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Everyone knows this German description even if they do not know this German word. Schadenfreude. The Oxford dictionary defines it as a feeling of pleasure, joy, or satisfaction at the bad things, troubles, or misfortunes that happen to other people. It combines two German word: schaden (harm) and freude (joy). The Malays have a similar saying, “padan muka” or “serves you right”. It sounds rather unchristian to take joy or pleasure in someone’s misfortunes but I suppose it arises from our instinct for transactional fairness. I mean you would hate it too when going to the fruit seller and coming home with the 2kg of duku which actually weighs 1.7kg. No one appreciates the feeling of being cheated.
We want fairness but the Gospel today reveals to us how God is characteristically unlike us. He measures worth not by output nor by effort spent but by love and presence. Still it is not easy to comprehend the behaviour of the landowner in the manner of payment which leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. But God the landowner was not unkind or unjust. Leaving aside the dissatisfied feeling of being cheated, we see how God was in fact just and merciful. The manner of God’s proceeding was to deal with what was needed and not what was desired. The transaction agreed upon by both the landowner and the original group of workers was that they will receive a living wage at the end of the day. The 1 denarius agreed upon possibly represented the necessary wage, on a daily basis, for a family to survive. At the end of the day, the landowner gave those who worked less what they needed but he was not unjust to those who had worked more because that was agreed upon wage whereas those who came last were mercifully treated by the landowner. Despite their little output, he gave them enough to survive on.
Often our instinct for fairness is tinged with a measure of envy. We feel entitled to what we have worked for and we resent how those who did not work also got what they should have. Perhaps the invitation is to move away from the bitterness of jealousy to the rejoicing of celebration. “I wish I have gotten what you have but I am able to be happy that you have gained so much more”. I am sure you can find it in your own experiences to know how envy and rejoicing work.
When I was younger, certain dynamics simply passed me by; they were outside the ambit of my experience. But the last round of bishops' appointments was eye-opening. I watched how those who believed their time had come, but were passed over, subtly leaked their resentment through passive-aggressive behaviour. It became clear that ecclesiastical robes do not shield the heart from envy. How difficult it is to trade resentment for enjoying someone’s elevation.
Remember the Prodigal Son? We often focus on the relationship between the father and the wayward son. But a main story we might miss out on in the Prodigal Son is the older brother whose resentment did not stem entirely from jealousy or envy. The father’s response to him was telling. “All I have are yours”. Sometimes our resentment comes because we have such a low esteem of ourselves that we resent those who got it better because we do not believe that we are entitled to a good deal.
I remember an incident during my years of studies overseas when I complained to the spiritual director in one of our monthly conversations. It was the Confession thing. I was pointing out how another Jesuit was not living out his vow of poverty. I still remember the “light-bulb” moment as if God was slapping me “You are just jealous that he dared to live while you refused to live”. I remember preaching once about how sometimes we want justice, not because we are just, but because we are envious that the unjust can get away with murder. We may secretly desire the same opportunity to get away with the same crime. It was jealousy but more than that, I learnt one valuable lesson. I should ask for what I want and if I got it, I should be grateful. But if I did not, I would not be jealous that someone got it. I can tell you how spiritually free one becomes when there is no jealousy because my happiness is no longer based on what others got or did not get. Schadenfreude or not, we must never envy God’s generosity.
St Paul is inspiring from this perspective. He has arrived at a point in his life where Christ truly was his centre. Where Jesus is, Paul wants to be. Given a choice, Paul would have wanted to be gone from this life, from all the messiness involved in his ministry. His experience is not different from ours. Even amongst the early Christians there was jealousy or envy. The reason why the order of deacons came to be instituted was to mitigate the breakdown of fair community care due to favouritism and comparison.
St Paul challenges us because for him, labouring for Christ was a privilege and not a chore and definitely not a competition. Petty jealousy often stalls our ministry, kills our momentum and damages the impact of our evangelical witnessing. The beauty of St Paul was that he was not concerned by what he could gain except that life with Christ was the prize he loved most. He was not tracking his achievements but in all things he maximised his love for the Lord. Detached from selfish ambition and human comparison, St Paul was only concerned with glorifying Christ. We should emulate Paul’s example that to live or to die is Christ. Always Christ.
Have you ever felt stupid for being good? Pretty sure you have. Some of us more and some of us less. Giving up your seat on the train to someone who may need it more than you do can feel stupid or maybe even unnecessary. If you take public transport, you routinely notice how a person gets onto the bus or even train, occupies the seats reserved for the sick, elderly, disabled and pregnant and goes to sleep. Why? So that they can be oblivious should any one from the marginalised categories board the bus or train.
Modernity, particularly the Anglo-Saxon world, is confused. Our language routinely blur the lines between good and bad. Michael Jackson, “You know I’m bad, I’m bad, you know it”. It intends to assert that he is actually good. One has to be bad to be good which may account for the way movies portray how anti-heroes are actually the heroes. Our reality now is that the boundary between good and bad are blurred that we no longer know what is what. And for that, our culture reinforces this uncertainly by teaching us “not to be stupid”. In other words, “don’t be a loser”. Nobody will praise you for standing up in the bus or the train. Nobody appreciates you for sacrificing. If anything, society will think that you are merely showing off.
Today’s 1st Reading talks of anger and resentment and the inability to forgive. It flows into Peter’s question in the Gospel about how many times we should forgive. “How many times” is not really the question but “How should one forgive” or “If one can even forgive” are. These two questions touches or challenges our idea of what is it to be good or bad.
Imagine a woman traumatised by rape. What should she do? She should seek justice, should she not? The perpetrator/s should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, should he/they not? What if she chose to forgive the rapist and refuses to press charges? How?
Of course, the arm of the law is long and no matter what, the rapist should face the consequences of his or their actions. The notion that a woman, raped and traumatised, wanting to forgive her rapist is rather unacceptable to our mentality. At the very least, psychologists will label the woman as internally oppressed or she has been so traumatised that she no longer can think clearly or properly etc.
The absence of boundaries between good and bad is possibly a consequence of the loss of heaven. It means that we are not entirely certain that there is a heaven. The idea of having fun to the maximum is symptomatic of this loss. After all, what is the point of “delayed gratification” when there is no heaven, right? The other tell-tale sign is related the notion of justice. It must be seen to be done, for if not, then there will always be a sense of incompleteness, miscarriage of justice because the person has not been properly compensated.
When heaven is not certain, why is there a need to be good? Bad is even as good, is it not? What we do has no eternal consequences per se. Thus, the demands of justice require that all scores to be settled now. The idea of forgiveness does not make sense because there is no heaven to enforce justice. We. have heard that the arm of the law is long forgetting that the arm of eternity is even longer. In fact, God peers into the deepest recesses of the human hearts and He knows what our needs are, including justice, even before we ask for it. As the author of the Ecclesiasticus reminds us: God keeps a strict account of sin. That is an assurance,
How many people hold on to their past hurts? We might dislike a person, which is a mild enough emotion or we might “hate” a person, which is a strong emotion. The stronger the emotion, the more we are imprisoned. Therefore, to forgive is a deeply and truly an act of faith. God’s justice is far better than human justice. When we forgive a person, we trust, contrary to human perception, that God will not be blind and that we can trust Him to be just in His mercy and also be merciful in His justice.
The Resurrection is real and so too is heaven. These eternal truths give us reason to stand up for others. They help us not to hold on to resentment and not let go of our hurts. They give us reason to live even though everything seems bleak.
For many of us, our reality or truth is restricted to what we can perceive for seeing is believing. So we must be out there with all our cameras etc etc. Facebook, instagram, Tiktok etc. How about a woman who serves and is unknown? How about a soldier blown into pieces by an American missile? The point is not debating the morality or legality of the conflict in the Persian Gulf. Rather it asks the question of invisibility. What happens to those thousands of souls unknown, unheard of and unseen? Who will remember them?
God will. So, on the last day, all will be gathered before Christ the Judge and He will separate the sheep from the goats. Both will be ignorant of their actions but Christ reminds us how He sees everything done, if not to Him, then to the least of His brothers and sisters. We can get away with murder here on earth but we cannot escape God’s justice. It is with this certainty that we dare to give and not to count the cost. To fight and not to heed the wounds. To toil and not to seek for rest. To labour and not to ask for reward. We dare to leave what we cannot settle or solve not because we do not care but because we know that all is in the hands of the Jesus for He is the Lord of the living and the dead.
We live under an oppressive cloud of “Who am I to judge?”. Ever since that famous “ex aeroplano” utterance we have retreated even more behind the walls of “irreproachability”, that is if there were such a word. It is almost “anathema sit” today if one should judge a person’s behaviour because social convention dictates that we just should not. Full stop.
The 1st Reading begs to differ. In no uncertain terms does it warn that everyone is responsible for everyone’s moral well-being. Present social convention dictates that one should mind one’s own business and not be bordered by another’s person’s unwashed linen. The stark contrast is how fearful we have become of what the Gospel tells us to do. If your brother has done something wrong, go and have it out with him alone, between your two selves. It is a call to correction.
Perhaps, we are not that special and the wall of irreproachability is merely a smokescreen. We celebrated almost exactly a month ago the feast of St Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers. He faced a formidable foe, a herd of heretics, called the Albigensians or the Catharis. A usual approach we are accustomed to when dealing with wrong is to invoke the might of right—a right derived from the possession of truth. It is basically described by “I am right and the only choice you have is to change”.
Well, change was certainly the goal to accomplish for St Dominic but the method was not the invocation of right. Rather, St Dominic followed the truth with humility and the power of persuasion was derived from charity. The previous attempt by Pope Innocent III to convert the Albigensians was to send in the Cistercians monks. They were unsuccessful because the Albigensians were already so ascetical in their lifestyle that there was basically nothing the Cistercians could point to in the Catharis’ lives that showed them to be morally corrupt. Of course, the Cistercians were not corrupt either but they failed the test of credibility because their way of living was not ascetical enough.
St Dominic went in with two tools. Firstly, he met the Albigensians where they were. The Dominicans were ascetical because they lived simply and that made them more credible to the Albigensians. It was Dominic’s way of going down to the level of those with whom he intended to enter into conversation.
Secondly, the Albigensians were interested in the imitation of God’s perfection. While that may be a noble desire but it is impossible simply because perfection has always been God’s gift to us. When the Lord created the world, it was “perfect” but that did not mean that it bore the quality of eternity. Even the most perfect creation, in this life, under the regime of time and space, will have to “suffer” an end. In other words, creation has an expiry date. Hence, the Albigensians, though they wanted to be perfect like God is, went about the wrong way.
St Dominic converted them not through the condemnation of their “wrongness” but through charity, that is, love, he slowly changed their vision. The first community he founded at Prouille was in fact for the nuns and women who have returned to the Church so that they could be cared for. He gained greater credibility simply because he was a man, who before he spoke of God, he spoke to God. It was this kind of intimate knowledge that gave his words greater impact.
In a world which has witnessed so much contradiction, credibility is possibly the only weapon we have against disinformation or misinformation. Both the Great Wars, I and II, were conducted under the aegis of “rationality” meaning that humanity has never been more rational or reasonable and yet, against reason, we went to war. Then, time and again, those with power, namely governments or those who were in government, under the auspices of the common good or the protection of the citizens, were found wanting for they lied and lied and lied. Even the most benevolent governments routinely lie to their citizens. Time has passed enough for us to look back at how the powers-that-be have behaved during the Pandemic. Remember the elites who ruled and yet their behaviour was perfectly captured by the slogan: “rules for thee but not for me”. What is even more blatant was not that we were educated and persuaded to the good of the measures taken to protect the public but instead the citizens were either guilt-tripped or shamed to behave according to the dictates of the establishment.
More and more credibility is the only weapon we have in order to preach or be able to preach convincingly. An important distinction needs to be noted though. The truth of a position is independent of a person’s moral status. As the saying goes, even the devil can speak the truth. Just because we do not like a person, it does not mean that he or she cannot utter something which is true. But having said that, what is clear is that the preacher’s credibility is truly dependent on his personal moral uprightness. As Paul VI in “Evangelii nuntiandi” reminded us "Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses”.
The lesson today is that we must care for each other’s moral future. The wall of irreproachability or unteachability is not because people refuse to hear. They simply cannot hear because their faith and goodwill to change has been abused by those who preach one thing but behave otherwise.
There is an innate search for the good in all of us. Like the Albigensians, some of us might be misguided. Still that does not negate our search for the good. What happened is that repeated failures in expectation has made our listening so much more difficult because we are incapable of dealing with the constant barrage of propaganda or doublespeak, especially from the powerful elites. The reassuring news however is that despite our wounded expectations, Christ has never abandoned us. He is present to us in His Church. Notwithstanding the frailty of her sons and daughters, the Church remains the only sanctuary where we can reliably hear the authentic voice of Jesus Christ. To be able to hear Him, many of us need to humbly dismantle the barrier that we are beyond reproach because pride can easily imprison us from hearing the truth. We can do it if we cleave to Christ, hold on to His Church for in Him and His Church we can find the common ground of credibility and charity in our care and concern for each other’s moral good and eternal salvation.
From the height of professing faith in the Christ of God last Sunday, how easily Peter falls from the lofty pedestal of his new office. From being the rock to being the block. Right after confessing Jesus to be the Son of God, Peter began to look for a softer Jesus whom He can worship easily.
This Sunday might be a good time to disabused ourselves of wrong ideas of who this Jesus is supposed to be. As the 2nd Reading goes, we are challenged to model our perspective not on the premise supplied by the world but based on our dignity as thinking or reasonable beings who have been redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ.
We might be distracted by the failure of Peter and even to think of it as a moment of weakness. Perhaps we should view Peter’s failure from the perspective of Jeremiah’s experiences.
Firstly, Peter is known for his impetuous reactions. Consider these incidents. He asked to walk on water but as soon as the winds picked up, he faltered. At the Transfiguration, he blurted out that they should build three tents for Moses, Elijah and Jesus. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he drew the sword and sliced off Malchus’ ear. Prior to the Passion, he boasted that he would never deny Jesus which he resoundingly did three times over. Today Peter remonstratedwith Jesus when the latter predicted His coming Passion. According to Jesus there would be a harsh reckoning awaiting Him in Jerusalem. Our Jerusalem Bible translation uses the word “remonstrated” which means Peter pleaded with Jesus when in actual fact, Peter was quite adamant as in other translations, Peterrebuked or commanded Jesus. In other words, Peter decided that the Jesus he wants to follow should not be meeting that kind of a violent end.
In fact, right down to the end, Peter struggled with the real Jesus which is reflected in the post-Resurrection apocryphal Acts of Peter. The text is the origin for the narrative centred on Peter’s cowardice. “Quo vadis, Domine?” translated as “Where are you going, my Lord?”. According to the legend, Peter was facing his death but chose to escape. At the moment of his departure from Rome, he saw coming towards him, Jesus, which occasioned the question, “Quo vadis, Domine?”. Jesus gave this answer, “Eo Romam iterum crucifigi”. (I am going to Rome to be crucified again).
The fact that Peter turned back and finally met his death in Rome is beside the point. The truth about him is how closely we resemble Peter. All through his life, Peter struggled to accept the true path of Jesus much like we do. We all want a Jesus we are comfortable with, a Jesus we can manage and a Jesus we can even control.
In a way, Peter was very much like Jeremiah. Both were lovers. Both may have been misguided in their love. In the case of Peter, his idea was that Jesus should be a powerful figure. Not unlike Judas Iscariot. For every Jew, to breathe is to inhale the covenant that they are a chosen race, a people set apart. Chafing under the tyranny of a pagan occupation, one can appreciate Peter’s delusion of grandeur. Any Jew would want to have a Saviour who is powerful and capable of over-throwing the uninvited Romans. But beneath that passion was someone who had fallen deeply in love with Christ. Both Peter and Jeremiah were souls deeply in love. In fact, Jeremiah spoke of being seduced by God and expressed the feeling of being cheated. Peter may have been impetuous but he loved Jesus.
As such, he had to learn the true meaning of leadership and discipleship. More than a political liberator, Christ had come to show what it meant to be a leader who serves. To a certain extent, Jeremiah was not wrong. He complained to God and made excuses. Who would not? We all want the glory espoused by Peter but we fear the Cross proposed by Jesus.
How do we overcome this reluctance or this reticence of humanity’s natural indolence to become the man or the woman God intended us to be? In the Gospel, the Cross is mentioned and proposed as the sine qua non of discipleship. The issue is not the Cross. Human experiences have providedproof after proof of how frequently the spirit excels under duress. We are not even speaking here of the call to martyrdom or stoic acceptance. Our experience shows us that a soul spared in the storm rots in the calm.
The only way that the Cross becomes not a cost to be borne but a prize to be gained is the love of God, the love for God. Each in his own ways came to the realisation that their love for Yahweh, in the case of Jeremiah or for the Son of God, in the case of Peter, is the driving force. Our discipleship should be rooted in or driven by love and not fuelled or motivated by guilt or shame.
I think I recognise this especially when we are trying to motivate God’s holy people. Fear of hell is one motivation. Shamed by stigma is another. Let them be haunted by hellfire. Jesus scolded Peter but not out of anger, even though He called Peter, “Satan”. Rather, He was trying to purify Peter’s motivation. “Since you love me, so, just follow me. No need for the excuses of Jeremiah etc”.When a heart is in love, it is easily led. Jeremiah spoke of being seduced by God and a feeling of being cheated. The truth was he was neither seduced nor cheated. Jeremiah realised that it was not a matter of deceit but rather that he had been smitten by his love for Yahweh.
In a previous pastoral posting, I witnessed how children, especially servers were disciplined by fear to coerce compliance. It is not the best way to teach or motivate. Discipline is needed; it is true but children will respond best when there is love. Authentic discipleship should be driven by love for God rather than be motivated by fear or guilt. Love does change everything.
