
This is perhaps one of the greatest challenges we face because of our hesitation with regard to suffering. It is a natural inclination to shy from pain because of the innate mechanism of self-preservation. Like gold, we need to be tested by fire and purified because those who claim discipleship are not automatically saved. Those who call out “Lord, Lord” will not necessarily be admitted into heaven. As the Gospel says, others will come to take our place if we are not careful about the state of our souls. That is the standard of God’s invitation.
More than ever, now that we have lost our social net, to follow Christ has to be a conscious personal choice. In the past, we could in some ways depend on religion being a social phenomenon. I know of a housing area near to a neighbouring parish where almost every household is Catholic. The shared commonality in terms of rites and festivals can buoy a person up, even a lukewarm Catholic. But as more of our social fabric is weakened by individualism, now one has to make a conscious choice to live according to what the faith teaches.
Without that commitment, one can be swept away easily by prevailing winds. Fundamental to the conscious choice of following Christ is to understand what it entails. We will have to sacrifice in order to follow Him. Is it worth it that one should deny oneself, give up sin and follow Him? For example, why are you here? To fulfil an obligation? Is that enough? In other words what makes it worth our while to sacrifice? The conundrum of St Augustine highlights a truth of an existence caught between now and eternity. He prayed, “Lord make me chaste but not yet”. We instinctively desire heaven but the allurement of this world is too much to give up.
It might help to recognise that whatever deal the world gives, it is always a bad deal when compared to a life with Christ in heaven. That is the only way we can overcome the world and it is to know that nothing measures up to a life withChrist our Lord. Our completed prayer room is named after Saint Carlos Acutis. He died at the age of 16. Even at his tender age he already knew what it meant to give everything up for Christ. In fact, he gave up his earthly life. He said this “Everyone is born as an original but many people end up dying as photocopies”. The aboriginality that we have been created in should give us a clue why we ought to live for Christ for He is the reason why we are here in the first place and that giving all for Him is the only logical action we can take.
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.
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.
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.
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.
