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Self-confidence can be deceiving. When we speak in terms of self-esteem, there might be an attempt to puff ourselves up ever so slightly in order that we may have confidence in facing the world. The truth is, it does not take much to shake our confidence or destroy our self-esteem. Today, the theme of compassion is appropriate and it definitely flows from last week’s Gospel.
We have a mission to share Christ’s compassionate love with the world. In the 1st Reading, Jeremiah expressed confidence that God will protect him. Matthew’s Gospel must be read in the context of the Jewish Christian community who has to face the might of the religious authority. Against the might of its leaders, the Jewish Christian convert would definitely feel an awkwardness since they were considered to have betrayed the ancient religion. It is not a novel experience. Just ask the new converts who chose to leave behind their loved ones who have remained staunchly devoted to the old religions.
In carrying out Christ’s compassionate mission, we will surely face rejection or abandonment. How does one carry on when there is renunciation or being forsaken?
Perhaps two real examples might help. Firstly, we have St Jean Marie Vianney. He was, by our standards, someone who might not have made it to the priesthood. He was not intellectually endowed but somehow he managed, through the kindness of those in charge of his formation, to get ordained. Those in HR know this reality. Those who can work, often get loaded with more responsibilities. Those who cannot work are left untouched because the result of dealing with problematic people is more unpleasant than the difficulty of the work itself.
Jean Vianney was not a difficult person. But like Padre Pio, he was just simple and the only way to deal with his lack of sophistication was to send him to a place of unimportance. Being abandoned in a faraway place was one way of getting rid of a problem. He remained in Ars for the next 41 years. The parish was mired in apathy after the French Revolution. People drank and did not go to Church. But he single-handedly faced their apathy, if not direct rejection for a good number of years. Slowly he converted them, if not by words then by his actions. He spent hours before the Blessed Sacrament and frequently heard confessions for long periods of time. Soon, France came to know of this holy priest and many flocked to the Curé d’Ars to have him hear their confessions.
Secondly, we take a look at the life of Damian Veuster. He was a priest who chose to go to the Hawaiian island of Molokai to serve as a priest in a leper settlement. The indigenous population of Hawaii had no immunity against the diseases brought by the colonisers. Soon, leprosy caught on and those suffering from it were isolated in Molokai, torn away from their families. Damian chose to serve them knowing that he might not return. When he started to feel numbness in his limbs, he knew that he had caught the disease. He had become one of them. Just like Jesus who took flesh to become one of us, Damian Molokai began to identify himself with lepers whom he served.
What gave both these saints the courage to accept rejection as in Ars and identify with being a leper in Molokai? Firstly, there must be a strong belief in the resurrection. The fact that God will take care of us is made more certain by the belief that the travail of this world is not the final answer to the loss that we will encounter in this present life. Jean Marie Vianney suffered the constant taunts of the devil. His burnt bed, which can be seen today, was physical evidence of the intense spiritual warfare and demonic attacks he endured. He supposedly said this. “The devil is angry. He cannot catch the bird and so he burnt the cage”. He carried on hearing confessions even as his room was burning. Like Jean Vianney trusting God, Damian Molokai, towards the end of his life, had gained nothing except that he had become a leper. And yet, that did not faze him. He carried on because he knew that despite the slow destruction of his human body, his soul would not be lost for it was secure in the hands of God.
To those who placed their lives in the hands of God, God will never forsake them. Even Christ who hung the Cross cried out “Eloi Eloi, lama sabachthani”. Even though He possessed a godly nature but that did not stifle the cry that rose from the depth of His human nature. In other words, we should never be surprised that there will be rejection and consequently, a feeling that we have been abandoned by God.
In the end, when Jesus breathed His last, He cried out, “Father, into your hands. I commend my spirit”. That scene would be repeated in the lamentation of St Stephen as the Jewish crowd stoned him to death. He gave his life and he commended his spirit to the Lord which means the same can be said of us. We are in the world to carry out Christ’s mission and we will encounter setbacks and be discouraged and we may feel that the world is unfair or that circumstances are stacked against us that we want to give up.
But we soldier on because the mission of Christ in the world continues. It makes sense as Saint Paul stated that “some sow the seed and some reap the harvest”. It reflects a philosophy that one’s entire life is not the whole story of the world. Instead, it recognises that one’s life is but a strand of the entire mission of Jesus. Each one of us is a part of His love for the world. We play our part within that mission and ultimately when we do not succeed despite all the effort that we have put in, we know that it is not a loss. We know that God has everything in his hands.
We must strengthen and cement our belief that there is life after death. Otherwise apart from the preoccupation of prolonging our lives, we will be hemmed in by this fear that history is only written here on earth forgetting that the future is inscribed by eternity. Thus the belief in the resurrection gives us confidence, especially when we are faced with incomplete answers to the questions we have. The basis for our engagement with the world must come from a realisation that we are loved by God and that on many occasions even God is helpless in the face of human freedom. God is bound by how man chooses to exercise his freedom. The greatest example is Jesus Christ being handed over to wicked men to be tortured and be put to death. While that may appear as abandonment, it was a supreme sacrifice on the part of God because He respects our freedom.
And yet Christ’s death was not a total loss. On the contrary, His death ransomed many for whom the future would be worthless. In Him, eternity is framed by the resurrection. Despite being burdened by our works and our worries and even though we do not have the answers to what we want and hope for, we dare to come before Him, especially during our adoration. We will not be sitting before a Lord who is dead but before a Lord who has overcome all burdens of this world. We sit before him confident that we will not share the fate of eternal death, but rather we sit here certain that we will enjoy the Resurrection.
Somehow Pentecost and Corpus Christi seem to flow seamlessly into this first Sunday in the second part of Ordinary Time. The Readings give us a sense of God’s compassion for humanity.
In the 1st Reading, God’s care was demonstrated through the Israelites being set apart as the Lord’s people and for His glory. The Psalms reflect this truth. St Paul simply laid out for the Romans that the cost of God’s compassion is measured by the price He paid to redeem sinners. In the Gospel, Christ was profoundly affected by a crowd that was seemingly lost without a shepherd.
There is a transition between Israel and the Church. As the 12 tribes of Israel were set apart for God’s glory, now the 12 Apostles sent out as the natural successors of the 12 tribes. Christ laboured amongst the people. He fed them. He healed them. He cleansed the lepers. He gave sight to the poor. He drove demons from those who are possessed. The Apostles and consequently His Church share in the same mission of compassion to the world. We are to be His eyes and ears, His hands and feet.
The word missionary sounds foreign. For many the word connotes the days of old when missionaries were sent to foreign lands but those days are mostly in the past. Moreover, the notion of “venturing into foreign lands” fits more closely with the movement of colonising territories. For example, the Augustinians, Franciscans and Dominicans arrived in the New World after the Spanish conquistadors had subjugated the local population. As such the missionary waves may be seen as a by-product of the imperial expansions of Western European colonial powers.
What we may not realise is that that Christ’s compassionate outreach is actually reflected in the Concluding Rite. In English, “Go, the Mass is ended” does not capture what the Latin dismissal means. “Ite, missa est”. Literally it means, “Go, it is sent” which, as an imperative does not make sense. What is more coherent is “Go, you are sent”. In fact, the words Mass, Missal, dismissal are all related to sending. At the end of every Eucharist, we are sent and therefore, the days of some superior foreigners coming to civilise us are over. Closer to home the meaning “Ite, missa est” is related to our homes, our work places and our communities.
“Ite, missa est” makes each baptised an apostle. The mission to radiate and diffuse God’s presence in the world is not the preserve of or limited to a handful men or women. No longer is missionary a specialised calling for a few. It is the vocation of every baptised person. This is the full extent of what it means to be baptised as priest, prophet and king—the basis for the universal call to holiness.
Thus, to gather in Church is truly expression of our common priesthood to worship. We offer who we are and what we have to God. Our talents are not merely our own in the sense that God bestowed them for our self-enrichmentonly. Rather, through our blessings and endowment, the Lord intends to touchthe world. Therefore at the end of Mass, after Holy Communion, we bring Christ into the world. Our worship does not end within the walls of the Cathedral. We carry our worship out into the world.
That is not an easy task. Outside the Cathedral, the challenge is to allow Christ’s teachings to deeply influence our words and behaviour. But there is a problem. At the personal level, each one of us, from Pope to Prince to Pauper, struggle with individual weaknesses and sins. Whilst it is crucial to cooperate with God’s grace in our personal conversion, there is still a reality far bigger than our personal foibles and failures. More than our personal struggles, the reality is we are also encountering a world which is not only frightening but a world that is fearful. We suffered a devastating pandemic, right? And that was frightening. All we need is a bout of flu-like symptoms in the general population and the sale of mask will shoot up and that is the reality of a world that is truly afraid.
In our country, for the first time, a state within the Federation, has two rulers. Furthermore, we have at the federal level, a government of supposed unity and at the state level, a coming election that will soon pit the component parties of the same federal coalition that rules against each other. Crazy but that is a fact. In the USA, the Democratic Party is hell bent on demonising Trump and the Republican Party is set on canonising him. What we are left with, both locally and internationally, is a deep sense of bewilderment and with anything that is uncertain, we are terrified. It is not helped that the world is on the brink because Iran, Israel and US are not able to come to a negotiation table. In Ukraine, Putin and Zelensky are obsessed with mutual destruction. With uncertainty, the result is life has become more expensive especially for the poor. While we cannot escape from or avoid vested interest, whatever the situation may be, the world is hurting. Maybe insecurity can explains why we spend excessively and overeat. We are unable to process the fear that is deep within us.
We have a mission at hand to show that God has not abandoned us and that He is still with us through our compassion. Jesus was moved with pity, for the crowd was like sheep without their shepherd. We share that same mission of Christ who showed compassion and while our effort may not be world-changing, still our family and home, our colleagues and workplace, our Cathedral and our city may just need that personal touch from us to make this place, a bit better, a bit hopeful and a bit more confident in God’s enduring love for us. “Keep calm and carry on” may sound cheesy but it is definitely most helpful. We soldier on through our prayers, through Mass attendances, through Confessions, through our charity. We do all we can within our power. We dare to stay calm for God is never far away.
If Trinity Sunday is my least favourite Sunday, then Corpus Christi is my favourite solemnity. Just like the Church’s teaching on God the Holy Spirit, this feast also took time to develop. In John 6, Jesus told the crowd that eternal life is premised on eating His Body and drinking His Blood. What does that mean? In fact, the entire crowd’s response except for the 12 was a total rejection of Christ’s invitation. It is not surprising because it sounded like cannibalism. The institution of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi shows us how the Church’s understanding slowly deepened over time.
Firstly, to put into context, the principal feast that highlights the Body and Blood of Christ should be Holy Thursday. But Maundy Thursday is reverently sombre, placed, as it were, just at the time when Christ will enter into His Passion. There is not much time to ponder on the meaning of the Body and Blood of Christ. Instead, the focus of Holy or Maundy Thursday is on the gravity of Christ’s Passion and His desire to establish a priesthood of service.
Secondly, Corpus Christi is livelier, two months exactly removed from Maundy Thursday (that is, if we mark it on a Thursday rather than on a Sunday). We give thanks to God for the wonderful gift that is brought about by the total and complete change of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. We are not handling a mere symbol but acknowledging the true Presence of Christ with us. The Eucharist is truly Emmanuel. The Eucharist is God with us.
In a small town of Lanciano, Italy, a Basilian priest who had doubts about the Eucharist, witnessed with his own eyes, at the words of consecration, the transformation of the bread and wine into flesh and blood. It took place in the 8th century making it the oldest evidence of a Eucharistic miracle. Lanciano is by no means the only expression of the Church’s belief in the Eucharistic presence that is validated by a miracle. There are many and Carlos Acutis, Saint Carlos now, documented them for the benefit of our electronic age.
But without any of these miracles, according to Catholic teachings, Real Presence is literal in which Christ is wholly present—His Body and Blood, His Soul and Divinity under the appearances of bread and wine. While many Protestants struggle with the apparent unscriptural belief held by Catholics, the Bible is not silent. Jesus claimed to be the living bread which came down from heaven and that anyone who eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread which Jesus gives for the life of the world is His flesh. St Paul affirmed that the wine we drink and the bread we eat is a participation in the Blood and Body of Christ. The Docetists who denied the reality of Christ’s Body were refuted by St Ignatius of Antioch who asserted that “bread is the Flesh of Christ and the cup His Blood”. Early Church Fathers from Ignatius until Augustine, all declared that the bread and wine are the Body and Blood of Jesus Himself.
In not so many words Vatican II’s document on the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, that is, Lumen gentium describes the Eucharist as the source and summit of Christian life. The Decree on the ministry and life of the priest, also reinforced this idea by further adding that the Eucharist, apart from containing the entire spiritual good of the Church, is the source and summit of all evangelisation.
As the apex, it is the only noble or appropriate food that can accompany us on our pilgrimage and if we take Jesus seriously, it is the key to heaven. “If you desire eternal life, eat my flesh and drink my blood”. Given its lofty state, would it not be logical that the forces of hell should be arrayed against it?
The goal of hell is not to make us forget heaven. Satan’s goal is not even to convince us that there is no hell and as a consequence, there is no heaven. Rather, it is more effective, given that human nature is sacramental, to make us relativise heaven, which is to make heaven unimportant. Let me explain.
Science is possibly the only canon of truth we know and therefore it is the standard for knowledge etc. Outside of science, we discount knowledge that cannot be proven in the laboratory. Devotion is also a form of knowledge but because of the narrow parameters imposed by science, as such devotion is disdained and it is relegated to the domain of the weak or the witless. In fact, devotion is considered the preserve of the elderly and the foolish. Following this line of thinking, the Devil is not proposing that Holy Communion is not central but that it is not as important for heaven with the suggestion that maybe it is only for the dumb and stupid. Our adoration for example is attended by the devotional crowd, the seemingly insignificant ones. The sophisticated and the intellectual do not need this. They are secure in their scientific knowledge. The cultic is scorned as too enclosed and ritualistic.
How do we combat Satan? What I am going to say will come across like devotional dribble and maybe intended as fodder for the dumb.
I am not instructing you nor commanding you on how you MUST receive Holy Communion. What I am begging you is to WATCH or be AWARE of how you are receiving Him. Therefore, it is not a question of tongue or hand. The host is NOT a piece of bread SYMBOLISING Jesus. The Host IS Jesus under the appearance of bread. The exhortation to be aware is not because we are promoting devotion but rather in obedience to Christ with regard to the reality of eternal life. He has given us the only food that can accompany us on the pilgrimage to heaven. Given that Satan intends to lead astray, it means we have a battle on our hands. Satan succeeds when we do not know Whom we are receiving.
The point of heightening awareness is to avoid a performative contradiction. Much of life is like that. We profess one thing but we behave otherwise. We instinctively recognise the need for coherence and for integrity. So in the Eucharist, we profess to receive Jesus under the appearance of bread but we behave as if it is no more than just a piece of bread. What can happen for many of us is the manner we receive may send the message that the Host is a very special bread, a highly revered symbol but nevertheless still a symbol. But as Flannery O’Connor said, “Well, if it were a symbol, to hell with it”. The statement sounds rather rude but she was defending the literal meaning of the True Presence of Jesus. In the case of the Eucharist, martyrs die for Jesus. They did not sacrifice their lives for a symbol of Jesus. For Satan not to win the war, grow in a deeper awareness of Whom you are receiving so that your lives may reflect Whom you believe in.
I am envious; jealous of my Jesuit brothers who do not run parishes and hence they do not have to celebrate public Masses most especially for today. This is my most disliked Sunday of the year because we are celebrating a truth and reality which has become, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant to ordinary Catholics or Christians. We might as well be worshipping three Gods or a God who wears different masks. On top of irrelevance what is worst is that we still have to “defend” the Blessed Trinity.
Christianity stands with both Judaism and Islam within the stream of monotheism in the belief of One God and yet Christianity stands apart from these two other great monotheistic traditions. The Trinity is central to Christianity’s monotheism because it defines who God is, explains how salvation works as well as reveals God’s eternal nature of love.
Why are there three persons in One God? How can one account for this anomaly? There are no explicit mentions of this reality in Sacred Scripture, let alone the very word “Trinitas”. Nothing of these three distinct persons, equal in divinity can be traced to the Bible. However, within Sacred Scripture, what we have are the traces of the Trinity.
Think about the creation scene, for example. In the beginning the Spirit was roaming the waters. In the New Testament, the Father’s Word was incarnate of the Holy Spirit which we recite this each Sunday at the Creed. When Paul wished the Corinthians, he used a deeply Trinitarian formulation: “The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God (the Father) and the communion of the Holy Spirit”. At the Ascension, the Great Commission is nothing more than a command to baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
This last New Testament quotation is most instruction. Jesus did not send the Apostles to go baptise in the “Names” of the Trinitarian persons but in the One name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. While the Church received this fundamental expression of faith and has faithfully passed it on, however, it took a while for the articulation to be understood in the manner in which God chose to reveal Himself to us.
We cannot control how God reveals Himself. We can only receive His self-revelation and we make the most of understanding what we have received. In choosing to reveal Himself, the example of the Incarnation shows us that God is love. In His great love for an unmerited humankind, He decided to save us. That God is love is a revelation of His nature. Love, as it should be, is never “selfish”. Instead, love reaches out to the other. It is relational. In the act of loving, God invites us into His inner life to see that essentially, He is one but subsistently, He is three in relationships.
By nature, God is one. Essentially, this makes Christianity a monotheistic religion. While God is essentially one, He is also three in Persons and this reality is what drives another religion crazy. How we get to one God being three in Persons is the result of God’s internal organisation. Within this arrangement, there are two processions and four relations. But there can only be three persons.
Let us unpack this two processions and four relations.
The two processions are generation and spiration. To understand generation, we can use the process of thinking. When a person thinks, he generates a thought. Both the thinker and the thought are the same being. Here we appreciate how inthe process of thinking there is only one being but two distinct realities, the thinker and the thought. With this analogy, we can understand how Father eternally generates the Word. And the Son is eternally generated by the Father. Here already in this generation, we have two relations and two persons. The Father begets the Son and the Son is begotten from the Father.
To understand spiration, the same can be said but with a difference. Both the two realities or distinct persons of the Father and the Son together breathe. Their breath is the Holy Spirit. As the Father and Son breathe the Spirit, the Spirit is the breath of both the Father and Son. Here in this spiration, there are also two relations but only one distinct person meaning that both the Father and Son are not a new reality, a composite of the Father and the Son. Instead when both Father and Son breathe, the Spirit is the breath of the Father and the Son. He is the Love between the Father and the Son. Hence the Spirit is a Person.
In these four relations, eternally the Father begets the Son, the Son is begotten of the Father eternally, eternally the Father and Son breathe the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is the breath of the Father and the Son eternally, we can only have three persons.
The Trinity is love and it a love that reaches out to the whole of creation. Out of love, God created the world and humanity. Out of love God desires to save mankind despite man’s rejection of the original covenant between the Creator and creature.
Sin ruptured man and nature’s aboriginal bond with the Creator and thus, Christ came to bring us back into the Father’s loving fold. In coming to us, in making Himself at home with us, He revealed the inner life of the God we believe in and invited us to a share of that life. We may not know the Trinity well. But the more we pray, the more we will get to know Him. As such our liturgies and prayers are heavily imbued with the Trinitarian dynamics where we are brought to the Father, through Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
In 2021, Feb 17, a change was introduced into our liturgy. The Collect’s concluding doxology was changed from “in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever” to “in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever”. Why? In the Latin version of the conclusion, there is no mention of “one” and the word “Deus” refers to Christ. If you read the Collect, it is directed to the Father and it concludes with a reference to Jesus Christ. The end of the Collect used to read like this. “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever”. We might think that the words “one God” refer to the Blessed Trinity but they do not. The word “God” is a reference to Jesus Christ and the translation which inserted the word “one”, suggests that Jesus is one God and hence the Trinity is “three gods”. The principle we follow is "Lex orandi lex, credendi". How the Church prays is what the Church believes in. The conclusion of the Collect might sound clearer in making a reference to Jesus Christ when it is reworded like. “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, for He is God, forever and ever”. The correction after nearly 50 years of usage shows us how important the Trinity is in our lives. We worship One God but a Trinity of Persons. Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
