Novena of Grace of St. Francis Xavier (Day 9) Saturday 12th March 2011 1st Sunday of Lent Year A

In the play Hamlet, there is a verse that goes like this: There’s obviously method in his madness. This evening, a current of many concerns are swirling together. It feels like mayhem or madness because we have the first Sunday of Lent and today/this weekend marks the end of the Novena of Grace [if you had come last Sunday, it was the 3rd day of the Novena, today being the 9th]. The context of this Novena is the Jubilee Year which also coincides with 50 years of Jesuit presence here. Historically, the Society of Jesus has been here far longer because St Francis Xavier was the first to establish a Jesuit presence in Malacca. Sadly, that presence was not continuous. [All we have are a sign board from the Antiquities Dept confirming that St Paul’s Hill belonged to the Society of Jesus and a tombstone of a Jesuit Bishop who probably died on the way to Japan].

In this circle of seemingly conflicting concerns, what is the method? How are the Novena, the Jubilee Year, the Jesuit presence and the 1st Sunday of Lent linked?

They are linked to a person whom we encounter in the desert. Right after His baptism, Christ entered the desert of purification. The three temptations correspond to the three evangelical vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. We think that the evangelical vows are for religious but, in actual fact, they are antidotes against avarice [poverty against greed], lust [chastity against giving in to seduction of comfort and mistaking this world to be heaven] and pride [obedience against arrogance]. There in the desert, Christ was purifying Himself for His mission—a mission that did not come from Himself. The connexion between purification and mission will help us find the method.

But, the method is not to be found in an idea. It is not even found in a vision or even a dream. There is no selling of an idea here and if at all this can be considered “selling”, the method is point out this person to you: Christ Himself.

An idea, a vision or a dream can leave you short. Ideas are what ideologies are made of. It is true that there may be different ideologies about Christ. For example, the last 50 years or thereabout we have been bludgeoned with an image that Christ was really a 1st century revolutionary—what we would call a “political agitator”. Many were sold on this idea that He came to “upset” the status quo and some bought into the band-wagon of “anti-establishment”.

That might have been a correct image of who Christ really was. He could have been this teacher of morality, a political maestro or an idealistic rabbi who stood against the establishment of the day. But, reflect upon what happened during the first wave of this movement for historical accuracy, called the Quest for the Historical Jesus. The best representative of this first wave was Albert Schweitzer, the great African explorer, missionary and doctor. They were trying to uncover the “real” Jesus stripped of all the theological coatings that theology had painted on him. But, their scholarly search stumbled only upon a Christ whose portrait resembled the one searching for Him.

For us living through a period of upheaval, it is not difficult to find a Jesus who reflects the longings of our era—a “liberator”. If there is one thing which the Quest has taught us, it is this: the “Quest” even though historically, and therefore, scientifically motivated, it was not entirely “objective” because each scholar's version of Jesus often seemed to reflect the personal ideals of the scholar.

So, how do we know who Christ is? That was why a chapel specifically for adoration was built. I know that this answer sounds stupid. But, we built a chapel where the Presence of Christ could be felt. Of course, He is present everywhere. But, this is the point. You receive Holy Communion. I would like to believe that as many as there are people here who receive Holy Communion, everyone is united in this belief: It is not just a piece of white bread but it is none other than Christ Himself that one is receiving. That is how we know Christ. Where do we find this Christ?

Richard Neuhaus once said: The world desperately needs the Church to be Church, not “do” Church differently. The theme for the Jubilee says this: As Church in faithfulness to Christ. As I have said before, the sinfulness of the sons and daughters of the Church does not erase the fact that the Church that was founded by Christ on the rock of Peter would withstand the test of time. The remains faithful to Christ. So, different fads may provide different “flavours” of Jesus if you like, but what remains is that any genuine encounter of Christ is through the sacraments and supremely the Sacrament of the Great Encounter is the Eucharist. Where does one confect the Eucharist if not at Mass? Thus, the Church confects the Eucharist, the Eucharist makes the Church—the Church is where you meet the same Christ.

So, the Mass is the great encounter and the Chapel we built is the prolongation of the encounter. Perhaps you may understand why we had the 1000-hour prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Fads will come and go but “Iesus Christus heri et hodie ipse et in saecula”—we adore the same Jesus Christ yesterday, today and forever.

Fashion is faddishly fickle. It will change but the only constant we have is the encounter with Christ through His sacraments. And this brings our method to the mission.—a mission that is of concern to us in the last 100 years or thereabout. Since the Industrial Revolution we have become more acutely aware of the injustice that exist amongst us. Christ was indeed prophetic when He said that the poor we will always have with us. I want to be clear that this prophecy was not a canonisation of “injustice”. Saying that the poor will always be with us is not the same as saying that the poor ought to be with us.

Instead, by His life, Christ brought the good news of salvation. He came to save us not only from eternal damnation but also to liberate us from the yokes of injustice. This mission has become our concern. It a crucial mission because the Church adopted a preferential option for the poor.

By now, you can see that we are concerned, and should be if we follow Christ, with our mission to and service of the poor. Ours—this parish and if you follow Jesuit spirituality—is supposed to be a faith that does justice. Translated, it is Christ and our love for Him which animates our actions for the poor. Otherwise, our actions on behalf of the poor will be nothing but expressions an ideology. The Communist tried to create a just and equitable society but where are they now? When ideology fails, where do we turn to? Thus, faith in Christ is necessary if Christianity is not perverted into a form of social ideology. In our era, Communism is Christianity without Christ.

In conclusion, I have been with you for nearly 10 years now. If I should die tomorrow, a fifth of my life would have been spent on forging a way for you to encounter Christ because your encounter with Him is the sine qua non, the one thing necessary before you take up His mission. There is a gulf of a difference between knowing the mission of Christ and the Christ of your mission. May this Jubilee be the grace of crossing from merely knowing the mission of Christ to an intense encounter of Christ Himself so that your every endeavour will be sustained by nothing but the deep love for Christ.

Novena of Grace of St. Francis Xavier (Day 8) Friday after Ash Wednesday 11th March 2011

Today is the 8th Day of the Novena of Grace and what areas have we covered so far? The thread through the last seven days has centred broadly on the call to holiness. This universal call demands that we draw lines. The boundary of holiness does not stop at the personal. It requires that we enlarge what is called the civilised public space for common existence—the space where mankind may flourish and civilisation may exist. Otherwise, we might sink into oblivion. But, in drawing the line for public engagement, we are at the same time drawing lines for sacred space. This space is sacramental in the sense that protecting this space shows our effort at allowing God to be God. The presence of sacred space indicates our respect for God’s sovereignty.

Second, holiness is linked to martyrdom. When we draw lines resisting compromise, we indicate a desire to be part of a great cloud of witnesses and that we on our part are willing to pay the price of witnessing, if necessary, with our blood. Accepting that we pay a price for holiness, we entered a reflexion that holiness is living truthfully and truth is defined not as a thing but rather a person Jesus Christ. Holiness consists of knowing Him, witnessing to Him and becoming Him who is the Truth. In trying to live the truth, holiness urges us to take responsibility for our decisions and actions instead of blaming others. Yesterday, I spoke on how the line of holiness that we draw must comes from a vision that extends beyond this world.

On Monday itself, we commemorated two martyrs of the early Church—Perpetua and Felicity. Today, we will revisit a topic which is close to their experience of martyrdom. For many of us, martyrdom would never be the price we pay. It is suffering. The embrace of an other-worldly vision will certainly involve suffering.

Suffering is a reality alien to so many of us. This sad state may be explained by the fact that we have trimmed our sails and settled into a more comfortable cruise called Christianity Lite.

In Christianity Lite, there is no place for suffering. Before you think that here I am advocating suffering, let me assure you that I am not. For example, I am not speaking of suffering arising from injustice as we heard in the first reading—strike the poor man with your fist. There is a difference between pain and suffering. Some pains are self-inflicted as when people make unreasonable demands on themselves, on others and on God. When our demands or expectations are not met, we experience pain. Furthermore, a dissolute life has consequences. But, this type of pain is not suffering because it can be managed—one’s expectations or changing one’s way of life.

Suffering, on the other hand, can only be embraced. Pain can be managed as in adjusting our unreasonable demands or it can be alleviated through medical means. However, we can only control pain up to a certain point. Beyond that, what? When one has taken all healthy precaution, one enters into the desert of suffering. Here in this desert, the only fitting companion is courage. Courage is no stranger to suffering because only with courage can suffering be embraced.

Why should we embrace suffering? Pain and especially suffering are not necessarily evil. If they were, then, they cannot fit into God’s plan of salvation. Instead, pain and therefore suffering is part of life after original sin. Take it at the level of the human cell. Its life may be described as a journey of pain and suffering. Why? Cells age and they die. A reason why there is a perception that existence or life is more “painful” is because this generation called “Body Beautiful” has unreasonably expected that bodies do not age or die. Or if you prefer a global outlook, take a look at the planets. We wonder where God is whenever a catastrophe befalls us, the recent being Christchurch where many lives have been lost and the latest, just two hours or so, a strong tsunami swept Sendai, Japan. Compare planet Earth with planet Mars. Mars is a dead planet, never mind the earthling obsessive search for water and life on the Red Planet. On Earth, the so-called presence of “suffering” is a sign of a living planet.

Thus, a good way to understand the presence of pain and suffering is this: The absence of God results in pain and suffering but pain and suffering are not proofs of God’s absence.

Thus, when Christ came to save us all, He did not come to liberate us from pain. He came to save us from eternal damnation and ultimate suffering is defined as the loss of eternal life. So, He who is sinless took upon Himself our suffering in order that we might gain eternal life. You can perhaps appreciate why not all suffering is evil.

According to John Paul II in his letter on suffering, he says that “Christ in bringing about human redemption through suffering has raised human suffering to the level of redemption”. It means that all of us that by virtue of sharing in Christ’s redemption, we also share in the world of suffering.

Human suffering, something which is beyond our control, is also a way out of our modern conundrum—the alienation created by our lonely existence. Do you remember that many of us were glued to the TV when we woke up on 26th December 2004? For some reasons, we were taken up by the sheer size of the catastrophe and the magnitude of the misery. But, a doctor took time off from his practice and he went there to serve those most afflicted. And there were many who did the same. Human suffering opens the way to human solidarity. Today, a solipsistic and solitary world is crying out for solidarity.

There on the Cross, Christ achieves the definitive solidarity that Man has longed for. As He stretched His arms on the Cross, He not only opened for us the road to salvation but He made it possible for humanity to stand in solidarity with one another. Therefore, our membership in the Body of Christ, through our suffering helps secure redemption. “In Christ, our suffering is not only human but also supernatural. It is human because, in suffering, we discover ourselves, our own humanity, dignity and mission. It is supernatural because it is rooted in the divine mystery of the Redemption of the world”.

In conclusion, let me rephrase what I said earlier that suffering is a reality alien to us. The truth is, suffering is not alien to us. We just do not want it.

Novena of Grace of St. Francis Xavier (Day 7) Thursday after Ash Wednesday 10th March 2011

The Lord is kind. In a sense, this statement is tautological because it is stating the obvious. Examples of tautology are colloquial expressions “repeat again” or “cuba try” [Malay, cuba = try] are tautological. He is kind because we are eating tonight. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. It was not appropriate to “mark” the Novena. Tomorrow is Friday and we keep the “no meat” on Friday for the sake of universality. There is something to be said about “No Meat on Friday". A world that meanders aimlessly through the wastelands of vulgar democracy, "No Meat on Friday" is badge we wear with a certain humility. Let me be clear that I am not against democracy. Vulgar democracy tends to “democratise” diversity—to the point that nothing is important. What does it mean? Relativist ideology tells us that there are as many truths as there are the number of people here. “What is true for you is true for you and what is true for me is true for me”… I know I sound repetitious and annoying. But think further, this so-called pluralist [many] ideology not only relativises but also reduces your voice to a no voice. The crass democracy of ideas when relativised make the world a lonelier world. Nobody can really share your believe—because everything is true—like the idiocy that all religions are the same. Well, I hold on to something as sacred even if it does not really speak to me because of the universal Church. That was why I wore the ashes yesterday… not because I am holy but because I am proud to see other Catholics, sinners like I am, walking around, proclaiming not their holiness but our common need of repentance and forgiveness. Today we are thankful for the Gospel because it ties in with the so-called evening gathering after Mass—it is simple because it reflects Lent. So let me dive in. How does it tie in? The first reading is a kind of repetition of last Sunday’s first. Moses set before the people choices. Choose life and blessing. The Gospel echoes this imperative that we choose and it ties in with our Novena of Grace OF St Francis Xavier. Accordingly, Francis was an ambitious young noble destined for worldly success until he met a man from a world totally unfamiliar to him. As in when two worlds collide, one was aggressive whereas the other was gentle. Francis resisted valiantly with contempt and ridicule even as Ignatius reached out humbly with kindness until one, when the aggression was sufficiently tamed, Ignatius proposed what we have in the Gospel today: “What gain, then, is it for a man to win the world and to have lost or ruined his very self?” In Francis, Ignatius discerned a soul not unfamiliar with nobility and open before his very eyes a vision of honour not determined by this world. Francis was challenged to draw his line of honour beyond the world that he can see. If glory was what he sought, then he should seek a glory which does not vanish like a dream. It was then that Francis gave himself over to Ignatius and through Ignatius, he began on the road to holy enlightenment. The very drive he had for the world was converted into a passion for the things of God. The passion for things of God can only be achieved through an interior battle to mortify his “flesh” and to bring all his sense under control. How is Francis’ conversion relevant to us? First, Francis himself is an embodiment of a vision not unlike ours. In itself, there is nothing wrong with this vision except that it leads ultimately to emptiness. The riches of the world is a promise which at the beginning will come across as fulfilling. It is when one has reached the pinnacle that further questions need to be asked. How did I come here? What have I given up or what have I taken in order to arrive here? What else after this? The sense of fulfilment that Francis sought was not to be found in this world. Thus, those who think that the ultimate in this world would be satisfactory would be driven to search for the rainbow’s end. Second, Ignatius brought the shadows of Francis’ passion into light. He gave him a vision which puts to pale everything that could be passionately achieved. In the end, Francis saw the world through Ignatian lens where the Blessed Trinity, seeing the world in need of salvation, decides that the 2nd person should become man to save the human race. It was this vision that sustained Francis’ endeavours in this part of the world. This is the second day of Lent. Yesterday we put on ashes, and for some it begins a forty days of “whatever”… no liquid diet (meaning nothing more than 5% alcohol), no misdemeanour, no gambling, no smoking, no chocolates, no face-booking any number of “noes”. For some of us, a “no” can be cosmetic. Before you think I am ridiculing your Lenten practices, let me assure you that I am not. Instead I would like to make sense of what you do during Lent in the light of Francis’ leaving Europe for Asia. Unlike modern migration, Francis was not looking for a better life in Asia. He came to share the vision of another life. St Peter in his first epistle, one of the so-called Catholic epistles, Catholic not in the sense of the “Catholic” Church, but Catholic in the sense that it was addressed not to a particular community. It was addressed to the “whole” Church. St Peter’s letter was descriptive of the early Church—a sense of alienation. He speaks of their existence by using two Greek words: Parapaedemoi and paraokoi. They sound alien until you realise that the word economy has its roots in one of them. He used them interchangeably and can be translated as wandering sojourners and alien residents. A good contemporary word is “refugee”—Christians are the original “Pendatangs”. In a sense we are refugees/pendatangs because Christians live for another world. Our vision is of that world. But, what have we? We have acclimatised, naturalised and we have grown roots too deep. There are two groups of people here. First, there are those who defend their rights to be here of the good old days. Second, there are those who look for the greener pastures—herons flying south. Both actually live for the now thinking that the promised land is here and now and can be attainable in this life. Penances make no sense at all. God does not need appeasement. What He desires is that we go home. All acts of “penances” only make sense because we are supposed to be agile enough for the next world. They are undertaken not for themselves… if they were, then they are cosmetics. Holiness is a journey to that world. England, Australia, Malaysia, United States or anywhere that takes your fancy, no matter how comfortable, how durable, how conducive and most of all, how desirable this world is nothing but a glorified bus-stop.

Novena of Grace of St. Francis Xavier (Day 6) Ash Wednesday 9th March 2011

You know, homilies are funny creatures. There are times when in the toilet, I get brilliant inspiration and I would be waxing lyrical crafting what I would vainly think, a lofty homily. But come the time to commit to pen and paper, all heavenly ideas disappear like the proverbial will-o’-the-wisp. It is enormously frustrating. Anyway, let me begin with a story, a true one because it involved me.

I was out for movie. It was a midnight movie. [If you regularly keep an 18-hour day, midnight is the only time for recreation]. Seated the row behind me but a couple of seats to my left was a gaggle of giggly girls. They were talking. You know that type of conversation which comes from “You must know that I am here”. [Like on mobile phone in a lift or on the LRT]. They carrried on talking loudly because we have come to tolerate such behaviour. As the movie started they showed no sign of abating. I mimicked our universal sound for silence: shhhh… Well, you guess it. One of them shushed me back and they carried on talking. Then in my best Tamil slang, I turned around, raised my voice a little and said, “Oi, [censored], diamlah”. (Hey, [expletive], shut up). That caught my two companions by surprise. But judging from the general laughter, it seemed that I had done the right thing for soon we settled placidly into watching the movie. Did I get it right? Not the settling into the movie part but shutting them up?

Today, we continue to tread the path to holiness. Appropriately, it is Ash Wednesday and so we shall speak of sin—not so much the act of sinning or the sin but rather the responsibility for sin. Our world today is troubled not as much by sins or the prevalence of sins as it is by the lack of responsibility for sins. At the time of the incident, it was funny but I am not proud of what I did. The point is this. No matter how extenuating the circumstances may have been, still it was unwarranted that I should have used an expletive. In my defence, I could claim: “Those stupid girls made me do it”. The blame-game is as old as Adam. “The woman made me eat the apple”. We live in a world that has shrugged off personal responsibility and we have assumed blaming to be reason for our actions—from blaming my parents to blaming my spouse to blaming everyone else. Without breaking the seal of Confession, do you know how often priests hear Confessions of details that a so-called sin was caused by someone else. Many of us do not see the connexion between blaming others and mental illness. What do lawyers do when they want to absolve their clients of a crime? They advise the client to plead insanity.

We have come full circle from the ancient philosophy of sin as a cause of diseases to illness as the excuse for one’s sin. The point is, “others” may be mitigating factors but the buck needs to stop somewhere. Ultimately there must be one who sins. There is a term which you may have heard of. It is called “affective maturity”. It is not just about emotions but also about the ability to enter into relationships. An important criterion of affective maturity is taking responsibility of not only your emotions but also your decisions and actions. According to a priest involved in the Marriage Tribunal, gross immaturity is frequently the ground for annulment. And here, it has nothing to do with great accomplishment, intelligence or success. On the contrary, many who apply for annulment are intelligent and successful and yet, the dysfunctional patterns of their relationship often betray an inability to accept responsibility. Thus, the annulment process is really rehabilitative in this sense. It allows the person to take responsibility for his or her past actions.

But, unfortunately what happens is that sometimes both parties will be blaming the other for the state of the failed marriage. The Church’s canonical sanctions are pastoral and catechetical. It is never punitive. Instead it is rehabilitative. Society at large reacts to the Church—either it is too soft [as in the case of paedophilia] or too harsh [especially the excommunications]. Those who think it is too soft believe that sinners should be locked up and keys thrown away. But, there is always a way home.

Have you seen Assumption Church’s car sticker? It says: God allows U-turns. To those who think that we are too harsh, canonical sanctions are meant to impress upon us the gravity of our actions. If actions have no consequences, it becomes a licence for sin. With sanction always comes an invitation for the sinner to return home. Some parts of our penal system attempts to reflect the rehabilitative dimension of the Church but more and more, it draws the line when it comes to the death penalty. People cannot be forgiven and neither can they be rehabilitated. The only solution is to be rid of them. But, without the possibility of “rehabilitation” there is no possibility of taking responsibility.

The Church has a role even more crucial in this post-modern world. She tries to give clear moral guidance so that we may take responsibility for our actions. Why? When Modernity came, the world came to equate “intelligence” or “rationality” with morality, in the sense that, what was possible was also moral. For example, just because we can produce test-tube babies means it is OK. But, Modernity was a dismal failure because rationality did not prevent two great wars. And now we are in Post-Modernity which is a reaction to Modernity and its basic principle: if rationality did not prevent us from sinking into barbarism, “Why bother now”? This explains much of our chaos.

Today is Ash Wednesday—a time to appreciate the gravity of our actions. Have I sinned or not? Note that Communion is denied to those who are not baptised or are in a state of serious sin, whereas the imposition of ashes does not discriminate. Why? Because everyone is a sinner and therefore in need of saving grace. Imposition of ashes is only symbolic and it will remain as such unless one takes responsibility for one’s sin. The 2nd Reading says: For our sake, God made the sinless one into sin. Christ the truly innocent one took on the responsibility for our sins and paid for it on the cross. Since we are not Christ and therefore cannot do it for others, should we not do it just for ourselves? For Christ’s sake. [Footnote: Coming back to expletives—bad words, four-letter words, etc. Its pervasiveness in the broadcast media may be an indication of how dumb-down world has become which explains why we cannot take responsibility for our actions. In fact we are so dumb-down that we have come to believe that big, loud and strong are the only ways to express ourselves. So, a “real” movie has to have loud noise, car chase, destruction and mayhem. But, scholarship has something to do with contemplation—what I said yesterday about knowledge. Silence, unseen and the ordinary allow us to step back and think things through. I guess the contemplative religious have something to teach us. Behind their walls they stand as a fortress for civilisation. Once I was called up by Fr Paul Tan then. He told me that there was a complaint against me. I had been liberal in the use of expletives. I told him, quite cheekily, I like Cantonese because their expletives sound like music to my ears. Music or not, the liberal use of expletives is a symptom of stupidity. I am brought to mind Winston Churchill. It seemed that a certain Lady Nancy Astor once said to him, “Winston, if I were your wife, I’d poison your tea”. And, his response was simply: “Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it”. He did not resort to calling her by names and even if he did, it was done with style. A certain Bessie Braddock accused him: “Sir, you are drunk”. Churchill’s response was, “And you, madam, are ugly. But in the morning, I shall be sober”. Today, our response to anything disagreeable is simply crass and unrefined. How to be civilised?

Novena of Grace of St. Francis Xavier (Day 5) Tuesday 8th March 2011 9th Week in Ordinary Time Year I

The Gospel this evening is helpful to our Novena reflexion. The setting consisted of the religious bureaucracy [chief priests and elders], the spiritual elite [Pharisees], the scholars [scribes] and the partisans of a puppet ruler [Herodians]. It was a setting best described as practical political prostitution because they all had different agendas and ordinarily they had no reasons to come together. But in the interest of taking Christ down, they came together under the guise of honesty, under the guise of searching for what was true. The answer of Christ cut through their hypocrisy.

Thus, the Gospel setting leads us down another path of holiness. Holiness is related to truth. In a sense, the authorities were doing the right thing even though the intention was questionable. Holiness is living the truth because to know the truth is to act on it. What was hypocritical of this expedient religio-political group was that they had no intention of living the truth.

So what does it mean to live the truth? To answer this question, we need to clarify three things. Firstly, how do we come to know. This is not easy at all. In fact, in the current climate of post-modernism, forging consensus is made difficult by “how” we arrive at the truth. Our present day theory of knowledge largely defines the act of knowing as a subjective act. In a relativist paradise, this rule is ultimately expressed as “What I know as true is true for me”. But, knowledge is never merely a subjective act of the individual because the act of knowing is objective in the sense that the community also participates in the act of knowing. That is why knowing is inter-subjective, meaning that it is “objective”—that it can be brought out into the open. If we follow the ancient philosophers of Greece, knowledge is always of the truth. Therefore, the act of knowing and the object known are both objective in the sense that how we arrive at and what we arrive at must be open to question. Thus, to know is an objective endeavour because it is not dependent on how I think or what I feel.

Secondly, what is truth? Again, to define “truth” is to sink into a philosophical quagmire. Yet we must. Truth “is” and that is why knowledge is of the truth. Knowledge is of what “is”—meaning, of reality. Therefore, truth, if it is to be true, has to be the same for all of us, rendering the earlier adage “what is true for you is not true for me” as really untenable. And yet, many in this post-modern world hold on to this relativistic position. In a space as big as this church, there are as many “truths” as there is the number of people.

But all is not lost because thirdly, knowledge is never for itself. To know truth is not just to know “something”. Thus, the knowledge, which is of the truth, serves a purpose. For example, knowing that there is a drain in front of you means taking appropriate measures to avoid falling into the drain.

When I was younger, I used to like “facts”. You know, "the capital of Zimbabwe is Harare and the former name of Zimbabwe is Rhodesia”. This form of “knowledge” serves a purpose, that is, knowledge is power and knowing and rattling facts can be quite impressive. But, I have stopped watching any of these “knowledge” documentaries because the purpose of this type of knowing is simply a form of gluttony.

Knowledge serves a purpose and it is more than just “naked” power. Knowledge serves a purpose and it is about change. Let me pause for a recap. Both the act of knowing and what is known must be objective. This actually ties in with what I have said in days past. The drive to know is a rational endeavour because it takes me into the public arena—the space we call reason or discourse. Thus, if knowledge is not just for itself, then it must serve the purpose of changing people for the better; otherwise it is nothing but intellectual gluttony—an expression of an insatiable appetite to know—akin to the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder of “hoarding”.

Truth changes us and because it changes people for the better, it leads us to make difficult decisions such as to accept, to forgive and to love. Here, we are brought back to the Gospel. The group that posed Christ the question wanted to know but was not willing to change with what they have come to discover. Truth serves no purpose for them. Were they really after the truth that liberates or just information to destroy? [For many of us, information to store, to hoard for this future use which might never come].

In this respect, we have a lot to reflect on the purpose which comes with knowing. First, to know always involves change. It cannot rest merely at the “grasping” of what can be known. Let me give an example—the innocuous pastime called gossip. People who engage in gossiping always believe that they have “truth” on their side. When chided, a response you might hear is “It is true what…”. Even though there is “truth” in gossips, the question to ask is what sort of purpose do they serve? Is it to disseminate so-called “truth” or is it just an “assertion” of power since knowledge is power? [People use “information” or knowledge to blackmail or to destroy]. Gossips serve no purpose except to feed our salacious appetite to know. In the end, gossips, instead of leading us to ethical behaviour will end up destroying the community. To further illustrate the point that truth involves change, let us take a look at marriage. A spouse may be overly eager to know the truth about the husband or wife’s fidelity or infidelity. So check on the SMSes, emails etc. The more important question is what will he or she do with the unpleasant truth? Will the knowledge save the marriage? Humbly I submit that I know enough marriages to know that that kind of “need to know” does not help marriages. Here, I am not counselling blissful ignorance. I am saying that if you are not ready to know, then it does not help to know.

Because, we often think that truth is about transparency and disclosure. A crucial criterion for transparency is whether a disclosure would be constructive. Only then will truth become liberating. In a way, I am glad that the penalty for a priest breaking the Seal of Confession is excommunication. Why? In Confession, we know a lot of secrets—truths—about peoples’ lives. And yet, we have no right to disclose no matter how true that may be and even if we should be put to death.

In the end, if holiness is living the truth, the question to ask is not what “truth” is. It would be good to realise that truth is not a “thing” to know. Truth is a person to know: Jesus Christ. He does not hover behind the truth. He is the truth and Christian holiness consists of knowing Him who is THE truth, witnessing to Him who is the Truth and becoming Him who is the Truth.

The Gospel this evening is helpful to our Novena reflexion. The setting consisted of the religious bureaucracy [chief priests and elders], the spiritual elite [Pharisees], the scholars [scribes] and the partisans of a puppet ruler [Herodians]. It was a setting best described as practical political prostitution because they all had different agendas and ordinarily they had no reasons to come together. But in the interest of taking Christ down, they came together under the guise of honesty, under the guise of searching for what was true. The answer of Christ cut through their hypocrisy.

Thus, the Gospel setting leads us down another path of holiness. Holiness is related to truth. In a sense, the authorities were doing the right thing even though the intention was questionable. Holiness is living the truth because to know the truth is to act on it. What was hypocritical of this expedient religio-political group was that they had no intention of living the truth.

So what does it mean to live the truth? To answer this question, we need to clarify three things. Firstly, how do we come to know. This is not easy at all. In fact, in the current climate of post-modernism, forging consensus is made difficult by “how” we arrive at the truth. Our present day theory of knowledge largely defines the act of knowing as a subjective act. In a relativist paradise, this rule is ultimately expressed as “What I know as true is true for me”. But, knowledge is never merely a subjective act of the individual because the act of knowing is objective in the sense that the community also participates in the act of knowing. That is why knowing is inter-subjective, meaning that it is “objective”—that it can be brought out into the open. If we follow the ancient philosophers of Greece, knowledge is always of the truth. Therefore, the act of knowing and the object known are both objective in the sense that how we arrive at and what we arrive at must be open to question. Thus, to know is an objective endeavour because it is not dependent on how I think or what I feel.

Secondly, what is truth? Again, to define “truth” is to sink into a philosophical quagmire. Yet we must. Truth “is” and that is why knowledge is of the truth. Knowledge is of what “is”—meaning, of reality. Therefore, truth, if it is to be true, has to be the same for all of us, rendering the earlier adage “what is true for you is not true for me” as really untenable. And yet, many in this post-modern world hold on to this relativistic position. In a space as big as this church, there are as many “truths” as there is the number of people.

But all is not lost because thirdly, knowledge is never for itself. To know truth is not just to know “something”. Thus, the knowledge, which is of the truth, serves a purpose. For example, knowing that there is a drain in front of you means taking appropriate measures to avoid falling into the drain.

When I was younger, I used to like “facts”. You know, "the capital of Zimbabwe is Harare and the former name of Zimbabwe is Rhodesia”. This form of “knowledge” serves a purpose, that is, knowledge is power and knowing and rattling facts can be quite impressive. But, I have stopped watching any of these “knowledge” documentaries because the purpose of this type of knowing is simply a form of gluttony.

Knowledge serves a purpose and it is more than just “naked” power. Knowledge serves a purpose and it is about change. Let me pause for a recap. Both the act of knowing and what is known must be objective. This actually ties in with what I have said in days past. The drive to know is a rational endeavour because it takes me into the public arena—the space we call reason or discourse. Thus, if knowledge is not just for itself, then it must serve the purpose of changing people for the better; otherwise it is nothing but intellectual gluttony—an expression of an insatiable appetite to know—akin to the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder of “hoarding”.

Truth changes us and because it changes people for the better, it leads us to make difficult decisions such as to accept, to forgive and to love. Here, we are brought back to the Gospel. The group that posed Christ the question wanted to know but was not willing to change with what they have come to discover. Truth serves no purpose for them. Were they really after the truth that liberates or just information to destroy? [For many of us, information to store, to hoard for this future use which might never come].

In this respect, we have a lot to reflect on the purpose which comes with knowing. First, to know always involves change. It cannot rest merely at the “grasping” of what can be known. Let me give an example—the innocuous pastime called gossip. People who engage in gossiping always believe that they have “truth” on their side. When chided, a response you might hear is “It is true what…”. Even though there is “truth” in gossips, the question to ask is what sort of purpose do they serve? Is it to disseminate so-called “truth” or is it just an “assertion” of power since knowledge is power? [People use “information” or knowledge to blackmail or to destroy]. Gossips serve no purpose except to feed our salacious appetite to know. In the end, gossips, instead of leading us to ethical behaviour will end up destroying the community. To further illustrate the point that truth involves change, let us take a look at marriage. A spouse may be overly eager to know the truth about the husband or wife’s fidelity or infidelity. So check on the SMSes, emails etc. The more important question is what will he or she do with the unpleasant truth? Will the knowledge save the marriage? Humbly I submit that I know enough marriages to know that that kind of “need to know” does not help marriages. Here, I am not counselling blissful ignorance. I am saying that if you are not ready to know, then it does not help to know.

Because, we often think that truth is about transparency and disclosure. A crucial criterion for transparency is whether a disclosure would be constructive. Only then will truth become liberating. In a way, I am glad that the penalty for a priest breaking the Seal of Confession is excommunication. Why? In Confession, we know a lot of secrets—truths—about peoples’ lives. And yet, we have no right to disclose no matter how true that may be and even if we should be put to death.

In the end, if holiness is living the truth, the question to ask is not what “truth” is. It would be good to realise that truth is not a “thing” to know. Truth is a person to know: Jesus Christ. He does not hover behind the truth. He is the truth and Christian holiness consists of knowing Him who is THE truth, witnessing to Him who is the Truth and becoming Him who is the Truth.

Novena of Grace of St. Francis Xavier (Day 4) Monday 7th March 2011 Ss Perpetua and Felicity

There are eight women mentioned in the Roman Canon or the Eucharistic Prayer I. The first woman is mentioned before the consecration. “In union with the whole Church, we honour Mary, the ever-virgin Mother of Jesus Christ our Lord and God”. This evening we celebrate two of the other seven: Perpetua and Felicity.

They were five of them martyred together in the 3rd Century. It sounds a bit distant from Apostolic times till you realise that they were martyred at latest circa AD210, a hundred years or so after John’s Gospel was written. Who were they?

According to a historical account, violent persecutions broke out during the reign of Emperor Severus. [With a name like Severus, how could it not be severe, you ask yourself]. Five catechumens were detained for the faith in Carthage. [Present-day Carthage is a ruin in the capital city of Tunisia]. Today we celebrate the memorial of both Perpetua and Felicity. The details of their martyrdom have reached us through a contemporary account—namely of Perpetua herself. It came from her own diary. She was of noble rank. Her companion, Felicity was a slave. Perpetua had just given birth and was suckling. Felicity was with child but gave birth just two days before the games—the day their execution took place. Both were baptised whilst in captivity.

They remained faithful to the teachings of the Apostles even though they were catechumens and for that reason they are relevant to us.

Consider the circumstances surrounding their ordeal. All through her imprisonment, Perpetua was tempted in the person of her father for he consistently begged her to apostatise. However, she was concerned for the well being of her infant and upon knowing that the child was in good hands she said, “The prison has been made a palace for me”. Imagine Felicity, who was rather apprehensive that she would not be granted the grace of martyrdom since Roman law forbade the execution of pregnant women. In the end, she was able to give up her child to a Christian woman.

The details of their martyrdom as described by Perpetua herself are not what we are accustomed to. Would you not consider Felicity’s apprehension a bit bizarre? But, that is fundamentally what it entails when one remains faithful. The teaching of the Apostles is more or less set, in the sense that it is there. It is being faithful that exacts a price to be paid. Are we willing to pay the price or is Christian martyrdom a dead language?

We may or may not be aware that martyrdom is alive. Not a few days ago, Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s Minister for Minorities, a Catholic, was gunned down. In different parts of the world, Christians have had to pay the ultimate price for their faith in Jesus Christ. According to the Vatican, between 2001 and 2008, more than 130 Catholics, who are known, have shed blood for the faith. Many more could be hidden.

If Christian martyrdom is not a dead language, perhaps, our not being acquainted with it, explains why it remains unreal for many of us. Yet, according to those attuned to it, Christian martyrdom today remains one of the greatest untold stories. John Paul II himself described that at the end of the last century, the Church had once again become a Church of the martyrs.

For us to appreciate martyrdom, we really need to hear more stories of Christian struggles. Unfortunately, we top the mock list and to be fair, in some cases we do deserve it. But, in the category of fair recognition, not so much for the sake of triumphalism, we come in last. It means that the media is often silent in the case of Christians dying heroically. The stories of Christian struggle are often told in silence.

Perhaps, the readings themselves may help us understand why it is that we are not so acquainted with martyrdom. They basically tell us that it does not pay to be good. Poor Tobias, despite his goodness, still went blind. The landowner, in his kindness leased out his land, only to have his son killed. In short, it does not pay to sacrifice.

Negative media and the lack of heroism have contributed to a dampening of our spirit of sacrifice. Furthermore, we also shy away from sacrifice because sacrifice takes the shape of suffering. Unless we accept this, the idea of dying for someone else, let alone for Christ remains unreal.

The last few days I have been speaking about holiness and how a notion that we often associate with those who are far removed from reality is really accessible to all of us. So, here by speaking of the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity, am I backtracking? Because, by all appearances, martyrdom seems to be inaccessible. But, au contraire, martyrdom and holiness are essentially linked. Although holiness comes within the reach of every Christian, it comes with a price. That price is martyrdom. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian put to death by the Nazis, once said that grace is not cheap. Every day when we decide to live a life of holiness, when we draw lines and resist compromising, we enter into the territory of martyrdom for that is what it really means: witnessing. There is something about holiness that is beautiful; likewise martyrdom. Its beauty can never be hidden. That is when we move from private Christian living to public Christian holiness. I believe all the martyrs recognise this beauty. To the world it may seem like a valueless piece of stone. But, to the enlightened, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Hence, sanguis martyrum - semen christianorum, the blood of martyr is the seed of faith.

Novena of Grace of St. Francis Xavier (Day 3) Sunday 6th March 2011 9th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A

Let me recap for those who were not here yesterday and for those who were, consider this a repetitive synopsis.

Yesterday, I spoke about drawing lines as both Moses and Christ did in the first reading and Gospel. In relation to drawing lines, I mentioned about the pervasiveness of the gated communities as a form of drawing lines. Unfortunately, we have drawn them too short. We have made personal security to be the line that defines us. What happens when the lines of personal safety that we have drawn are breached? Where do we run to and what happens to the self?

The answer must lie in enlarging the public sphere without which we cannot exist as a civilised people. This space must be reclaimed by all and for all so that public discourse and meaningful interactions may take place. Otherwise, we will have to retreat behind the anonymous walls of twittering, blogging and face-booking and from there, shout into the void called the public arena. It is when we do not claim this public space for all that those who believe that "might is right" will flourish. That is why tyranny and dictatorship exist.

The word alone is not really a “lonesome” word. Alone does not mean “alone”. Instead, alone means that one is not with others. In effect, the need to be alone throws the individual back into the community—otherwise known as the public space—against which one can claim the privacy or solitude needed. The Gospel today urges us to listen to Christ’s words and act on them. What do listening and acting mean if not living in the public arena? Holiness does not cordon us from the world or cocoon us into what is merely our personal space but brings us into the heart of the public square where the battle for Christ is fought and won. And to do that, we must draw the lines for public arena to exist. In doing so, we are not drawing lines in order to be self-righteous. Instead, we are drawing lines to be righteous for that is what it means to build our lives upon the rock of Christ. That was yesterday.

Today I would like to focus on drawing another line. This time it is the line for the sacred. Let me begin by calling your attention to the projection before Sunday Masses. One of the slides concerns propriety in dressing. Some people have reacted to it. Let me explain the context for the slide. It was printed about 4 years ago. It arose from the youths themselves who felt that people ought to be educated on their dressing. If you go to other parishes, you will find notices posted with details of what is or not accepted as appropriate. Why the long wait before we put it out? Even this recent putting up the slide and distributing the leaflets came as a request from the youth ministry.

The reluctance of putting up such a sign is due to the fact that we have not sufficiently accepted the necessity to draw a line for the sacred. So, this evening I would like to attempt an explanation of why we should.

Our society, in general, believes that lines or boundaries are not necessary to human interactions. Perhaps what is truer is that the lines or boundaries have already been decided according to a liberal agenda. From this perspective, the Church has often been viewed as having a fortress or siege mentality because she has some rigid boundaries. What happened after Vatican II, was a process of blurring the line between the sacred and the profane. This blurring continues—with regard to human reproduction, to marriage and to family. With regard to the Church, a nagging feeling that the Church is too rigid comes from this “blurring” that has taken place.

But consider this. When God created the heavens and the earth, all was in a formless mass. Then God drew a line between night and day. He drew a line between land and sea. He drew the greatest line between animals and Man. You know the creation story. Suffice to say that even God drew lines. He drew lines limiting His omnipotence in order that we may flourish and exercise freedom. Two things may be said of God’s limiting act. First, it was His prerogative to limit Himself. It does not say that we now have the right to behave more than our freedom allows. In short, it does not mean we get to play God. Second, the boundary that God demarcated was not absolute in the sense that God was absent. God has always been present but we on our part need to draw lines to allow God to be God.

There is a need to recover that line that return to God His sovereignty. We do it not because of who God is but more so because of who we are. Why? God does not need as if He were defective but we need to because we are limited and boundaries acknowledge the limits of our creatureliness.

The attempt to demarcate between the sacred, meaning God’s space and the profane, meaning our space, is sacramental because of who we are. We are sacramental whether we acknowledge it or not. Since we are not spirits, this is translated as giving God time and space. [1]

When we renovated the front porch, a baptismal pool was constructed at the entrance to symbolise the effect that the sacrament of baptism has. It opens the door to the other six sacraments. Without baptism, one cannot receive anointing of the sick, be confirmed, receive Holy Communion, or be ordained. What we use to show that it was a baptismal pool was basically a coconut matt. People were walking on it and wiping their shoes… that was because they did not know what was underneath. Today, there is a demarcation—a sense that this place which can open the door to all the other sacraments is sacred and it must be accorded the dignity befitting its sanctity.

The sacred or a sacred place reminds us that God is present. Sacred places are sacramental reminders that the profane world is shot through with the presence of God. Does it make sense that the early Christians recognised this and their acknowledgement resulted in the monumental and soaring spires of cathedrals and churches? [2]

I am never in favour of demarcating anything for itself. But, the only way to remember that God is everywhere is when we have sacred places. When St Augustine wrote the City of God, Civitas Dei, he was thinking of the City of Man as the preparation for the City of God. Today, we must not forget that drawing lines are important and much more, lines that demarcate sanctity or sacredness. They are measures of our preparation for the Civitas Dei.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] This idea that we can worship anywhere is not an absolute idea. It is relative simply because we are embodied spirits. Not forgetting that there is a space, not just any immaterial space, but real space for God is important. Our culture is pregnant with such spiritual presences—maybe not of the God we worship but of the “penunggus, the datuks, the keramats”. Whichever cultures we go to, there is always a sense of the presence of the sacred and that sense is marked off by time and space through what we called ritualised behaviour.
[2] What is more, civilisations can only flourish when God is present. Today, we have mistaken the prowess of progress to be the flourishing of civilisation. We seem to think that technological advancement is the only measure of civilisation. Is it?

Novena of Grace of St. Francis Xavier (Day 2) Saturday 5th March 2011 9th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

To those who did not come yesterday, let me recap a little of the 1st Day of the Novena of Grace. Otherwise, you might wonder why I seem to go off-tangent. I made a connexion between a trip to the former Jesuit Noviciate in Hong Kong, the Novena that we are in and the Jubilee Year of the parish—the connexion between these three is the universal call to holiness. This call is rooted in the mysteries of the Church and of Christ Himself. First, the Church is holy because Christ made her so. Second, Christ Himself preached holiness. The second mystery we can understand but the first about the Church being holy is where we may have difficulty with because of the sins of her children. Some cannot make a distinction between the Church, who is always holy, and Christians, who are not. And for some, this becomes an excuse for shirking the personal responsibility of responding to the call to be holy. Finally, holiness does not result from merely managing or changing sociological structures. For example, get rid of structures of injustice and we become holy. Instead, it requires a hard look at oneself as well as striving to make what is NOT of Christ in us disappear so that what is truly of Christ can appear. And for this enterprise we need Holy Mother the Church for she gives us Christ Himself through the sacraments.

Today the reading points us towards the space needed in order that the universal call to holiness may flourish. Let me tell what happened the other day and here I will revert into colloquialism and also use politically incorrect language. The other day I was going into the City for a function. I was with Fr Michael and just on the bridge turning into the Federal Highway, I saw what many of you may have seen and some of us may have done. A couple of cars ahead, I saw a window winding down and a bunched up ball of toilet tissue tossed out. I thought to myself, “So pariah lah, if want to litter, at least, throw out Kleenex lah”. Anyway, I was not about to let them go.

Well, prior to this incident, I was behind a BMW near to Amcorp Mall, same action but this time it was mandarin orange peel tossed out. That time, I flashed my lights and when I drove past the car I made some signs of disapproval but it was not communicated because the other car could not see nor hear me. So, coming back to Jalan Gasing bridge, as I caught up with the Toyota car on my right, whom did I see? Two Chinamen with a hair-do from a Jinjang saloon. I wound down my window and shouted across saying, “Oi! You so dirty lah!” and drove on. Of course, the traffic being heavy, we moved at different pace, the Toyota caught up with me and the passenger shouted back at me and gave me the dirty finger. That I ignored and as it got ahead, it sort of slowed down to give me another dirty finger.

Before I go further, I would like to make a clarification. Do you know why I give the marques of the cars? BMW and Toyota. We mistake style or standard for “civilisation”. We expect a person who drives an expensive car to behave according to the standard he or she subscribes to. It is a fallacy and it ties in with yesterday’s homily. It is an age-old fallacy to equate knowledge with virtue. Knowledge does not necessary translate into virtue. Just because a person has a university degree, it does not mean that he will have morals. Likewise, just because you are beautiful or dress beautifully, it does not mean you will have impeccable manners. Just because you meet a Christian, it does not mean you will encounter Christian behaviour. It proves the point that the Church is holy but people inside are so much more in need of conversion. In fact, yesterday after a homily on holiness, this took place in the basement. Fr Michael was in the car park removing his car so that someone else can move out but a car behind him was honking away impatiently. Coming for Mass and receiving Holy Communion is not guarantee that there will be no sin.

Now coming back to the story. Why this story? Well, I was fed up. Many of us are fed up. And it has something to do with drawing lines. After the earlier BMW incident, I decided that enough was enough, I was not going to keep quiet. Even though I did not know who the occupants in the Toyota were, I was quite prepared to face the music. Later, someone told me that if I had reacted to the dirty finger a fight would have ensued.

Last Sunday, I mentioned about the enclaves of gated communities. We gate ourselves believing that we will be safe. It is one of the expressions of self-reliance that in order “to be”, one has to “wrought, forge and make of oneself”. Self-reliance is well and good. But, what happens if within our gated community, still a break-in takes place? Where do we run to if the product of our self-reliance, that is security we forge for ourselves, is breached? Today, when public space is no longer safe, personal security is necessary to self-definition. Without security, the self may just cease to be. What can be done in order that the “self” does not cease to exist?

The answer lies in drawing lines. At least the first reading and the Gospel are clear in drawing lines. Moses told the people to choose. Draw a line between good and evil. The Gospel too drew a line between building on rock and on sand. The gated enclaves highlight to us that our problem is not that we do not draw the line. We do. It is just that we have drawn it too short. We make “personal” space to be the definition of who we are. Therefore, that which is not directly linked to the “personal” space will definitely fall without our care or concern.

On the one hand, it is easy to dismiss this lack of care or concern as apathetic. The usual culprit we blame is the “tidak apa” or “couldn’t care less” attitude. On the other hand we also are wary that drawing lines will make us “self-righteous”. But, in actual fact, drawing lines increases not so much the “selfish” space as it increases our public space. It increases the space for public and social interaction.

In a sense, twittering, blogging, face-booking are perhaps symptoms of small “private” spaces. It is true that one might reach many but it is often from the comfort of anonymity and so-called safety. But, there is such a thing called public space without which we cannot exist as a civilised people—a space where public discourse may take place. That space must be reclaimed by all and for all. If not, just a few will widen their own space to take over that public space meant for the good of all and they make it their personal domain. That is why tyranny and dictatorship exist.

I am sure that you would have passed by people in need. Again, let us not be hasty in judging it as selfishness or apathy. It merely highlights the reality that we have come to expect that someone else will provide the help, someone else will do the good deed. By far, the biggest sin in public arena is not really the sin of commission but the sin of omission. A famous quote attributed to an Irish statesman, Edmund Burke, succinctly conceptualise the need for us to enlarge the public arena. It goes: “For evil to flourish, all that is needed is that good men do nothing”. According to the same Burke, to mean well falls short of what public duty requires because public duty demands and requires that what is right should not only be made known but made prevalent; that what is evil should not only be detected, but defeated.

The Gospel today urges us to listen to Christ’s words and act on them. What does that mean if not living in the public arena? Holiness does not cocoon us into what is merely our personal space but brings us into the heart of the public square where the battle for Christ is fought. And to do that, we must draw the lines for public arena to exist. In doing so, we are not drawing lines in order to be self-righteous. Instead, we are drawing lines to be righteous for that is what it means to build our lives upon the rock of Christ.

Novena of Grace of St. Francis Xavier (Day 1) Friday 4th March 2011 8th Week in Ordinary Time Year I

I just got back from Hong Kong not many hours from now. In fact, Bro Gerard, Frs Lawrence and Albert are enroute even as I speak. The last couple of days have been excruciating in the sense that there I was visiting the Jesuit communities and works in both Hong Kong and Macau and yet, every part of me felt the urgency of this Novena of Grace. I brought things there to do but it was, like what last Sunday’s Gospel says--impossible to serve two masters: it was either be in Hong Kong and do what we had intended to or be at home and attend to the necessary. In the end, I surrendered and placed myself in God’s hands. [Fr Michael says I am pre-empting an excuse for a homily that will "bomb"].

On the second day, Tuesday, we ferried ourselves to an island of significance for Fr Lawrence Andrew. It was the island Cheung Chau—really an island for those who are accustomed to walking a lot. The Jesuit noviciate is located on this island—some of our older Jesuits were trained there—you may know them—like Bishop Paul Tan and Fr Peter Kim among others. How was this visit relevant to us this evening?

A visit to a Jesuit noviciate, the Novena of Grace and a Jubilee Year—I thought that they were connected by the call to holiness—an appropriate start to the Novena of Grace in this Jubilee Year is to echo the Church’s universal call to holiness. Actually, there is a redundancy somewhere in this statement I have just made considering that “Catholic Church” already means “universal” and “holy”.

Perhaps, the word “universal” in the context of the call could be read in relationship to a “restricted” religious call to holiness. For a period of time, a common understanding was that “holiness” was the preserve of those special people called to be priests or religious. We hear it from time to time “that’s only for holy people”. At Vatican II, in a timely manner, Lumen gentium reissued the Church’s long-standing teaching that holiness was never intended to be restricted to men of cloth, men and women of habit.

What does it mean that universally we are called to be holy? The Church understands this call as coming from the mystery of the Church herself and from the mystery of Christ Himself; these two mysteries are linked and an understanding of it is important.

First, the mystery of the Church. She is holy and she is made holy by none other than Christ who gave His life for her. Not only is the Church the Bride of Christ but she is also described as His Body and He perfects her by the gift of the Holy Spirit. As she is holy, we, her children, everyone and none excluded, are called to the same holiness which according to the same Lumen gentium is to be shown forth through the practice of love in some cases or the evangelical counsels in others. In short, whatever state of life we are called to, there we find holiness to be lived.

Second, the mystery of Christ is fundamental to why we speak of the Church as holy. For Christ Himself preached holiness. Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. He provided the means of holiness through His Spirit. By means of Baptism, we put on Christ. We become sons and daughters of God the Father and we have a share in His divine life. This second mystery resonates with us and we understand this.

Now, what is problematic is the link between the two mysteries.

In fact, it was fashionable at one time to speak of "the Church in need of renewal and purification”—the phrase used was “ecclesia semper reformanda”. Faddish or fashion aside, that was true and has been proven true because of her children. At times we get lost in this mess which is rather an inevitable result of sharing in what is otherwise known as the human condition. Notwithstanding the human condition, these two mysteries give us a clearer picture of who the Church is. She is the faithful Bride of Christ, whose faithfulness is not called into question by the infidelities of her children.

Failure to recognise the link between these two mysteries has led to the phenomenon which we see time and again: rejection of the Church and what is more, a reduction of religion to spirituality. “I believe in Jesus and my faith is personal”. If we do not recognise this distinction that Christ’s Bride, the Church is always faithful and we, her children, are the ones who sin and are in need of conversion, then, it is possible that the sin of the individual becomes the sin of the Church. Without recognising how inextricably linked the mystery of the Church’s holiness is to Christ her beloved, “holiness” becomes a captive of the community.

What do I mean? I am holy only because the group is holy. In fact, the individual becomes a captive to the rise and fall of the group, the community etc. Does this not explain why parishioners become discouraged and fall into despair? We look at a group of people and we are instantly turned off. It does explain many cases of Catholics leaving the Church for the “Pentecostal” sects.

But, Christ is holy, the Church is always holy and we are called to holiness despite the presence, the ubiquitous presence of failure within us and amongst us. Not forgetting this allows us to approach the sacraments with the certainty that despite all failure, Christ and His Church will never fail.

With such a certainty, we can now speak of individual holiness. It makes sense that my holiness is not hinged on the failure of others as often has been the case. Look at Anne Rice, the famous writer of the Vampire Chronicles. Early in life, she rejected Catholicism only to find it and then reject it again, stating that she rejected it on the basis that the “Church” has monumentally failed—without making distinctions between the Church and her members.

The failures of individuals or communities are not excuses for the lack of personal conversion. Instead, holiness is allowing what is not Christ’s in us to disappear so that what is truly Christ’s can appear. This is the real meaning of "ecclesia semper reformanda". The saints recognise this by reforming themselves and not by “dreaming” of new structures or new management.

After Vatican II, what we saw of the world, we also began to see of the Church. We viewed the Church through a structural and a sociological lens. And to a large extent we began to focus on structural changes to reflect sociological realities. Change structures and voila! You are on the way to a changed and a better world. But, we are nowhere near a better world. In fact, we are brought back to what is fundamental, to a world in need of change: the self. This "ecclesia semper reformanda", "the Church in need of purification and renewal" has seen us falling over ourselves in trying to change structures, sometimes forgetting that persons make structures.

Brother and sisters, to complete the phrase "ecclesia semper reformanda", we need another phrase "ecclesia semper aeternum"—"the Church is eternal" because she is eternally the faithful Bride of Christ and so the path to holiness means never turning away from His Bride the Church, no matter how pressing it feels. It means the hard and difficult road of looking at ourselves with the eyes of Christ (justice) and changing ourselves with the heart of Christ (mercy). It calls for the constant battle in daily life and not just ecclesial life and this battle takes us to our family, our work and our community. It takes us out into the world and for that we need our Holy Mother the Church for within her bosom we draw the very life that makes her holy—Christ, whom she makes available to us in the sacraments.

Novena of Grace of St Francis Xavier 9th Day, 12th March 2010

On March 12th, 5 saints were canonised in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV. St Isidore the Farmer or St Isidro Labrador, a Spaniard. St Teresa Avila: the great reformer of the Carmelites. She has two great daughters: St Thérèse d’Enfant Jesus whom we got to know a little yesterday and St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, otherwise known as Edith Stein, whose name in religion also honours St John of the Cross; she was a Jewess who died at Auschwitz. St Philip Neri, otherwise known as the Apostle of Rome. One of his more famous followers is John Cardinal Newman, the English convert from Anglicanism, who might be beatified when Benedict XVI visits the UK this year. Of him, it was alleged that when the canonisation took place, a shout was heard in the streets of Rome, “The pope has canonised 4 Spaniards and a Saint”. According to the Italians, no Spaniard was good enough to be a saint. The fourth was St Ignatius, without whom we would not have the Society of Jesus. And finally, St Francis Xavier, whose Novena we have been celebrating. But none of them is our saint.

It is a tradition of the Society of Jesus for a Jesuit to take his vows on a feast of Our Lady. For example, 2nd February used to be a Marian feast but it has since been changed to a feast of Our Lord—from The Purification of Mary to the Presentation of the Lord. 49 years ago, on the evening of the dedication of this Church, Fr Paul Jenkins made his solemn profession in the morning because at that time 2nd February was still a Marian feast. Other Marian feasts of Jesuit importance are like 1st Jan, Mary Mother of God, 22nd April, Queen of the Society of Jesus, Assumption without a doubt is an important Jesuit-vow day, the birthday of Our Lady which falls on 8th Sept and 8th Dec, the Immaculate Conception. When a Marian feast is not available, then a feast of a Jesuit saint is used. Theoretically, one enters a day before the Feast to take his vows two canonical years exactly after—therefore, an entrance into the Society of Jesus on 14th August means vow-taking will be on 15th August two years later.

I entered on 15th February—the feast of Blessed Claude la Colombière. But, I took vows on 2nd March, two weeks after two canonical years because one of my co-novices could not join us until 1st March. We waited for him to complete his two canonical years. Today, the life we consider is St Claude, not Blessed, because he was canonised in 1992 by John Paul II. The last miracle needed for the canonisation of Blessed Claude took place in 1989: the cure of a Jesuit suffering from a fatal lung disease--pulmonary fibrosis. A first class relic of Blessed Claude la Colombière, a small sliver of bone was placed on the dying priest's forehead and a miracle was prayed for. Three days later, the Jesuit, Father Houle's condition was greatly improved and, to the amazement of his doctors, X-rays showed that the pulmonary fibrosis had completely disappeared. There was no scientific explanation for the sudden turnabout of the condition. According to his doctor, the Jesuit was too far gone for any reversal of his condition. [1]

St Claude la Colombière cannot be separated from another Saint: Margaret Mary Alacoque who is associated with the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. But his life has its own drama. He was born near Lyons in 1641 and entered the Society of Jesus at Avignon. After his novitiate, he taught grammar and the humanities. Even before his ordination to the priesthood, he gained a reputation as a preacher. After completing his studies in Paris, he became tutor to the sons of Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV, but was dismissed from his post and returned to Avignon. In 1675, after his solemn profession as a Jesuit, he was appointed superior at Paray-le-Monial, in which the convent of St. Margaret Mary was located. Here he became her spiritual director and encouraged her in the spread of the devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Because of his remarkable gifts and judgment, he was sent to England, to be court preacher to the duchess of York, Mary Beatrice D’Este, wife of the future James II, and took up residence in London. His radiant personality and splendid gifts were noted by everyone. When the alleged "Popish Plot" to assassinate King Charles II shook the country, St Claude was accused of complicity in the plot and imprisoned. Through the intervention of Louis XIV of France, he was released, then banished from the country. He spent his last years at Paray-le-Monial, his health broken by tuberculosis caught whilst imprisoned. He died on February 15, 1682, an apostle of the devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Why did I choose him? First, the readings both make mention of the heart—conversion and how one ought to love with one’s heart, soul and mind—one’s entirety. Friday is also traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. So, who more appropriate than the Apostle of the Sacred Heart?

In St Claude, we have a priest of great sensitivity—a sensitivity of spirit needed to recognise the truth of the revelation that St. Margaret Mary received. She was thought to be delusional by her sceptical sisters in the community and she suffered as a result their disbelief. She received assurance from the Lord, however, that he was sending her his "faithful servant and perfect friend".

What is of interest to us is that “sensitivity” can also border on scrupulosity. In fact, during his tertianship, he felt moved to take a special private vow to obey all the rules of the Society in the strictest manner possible. In this, there is some kind of affinity between him and St Thérèse because the focus on minutiae can lead to scrupulosity. In other words, meticulous or conscientious is good but overly leads to anxiety. This is where his life cuts into ours. Scrupulosity is an obsessive tendency to see as grave sin what is venial sin or even no sin. A person suffering from scrupulosity often keeps remembering and confessing past sins that have been absolved through sacramental confession.

At the other end of the spectrum of scrupulosity is the tendency to rationalise away or minimise what is truly a serious sin. So, you can see that the other side of the scrupulous coin is “rationalisation”—the tendency to “explain” everything away—a form of the deadening of the conscience. I think many of us belong to this category. We have lost the sensitivity to sin and its consequences. Saints such as Claude challenge our world of deadened conscience personally as well as collectively, to take care not to rationalise our behaviour in the name of personal development, or progress. Have you ever wondered why right after the greeting “The Lord be with you” we enter into the penitential rite? Have you felt disjointed that after the “riotous” entrance hymn, we immediately go into this breast-beating rite, that it does not make sense? It may stem from the fact that we have lost the sense of sin. If a few of us err on the side of “scrupulosity”, then many of us err on the side of an eclipsed conscience.

Thus, the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the recently approved devotion to the Divine Mercy do not make sense unless we recognise that we are sinners in need of forgiveness. His prayer in times of despair helps us appreciate this fact. “Lord, I am in this world to show Your mercy to others. Other people will glorify You by making visible the power of Your grace by their fidelity and constancy to You. For my part I will glorify You by making known how good You are to sinners, that Your mercy is boundless and that no sinner no matter how great his offences should have reason to despair of pardon. If I have grievously offended You, my Redeemer, let me not offend You even more by thinking that You are not kind enough to pardon me. Amen”.

Second, I choose St Claude because he is a good model of what a priest can be. He was an unspectacular man. Much of his fame cannot be divorced from that of St Margaret Mary. It was only subsequently that he came into his own. He knows what it really means to play second fiddle as in the words of our Allah-priest himself: Always the bridesmaid but never the bride. Saints are those who live exactly what St John the Baptist has taught us: “He must increase and I must decrease”. But, he is a good model because Christ called him “a faithful servant and a perfect friend”. In effect, Christ was saying: “Here is a man after My own Heart”. And, what has St John Baptist Mary Vianney to say about the priesthood? “The priesthood is the love of the Heart of Christ”.

Finally, the novena has come to its conclusion. Why are we celebrating this? When everything around us is changing, and changing too fast, we need anchors or foundations. Tradition, to name one, is a kind of foundation. Do you know why Hitler’s National Socialism was appealing? From our vantage point of view, we can see how wrong Nazism was but yet many bought into it lock, stock and barrel.

With the Industrial Revolution, individuals were reduced to faceless individuals. There is some truth that God has carved us into the palm of His hand… we are not nameless. He knows every one of us by name and every hair on our head is counted. There is something inherently transcendental in our looking for recognition; to be known as God knows us.

When people find that on one day they have a job and the next day, they don’t and they are basically a number in a statistic, you find that they will look for something to fill the vacuum of namelessness. So, it seemed that Hitler came at the “right time” to fill an unfortunate vacuum.

With our novena we are in a process of re-forming our tradition—consolidating the anchor which allows a Catholic, through the changes of life, to point to something which says, "It is a rock I can stand on"; the anchor I can rely on. And this is proven for so many of you; when you look back, you find markers in your life which for you are constants in a sea of change. Those of you who have the experience of the Latin Mass or those whose educational background was a missionary school, you remember the constants, that after many years, these constants remain foundational and they give you a sense of continuity. Now, if you put this into a bigger picture, you begin to see why “divorce” is prohibited by the Church. Children need the constancy of the father and mother’s relationship in order to navigate the turbulence of life. We are not engaged in the creation of nostalgia. Instead, it is a conscious effort to anchor the parish in the big picture. Without this anchor, the whole work of justice is at best our knee-jerk reaction. The anchor of tradition and constancy provide us with a stability to engage in the sanctification of the world. Tradition frees us from the task of re-inventing the wheel so that our energy can be spent unfolding the gifts of Baptism. What we are doing put us within the frame of a bigger picture that is meaningful in the sense that it has an intention—that intention is God’s vision for the world. Baptism and all the sacraments and sacramentals which a novena is, are directed to the unfolding of that vision.

FOOTNOTE:
[1] Relics! We have one here from St Francis Xavier. The important point is that relics are not unscriptural. On the contrary, Christian veneration of relics has biblical foundation. Miracles were worked through both the cloak of Elijah and the bones of Elisha. In the Acts of the Apostles we see people healed by coming into contact with handkerchiefs touched by St. Paul. Of course, from Christ Himself, the woman with haemorrhage was healed by touching the hem of His cloak. St. Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate version of the Bible, gives us the proper attitude towards relics: "We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than the creator but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order to better adore Him, whose martyrs they are". At Cologne in 2005 Pope Benedict summed up the part relics play in the life of the Church: "By inviting us to venerate the mortal remains of the martyrs and saints, the Church does not forget that, in the end, these are indeed just human bones, but they are bones that belonged to individuals touched by the transcendent power of God”.

Novena of Grace of St Francis Xavier 8th Day, 11th March 2010

From the Cliffs of Dover we cross the English Channel to a town west-northwest of Paris. Remember on the 2nd day of the novena I mentioned a Jesuit psychologist who had made the assertion that St John Baptist Mary Vianney was an idiot. Today we shall get acquainted with a person whom the same Jesuit psychologist called a neurotic: St Thérèse d’Enfant Jesus otherwise known as St Thérèse de Lisieux.
Who was she and in the line-up of saints who were priests, why she? The answer is after the “no need to re-invent the wheel” section, that is, after I have given a synopsis of her life—easily accessible through the internet.

Thérèse was born in France in 1873. Both her parents were holy and their idea of marriage was celibacy until told otherwise by a priest. They went on to have 9 children. Only 5 survived. Thérèse was the youngest. Her mother died when she was young and her eldest sister Pauline played “mother” to her for a few years. When Pauline joined the Carmelite it affected Thérèse greatly. She took ill but recovered because in her prayer she saw Mary smiled at her. When she refused to divulge more information of the alleged apparition, they thought her lying. Two other sisters, Marie and Leonie, also entered religious life, a Carmelite and a Poor Clare respectively. She was left with her last sister Celine and her father. She was spoilt to the point that she thought making her bed was a great favour to her father.

She was a sensitive child and she cried at the slightest criticism. She wanted to join the Carmelites but the superior refused to take her because she was considered too young. She went to the Bishop but he too refused her request. To take her mind off the idea, both Celine and her father brought her on a pilgrimage to Rome.

There at a general audience with the Pope, even though forbidden to speak, she took the chance to ask the Pope. She had to be carried out by two guards. At 15, she was allowed to join Pauline and Marie. In the convent, all romantic ideas of religious life evaporated.

There began a time of suffering when she experienced such dryness in prayer and yet there was this reaching out in her that yearned to perform great deeds for God. But, she knew the restrictions imposed by a cloistered life. This may explain why she was considered to be neurotic. How to love despite the constraints of the cloister? “Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love." These little sacrifices cost her more than bigger ones, for these went unrecognised by others. When Pauline was elected prioress, she asked Thérèse for the ultimate sacrifice. Three sisters in a convent gave rise to fear of domination by the Martin family. So, Thérèse remained a novice, in order to allay the fears of the others that the three sisters would push everyone else around. She would never become a fully professed nun and that meant she would always have to ask permission for everything she did. [Later Celine also joined and four sisters in a convent constituted a fifth of the population.]

e always wanted to be a saint but she found herself short when compared to the saints. She was not discouraged: “God would not make me wish for something impossible and so, in spite of my littleness, I can aim at being a saint. It is impossible for me to grow bigger, so I put up with myself as I am, with all my countless faults. But I will look for some means of going to heaven by a little way which is very short and very straight, a little way that is quite new”.

At times she expressed her desire to be a priest, a martyr, a crusader etc. But, in the end, she saw charity as the key to her vocation. “I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart was burning with love. I understood that Love comprised all vocations, that Love was everything, that it embraced all times and places...in a word, that it was eternal! Then in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love...my vocation, at last I have found it...My vocation is Love!"

In 1896, she coughed up blood but kept working without telling anyone until she became so sick a year later that everyone knew it. Her pain was so great that she said that if she had not had faith she would have taken her own life without hesitation. But she tried to remain smiling and cheerful—and succeeded so well that some thought she was only pretending to be ill. She was famous for this quote which the Catechism of the Catholic Church cites in teaching on the Communion of Saints and on why we can ask the Saints to intercede for us. "I will return," she said. "My heaven will be spent doing good on earth". She died at the age of 24 years old. After she died, her writings were put together and sent to other convents. Thérèse's "little way" of trusting in Jesus to make her holy and relying on small daily sacrifices instead of great deeds appealed to the thousands of Catholics and others who were trying to find holiness in ordinary lives. By 1925 she was canonised barely 28 years after her death.

Why St Thérèse? I have included her here for two reasons. First, it was briefly mentioned earlier that she wanted to be a priest. This is not the reason why she has been included in the novena simply because she had expressed also her desire, apart from a crusader and a martyr, to be an apostle, a doctor and a fighter. Her desire for priesthood was an expression of her devotion to Christ present in the Blessed Sacrament. “I want to be a priest. How lovingly I would carry You in my hands when You came down from heaven at my call. How lovingly I would bestow You on men's souls. And yet, with all this desire to be a priest, I've nothing but admiration and envy for the humility of St. Francis. I would willingly imitate him in refusing the honour of the priesthood”.

Secondly, her inclusion is relevant because she is representative of what life truly is for so many of us. Today, the definition of meaning—as in a meaningful life—is so skewed that meaning is perhaps closer to excitement when in reality meaning is to be found in the mundane—the cooking of a meal unappreciated by husband and children and whose comments, if at all, are usually negative; the changing of diapers so soon after the last one; the daily grind of attending to annoyed clients or customers. She has shown us that nothing is too insignificant for the life of grace. This life of grace is necessary to support the mission of the Church.

She is the Patroness of the Missions not because she gallivanted throughout the world but because of her special love for the missions, and the prayers and letters she gave in support of priest-missionaries. All sacrifices embraced willingly become the merits to be applied for the goodness of the Body of Christ—a reminder to all of us who feel we contribute nothing; a reminder that it is the little things that keep God's kingdom growing. She prayed for priests and she invites everyone to do so: "O Jesus, eternal Priest, keep your priests within the shelter of Your Sacred Heart, where none may touch them. Keep unstained their anointed hands, which daily touch Your Sacred Body. Keep unsullied their lips, daily purpled with Your Precious Blood. Keep pure and unearthly their hearts, sealed with the sublime mark of the priesthood. Let Your holy love surround them and shield them from the world's contagion. Bless their labours with abundant fruit and may the souls to whom they minister be their joy and consolation here and in heaven their beautiful and everlasting crown. Amen".

In summary, her entire Carmelite vocation was closely linked to the priesthood as she consecrated her life to priests, to be "the apostle of the apostles." She embraced the vocation of praying for the spiritual renewal and the mission of priests even as she understood the human weakness and sinfulness of priests. Let me read to you something I got off the internet.

In the "Story of a Soul" we read how Thérèse understood the vocation of Carmel: “I lived in the company of many saintly priests for a month and I learned that, although their dignity raises them above the angels, they are nevertheless weak and fragile men. If holy priests, whom Jesus in His gospel calls ‘the salt of the earth’, show in their conduct their extreme need for prayers, what is to be said of those who are tepid? Didn't Jesus say too: ‘If the salt loses its savour, wherewith will it be salted?’. How beautiful is the vocation which has as its aim the preservation of the salt destined for souls! This is Carmel's vocation since the sole purpose of our prayers and sacrifices is to be the apostle of the apostles. We are to pray for them while they are preaching to souls, through their words and especially through their examples". (Story of a Soul, tr. John Clarke, O.C.D. p.122).

Thérèse never lost faith that the priesthood could be as Jesus envisioned it. And she prayed for priests not for their own sake, but for the sake of those God called them to serve: "Our mission as Carmelites is to form evangelical workers who will save thousands of souls whose mothers we shall be”.

In the Year for Priests, so much prayer is needed so that priests may fulfil their vocation. Thérèse wrote this to her sister Celine: "Let us convert souls. We must form many priests who love Jesus and who handle Him with the same tenderness with which Mary handled Him in His cradle". Through your sacrifices and prayers, you are united with Thérèse, the Patroness of the Missions. So, do not underestimate yourselves.

As an aside, do you know that both her parents—Louis and Marie Martin--have been beatified? This shows how important the role of parents is in the nurturing of vocations. Their beatification is a challenge to a particular schizophrenia in our thinking. Often we excuse our children when they are unruly. The usual excuse given is: "They are just children". But, whenever a child shows a whiff of prodigy-like characteristic, parents do not hesitate subjecting them to the disciplines of music, arts etc. They are never too young to be a child-prodigy. However, when it comes to Church, they are just too young to behave and they have to be fed, entertained, and etc. Schizophrenia!!

Novena of Grace of St Francis Xavier 7th Day, 10th March 2010

An Act of Parliament (1571) during the reign of Elizabeth made it high treason to question the queen’s title as the head of the Church of England. Through this Act, the practice of Roman Catholicism was rendered treasonable. The Act also authorised the confiscation of the property of Roman Catholics. Between 1577 and 1603, 183 English Catholics were put to death for their faith. Between the 16th and 17th centuries, some 600 Catholics died in the persecutions; some were executed for offences as trivial as obtaining a papal licence to marry.

It is to this unfortunate period of Christian history that we encounter our Saint for the 7th Day of the Novena of Grace: St Edmund Campion—the most famous of the English martyrs.

Campion was born of Catholic parents who later became Protestants. He attended St. John's College, Oxford, where he gained renown as a lecturer and a following of students who called themselves "Campionites." When he was 26 years old, he gave a speech of welcome in Latin to Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Oxford; he made such an impression on the queen that she and Lords Cecil and Leicester tried to recruit him for her service. He probably took the Oath of Supremacy, and was ordained a deacon for the Established Church. But, the more he studied to be a priest, the more convinced he became that the Catholic Church had the true faith. He moved to Dublin in 1569 in an effort to find a place to live as a Catholic, but the Irish capital showed an anti-Catholic feeling that drove him back to London. In June 1571 he left England for Douai, Belgium where the recently founded English College trained seminarians for England.

Campion finished his degree in 1573 and set out soon after for Rome with the intention of becoming a Jesuit. Within a month of his arrival in Rome, he was accepted into the Society. At that time there was neither an English province nor an English mission, so he was assigned to the Austrian province and went to Prague and Brno to make his novitiate. He remained in Prague after he took vows and was ordained there, expecting to spend the rest of his life teaching in that city. He wrote and directed plays for his students and won renown as an orator.

When the Jesuits decided to open a mission in England, he was one of the first to be assigned to it. English spies in Holland learnt of his impending departure and informed the English ports of entry, who awaited their arrival. He disguised himself as a Mr Edmonds, a jewellery merchant. He was questioned by port authorities but managed to slip through their surveillance.

In London he wrote a manifesto of his mission which became known as “Campion’s Brag”. The intent of the mission was religious, not political. It was so well-written that copies were made and widely distributed to confirm Catholics in their faith. He moved on to Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire. He would stay at a Catholic house for one or two nights or visit households where Catholics were employed. The pattern of his visit was to arrive during the day, preach and hear confessions during the evening, and then celebrate Mass in the morning before moving on to the next location. He composed a book addressed to the academic world entitled Rationes decem ("Ten Reasons") which gave arguments to prove the truth of Catholicism and the falsity of Protestantism.

His freedom to minister to Catholics soon ended when he was betrayed by a professional priest-hunter pretending to be a Catholic. He was caught with two other priests.

The three were taken to the Tower of London on July 22, where Campion was put in a cell so small he could neither stand upright nor lie down. After three days there he was brought to Leicester house, where he met Queen Elizabeth for a second time. She offered him the opportunity to renounce his Catholic faith and become a Protestant minister, with the offer of great advancement. He refused and was returned to his cell; five days later he was tortured on the rack. The government determined that he should be executed, but they needed a stronger charge than the fact that he was a Catholic priest. They cooked up the charge that he had conspired to take the life of the queen, and had exhorted foreigners to invade the country and had entered England with the intent of fomenting rebellion to support the invaders. At his trial Campion attempted to defend all the priests by pointing out that their motives were religious, not political; but they were found guilty of high treason and condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered. The priests joined in singing the Te Deum when they heard the verdict.

Campion remained in chains for another 11 days, and then was dragged through the muddy streets of London to Tyburn. With him were Alexander Briant, a Jesuit and Father Ralph Sherwin, a diocesan priest. There they were executed.

Edmund Campion together with Alexander Briant, Edmund Arrowsmith, David Lewis, Henry Morse, Henry Walpole, Nicholas Owen, Philip Evans, Robert Southwell and Thomas Garnet, all Jesuits, belong to the group of Martyrs collectively known as the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales canonised in 1970 by Pope Paul VI. These 40 Martyrs, which the Church in England celebrates every year on 25th Oct, died between 1535 and 1679.

Is St Edmund relevant? For the matter of speaking, are the forty canonised so recently, relevant? For example, the “Rationes decem gave arguments to prove the truth of Catholicism and the falsity of Protestantism”. Such language is no longer used today, certainly not in official Catholic teachings. In fact, the Church has made great strides in ecumenical dialogue with the Anglicans and Lutherans. The polemical language of the past has now given way to conciliatory language of the present. Apart from the occasional hiccoughs, like the Declaration Dominus Iesus, [1] the general tone of ecumenical relationship is markedly peaceful.

His relevance is perhaps found in this maxim: peace is not the absence of war. His brag, even though arrogant in tone, was manifestly a declaration that his stance was religious and not political. He wanted to defend his faith in the Catholic Church which he had come to recognise to be the best representation of what the Church of Christ should be. A good way to understand this is through question. For Fr Campion, the Catholic Church is the answer to this question: “Where in history can one locate the Church founded by Christ”? Thus, you can appreciate that his defence concerns the truth. Where is it to be found?

In the context of today, defence of the faith—the search for Christ’s Church—is through dialogue. This is a primary method of reaching the truth. Ecumenism and interreligious dialogue are both instruments of the defence in the sense that we no longer need to use force to justify our stance but instead we must rely on the unforced force of the better argument. However, if we were to go deeper, truth is more than just a better argument. Where is the truth to be found? In our case, this is an important question because the truth is not an idea, it is not democratic, it is not an ideology, and it is not relative. Truth is a person because Christ Himself declared: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. Therefore, in Christianity, Truth is a person. Truth and Christ are synonymous because Truth does not hover behind Christ. Christ is Truth. This truth comes to us in history as Man [the Incarnation] and in the new economy [dispensation] of salvation through His Church—namely through teachings [creed], governance [code] and sacraments [cult].

No less relevant to this dialogue is apologetics. The unfortunate reality is that Catholic apologetics have been relegated to the dung heap of relativism by a false notion that every expression of faith is the same as long as we declare Christ to be Saviour. Thus, there is a great need, even in the time of peace, to know why we are Catholics. Do we stand up enough for our faith because it is true? The Society of Jesus, of whom Edmund Campion was a member of, was founded precisely for that: to strive especially for the defence and propagation of the faith. Pope Benedict XVI in his allocution to the Society of Jesus at their General Congregation 35 says this: [t]he Church is in urgent need of people of solid and deep faith, of a serious culture and a genuine human and social sensitivity, of religious priests who devote their lives to stand on those frontiers in order to witness and help to understand that there is in fact a profound harmony between faith and reason, between evangelical spirit, thirst for justice and action for peace. Only thus, will it be possible to make the face of the Lord known to so many for whom it remains hidden or unrecognisable.

Thirdly, and this is where we begin to realise that there is something antithetical between faith and the world as expressed by the Evangelist John: We are in the world but we are not of the world. Thus, one must be ready to die for one’s faith. The circumstances surrounding Edmund Campion’s death may be unfortunate because the question of faith became entangled with politics and it was often settled by torture and murder. But, the fact was that loyalty to Christ and his Church was incompatible with loyalty to King. Just like the first reading, when we choose God, we will find opposition from the world. Part of life’s conversion is to come to this. Only then can we speak of martyrdom.

In conclusion, these men who died for the faith must be a challenge to each and every one of us to know why we are Catholics in the first place. Sentiments aside, there must be a determined desire to go deeper into the reason for being a Catholic. Otherwise, those who defended and died for the faith would have done so in vain.

FOOTNOTE:
[1] Every now and then the Church comes up with official pronouncement which seems to throw a spanner into the ecumenical work. For example, when Pope Benedict was the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Declaration Dominus Iesus created a major furore when it made the distinction between true particular churches and ecclesial communities. This in effect reduced the co-called Lutheran church into an “ecclesial community”—it was considered to be some kind of condescension.