Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord Year C 2025

Today we enter the holiest week of the Liturgical Calendar. To mark this period, we begin with the triumphant entry of Christ into Jerusalem. It is the Gospel of the Mass read either before the Procession or at the Entrance. We cannot miss the irony at play here. Christ enters as a victor into His own city. However, His victory culminates in His Passion and Death on the Cross. And yet that is not the final story.

The whole panoply of human reactions is on display this Sunday. The landscape of popularity is simply treacherous. Human loyalty is as fickle as the shifting sand in the desert. The Gospel read at the beginning projects victory. The Passion heard just only is wrapped in pain and sorrow. From hero to zero, Christ was acclaimed only to be condemned.

What then should our response be?

In the face of human treachery, the natural tendency is to react with outrage but the only proper response to it is silence. Holy Week marks the beginning of a powerful silence to allow us to embrace and enter the depth of what Christ would undergo for the salvation of our souls.

The week is heavy and is ordinarily filled with frenetic activities. Flowers to be arranged, statues and images to be veiled, then come Maundy Thursday—the washing of feet and adoration until midnight. Good Friday—Veneration of the Cross and the Easter Vigil—all 9 Readings and baptisms by immersion. There are many things to consider and to be done. Yet this is the week of Mary of Bethany. She sits to contemplate the Lord in His Passion. And the one path that can lead to a profound and prayerful contemplation is silence.

Silence is the language of God’s presence. It is almost like Jesus peeled back the curtain of His divinity so that we can peer behind the scenes to savour His humility at work. He speaks but mostly in silent recesses of our hearts.

It is not a silence of inaction or inactivity. Rather it is a silence which is intentionally slow. One of the foci we should have is our need. Indeed we have so many wants that we can be distracted by them. We eat, entertain, shop and travel believing that all these will make us happy. Or that these activities will complete us. However what we may fail to recognise is that they may hide our real need.

Our need to be saved. There is ugliness and there is a lot of that during this week. Even as we get first-hand experience of treachery at work, still we can be distracted because whatever Christ had to undergo and endure, it was to save us.

The challenge is if we need salvation. Nothing of the treachery makes sense if we do not require salvation. If we have no need of a Saviour, then what Jesus went through was plainly stupid and unnecessary. Perhaps Pope Francis’ primary concern with God’s mercy stems from this truth. God wants so much to save us and mercy is how He reaches out to us. The foremost image for God’s mercy, according to the Pope, is the “Field Hospital”. The Church is the place where wounded and traumatised souls are treated.

Right now, the earthquake in Myanmar is fresh in our memory and the urgency for charitable outreach is also vital. People want to help but as in many disasters today, it has also spawned a modern-day phenomenon for some have developed a taste for what is called “disaster tourism”. Have you watched videos of people who stand around filming a tragedy so that they can have the thrill of being the first to post it on social media? There are some who visit sites of calamities even with the noble intention of helping the victims but nevertheless, they are still driven by a curiosity or a fascination with disasters.

Translate that to a hospital setting. A hospital is meant for those who are sick and need treatment. Any salutary or sanitary setting which is targeted towards those who are not sick is merely cathartic or simply therapeutic. On Friday Bishop came to launch the Perjalanan Salib and I happened to sit next to him and with the new renovation, I can see outside across the street. The crawl sign flashing massage, massage, massage. A massage is therapeutic because it helps to relieve aches and tension. Feeling good is a good feeling but feeling good is not necessarily what we need. In fact, to be good is miles apart from feeling good. To be good is our goal and quite regularly one actually feels bad even as one tries to be good. A good example is to apologise. How often is it that one refuses to apologise (to be good) because it feels lousy for one feels like a loser having to be the first to say, “I am sorry”? Hence, religion or our religious observance is meant to deepen our need for salvation. Our rituals are targeted at highlighting this need. While therapy is good for our mental health and personal growth, it does not guarantee our salvation.

If we have no need of Christ’s salvation, it does not take much for our rituals to become therapeutic treatments which do not really save the soul. A spatreatment only makes us feel good about ourselves and no more.

Silence is therefore unnerving because it penetrates the darkness of our heartsthat are eclipsed by self-will and sin. It is there in our restless hearts that Christ fights to save our souls. The only way we can appreciate His salvation is when we allow the silence to challenge us, challenge our sin and challenge our apathy toward His salvation. Silence is for us to say, “I need you, my Saviour. I need you more than I need air to breathe”.

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord Year A 2023

This Sunday has a long title as it reflects the change in the arrangement of the liturgical calendar. We used to have a sub-season called Passiontide which began last weekend. In the past, the 5th Sunday of Lent was called Passion Sunday and the 6th Sunday became Palm Sunday. One would recognise the beginning of Passiontide through the veiling of the images and statues. The exceptions to the veiling were the stained glasses and Stations of the Cross. The result of this change in the Universal Calendar was the coalescence or the merging of these two Sundays of Passiontide into one. The proper title today is the Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord. The main point of the veiling was to signal an entry into a more sombre Lenten mood. Interestingly, even though there is no longer Passiontide, still, one detects a remnant of previous dynamics in the alternative Collect for Friday of the 5th Week of Lent. The prayer refers to a feast which is now celebrated on 15th Sept: Our Lady of Sorrows. And also beginning with the 5th Sunday, the preface before the Eucharistic Prayer is Preface I of the Passion of the Lord.

The exultant waving of palms to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem marks the beginning of Holy Week—the climax of the liturgical calendar. It might as well be named as “Busy Week”. We can be engrossed by the physical preparations as to forget what “holy” in Holy Week means. We are counting down the final days in the earthly life of Jesus and the spotlight on the bitter passion of the Saviour is meant to evoke in us a profound sorrow for our sins.

Sadly, busy is better because the world is in such a dire straits. For example, collectively, many of the poorer countries appear to be facing a crisis of apocalyptic proportions. Every variation in the weather pattern is now articulated as emanating from climate change. We are repeatedly reminded that island nations will disappear as the sea level is rising. As a consequence of this urgency, the Stations of the Cross have been co-opted into promoting a greater awareness of our ecological obligations. This concern for the future of creation is laudable. However, even if our climate responses are important, they completely miss the mark that Holy Week’s spotlight shines on the Saviour alone.

The focus of Holy Week is to pay attention to the Lord’s Passion. Matthew took great pains to inform the reader that Jesus was the fulfilment of the prophecies of the Old Testament. He even cited quotations that proved Jesus to be the Suffering Servant described by Isaiah. The events leading to the Saviour’s death was a result of His obedience to the will of the Father. In other words, Jesus died on account of the sin of man. He died for you and me.

Somehow this truth does not come across as urgent as we have the more pressing matter of the environment to care about. We are busy trying to save the world ourselves.[1] However, our concern for environmental justice, even though it is compelling, fails to recognise that personal sins are the causes of so many of these ecological missteps we have. As Pope Francis remarked, “our selfish system is motivated by profit at any price”. Perhaps the move to widen the concept of sin to include environmental destruction is a right step. But still what must be stressed is that sin is “selfish” more than it is “structural” or systemic. While it matters that there are unjust structures, what matters more is that I am the sinner.

Personal conversion is the only way out of our environmental mess. The path to interior change is to focus on Jesus. Perhaps one should try watching one of the older movies on the life and death of Jesus. There is less baggage in these dated films as the current offerings tend to be ideological in trying to coax us to pay attention to current issues ailing society. These virtue-signalling movies are inclined to highlight the present “isms” that must be eradicated[2] in the attempt to construct a better world without realising that we are in such a shambles simply because we have ignored the reality of sin, not structural sin but personal sin. We shy from taking responsibility for personal sin because our therapeutic mentality struggles to process guilt. It is easier and more convenient to point to some structures that require changing than recognising that necessary change must begin individually and personally.[3]

The now defunct season of “Passiontide” is indicative of the mood that we should embrace. After declaring “Before Abraham was, I AM”, the crowd wanted to stone Him and so Jesus hid, signifying the retreat of His Divinity. From now on, His humanity is on trial. It is true that He will be scourged on account of our “collective” sins but it takes a paradigm shift to go through Holy Week acutely aware that He died for MY sins. He did not die for our “collective sins” because “collective sins” do not exist on their own except through the contributions of each individual’s personal sins.

At the end of the Holy Week, what is it that we have “accomplished”, if achievement is even a proper word to characterise the culmination of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection? The aim of Holy Week is to deepen the sense that I have been saved from MY sins. His death will not make any sense if I were sinless. This is how profoundly personal the death of Christ is for me. Otherwise, we are merely undergoing therapy. Therapy at best helps us to cope. But Jesus is the Redeemer. He took my sins upon Himself. He is the Saviour and not a therapist. Therapy can change one’s mind but only Jesus Christ can change one’s heart. Focussing on my sins can help me turn to Him who, in the days to come, will be crucified for my sins. My sins, not ours, put Him on the Cross.



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[1] Many of the burning issues, the “cause célèbre” today are centred on righting the wrongs of the past. Hence the push towards DEI. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

[2] The underlying message is that you are not good enough to be “included” unless you do these things.

[3] The age of media presence is driven by the need to virtue signal. “Media presence” is possibly a cynical indication of God’s absence. Hence, if what we do is not “seen” by God, then it must be witnessed by men. Therefore this requirement to virtue signal. A good example is Lady Antebellum—a Country singing group whose name seemed to romanticise slavery. They have since changed their name to Lady A which ironically is a name used by a black singer for more than 20 years. Anyway, it was to signal their “woke” credential, broadcasting to the world how “distant” they are from the evil of slavery and white privilege. Since we no longer need God’s blessing (since He is glaringly absent), we will certainly need man’s approval.

Palm Sunday Year C 2022

The official title of this Mass is “Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord” and today is supposed to be the 2nd Sunday of Passiontide. The title is long because we are combining two events into one. From the joyful respite of Laetare Sunday (4th Sunday of Lent) we should sail into the short season of Passiontide consisting of Palm and Passion Sundays, respectively, the 5th and 6th Sundays of Lent. From the 5th Sunday of Lent onwards, the statues, the images and the Cross[1] are supposed to be veiled in purple to dramatise the concealment or the “hiding” of Christ’s divinity as His humanity will now be paraded and parodied through the Passion. We also used to celebrate Our Lady of Sorrows on the Friday of the 5th Week of Lent.[2]

However, rightly or wrongly, in the amalgamation, what happens is that we seem to dash through the liturgy with barely time or space to savour the silence of helplessness because the mood very quickly takes a dramatic and sensational turn. Beginning with waving palms, jubilantly we enter into Jerusalem but by the time we re-enact the Gospel drama, we are already thick in the Passion of the Lord. Whatever the loss of space or time to stay and watch, our focus is no longer penance but the bitter passion of Christ’s suffering. Passiontide directs our attention to the sorrowful Saviour as He struggles up to Golgotha.

What we have today is the longest Gospel in the liturgical year and it previews what is to come on Good Friday. A sharper focus of what Jesus goes through has already been foretold by Isaiah’s Song of the Suffering Servant. If we were to remove all the details, the entire Passion drama can be abridged into the 2nd Reading. There St Paul’s theology is central to appreciating what God’s Son went through, all for the sake of humanity.

His state was divine but He clung not to His divinity. This is the great paradox that Jesus taught and lived: life is lived fully not by surrendering to our survival instincts and definitely not by self-preservation. It is counter-intuitive that the fullness of life comes when one gives it up so that others can live. Think of a candle that burns. The only way to emit light is through being burnt off. The idea of self-sacrifice is not unfamiliar to us. Many of you work south of the border so that your children can have a better life. The lofty challenge is to lay down one’s life for strangers and not for blood relations.

Self-preservation is the mantra of a post-Christian, post-truth world. The greatest love is supposedly self-love. The true Servant of Love is Jesus who exemplified that true love equals laying down one’s life and the hymn in the Letter to the Philippians reveals the full sacrifice of that love. If we take our inspiration from the 3rd Luminous Mystery where Jesus proclaims the Kingdom of Heaven, what He does in "kenosis", in self-emptying, is to make sure that the Kingdom He came to inaugurate is not an empty slogan but can be recognised in this world.

And yet, we are far from that Kingdom, are we not?

Even as we claim discipleship, conversion has been painfully slow. St Paul’s “incurvatus in se”, translated as “curved inward on oneself” describes the contradiction between good intentions and our inclination to evil deeds. Man is deeply afflicted by concupiscence for even though the Sacrament of Baptism washes away Original Sin, it does not remove our tendency to sin. This impulse is akin to the experience that we cannot “unknow” or “unlearn” what we have come to know and learn. A person who knows how to walk cannot “unknow” walking.

Why is it so difficult to be converted?

The hurried descent from triumph to failure may have robbed us of the opportunity to stay with the Lord. Like Peter, James and John in the Garden falling asleep while Jesus agonised alone, the sudden slide from victory to defeat also lets us off the hook of staying with the Lord in His suffering. We are ill at ease with inaction, that is, doing nothing, because our basic attitude is activism. After all, are we not upwardly mobile? Instead of waiting for the winds to push our sails, we fly into the storm to get to where we want to be. To be productive is to do something because a minute stalled is a minute wasted. Furthermore, we are uncomfortable with sorrow and we shy away from pain because we associate God with a sense of well-being. In our rush through the liturgy, there is no time for silence and sorrow. No space for us to stay with Him and to feel the weight of our sins loaded onto His shoulders.[3]

If the spiritual objective of Lent is renewal, then, as the etymology of the word suggests, it is a springtime for the soul. In fact, the season of spring leaps forth after the passive fallow of winter. Conversion is the fruit of our penitential practices. But it is not guaranteed automatically. Some Catholics who mortify themselves rigorously will discover that the lasting change they long for always remains as elusive as the horizon. Here we may not realise that conversion is most radical in a grateful heart. A thankful heart is more disposed to change. Without gratitude, Christ’s salvation can feel like we are entitled to it and when it comes to accepting that He died for us, without a matching sense of gratitude, we will take salvation for granted and remain where we are, unmoved, unchanged, unreformed.

Gratitude grows from staying with the Lord. The prolonged Passiontide and the entire Holy Week give us ample time and space to accompany the Lord and to deepen the awareness and to savour the gravity that He died for “me”. He sacrificed Himself to take away “my” sins and not the generic He took away “our” sins or that He died for “us”. It is not “we” who hanged Him on the Cross. It is “I” and not “we” who crucified my Lord. It is easier to hide behind the generic “we” but it requires more personal responsibility to acknowledge the “I”.

Sadly, entitled and insulated that we are, “I” want God to stay with “me”. Whereas a conversion of lasting effect is the fruit of keeping close to Jesus. Furthermore, “I” stay with Him not because He needs “me” but because “I” need Him. Especially when “I” want to rid “myself” of sins or grow in the deeper appreciation of how “my” sins crucified my sweet Jesus. The longer I stay and the more intimate I am with Him, the keener will I feel my sinfulness through and through. Like the Publican at the back of the Temple, not daring to look up, beating his breast, I can lament, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am a sinner”.

In the 2nd Reading, St Paul rightly sings of the abasement of Christ. If the fall of Adam is my damnation, then the abnegation of Christ is my salvation. If I have no sins, then, I really have no need of Him which can only mean that salvation is unnecessary and if He did die for me, I will not be able to appreciate it. Just like the Pharisee in the Temple who was not saved because he had no sin.

Finally, we may not have veiled our images as we have been instructed to do it on Holy Thursday. Notwithstanding, just be mindful that these days of inactivity, our sight should be drawn toward the essential work of Christ’s redemption and the price paid for our salvation. In these coming days of silence, let the hymn “Abide with me” play in our minds. More effectively, change the wordings to “Abide with You” to signal that “I intend to stay with You, my Lord, in Your agony in the Garden all the way to Your death on the Cross so that I may rise with You and be freed from the sins that cling to me”.

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[1] Except Stained Glasses, Stations of the Cross and Procession Cross.

[2] Our Lady of Sorrow is now permanently commemorated on 15th Sept, a day after the Exaltation of the Cross. Its trace is found in the alternative Collect for the 5th Week of Lent. “O God, who in this season give your Church the grace to imitate devoutly the Blessed Virgin Mary in contemplating the Passion of Christ, grant, we pray, through her intercession, that we may cling more firmly each day to your Only Begotten Son and come at last to the fullness of his grace”.

[3] What we are comfortable to do is bubble-wrap the notion of God’s presence in safety and security that we often fail to recognise that He is there in our physical, psychological, social, ecological and spiritual pain.

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord Year B 2021

Today we have two readings from the Gospel of Mark. Palm Sunday is only day in the liturgical cycle with this special feature. But it is not only that. The narrative of the Lord’s Passion is particularly long, and it is recommended that the homily be kept as brief as possible.

The word “proximity” can help us get into the spirit of the Passion. In a recent homily, a link was made that closeness to the sacred is salvific. It may explain the surge of people coming for the services during these most holy days of the Christian calendar. If staying near to Jesus saves, then it is what we ought to do.

The Gospel at the beginning describes Jesus making His triumphant entry into His city, reclaiming the capital, not as a lordly sovereign but rather as a lowly servant, not riding on a steed of war but rather on a beast of burden. Our King is not only meek, but He is soon to be humiliated.

This is the Passion of the Lord and this is the “proximity” we are invited to. Follow Him closely so that we can more deeply appreciate our salvation.

But what have we done?

We have domesticated the Cross, tamed it and turned this compelling badge of belief into an anaemic accessory of adornment. This is inevitable as we have embraced a therapeutic mentality that seems to cling to the crutches of “feeling good”. In a sense, we have reduced “being good” to “feeling good” or therapy. As a result we banish the discomfort that naturally arises from being good or we attempt to eliminate the struggles that comes with the cultivation of moral excellence.

We have forgotten that every endeavour that leads to the Good must somehow involve the Cross. An example to illustrate this is something we all have experienced before: a baby’s teething problem. The pain which is indicative of growth is a good which we, in our fear of suffering will try to eradicate. The basic principle we apply to everything good in which there is pain involved is that we try to get rid of the pain. It means that we want the end result without going through the process of growing. Like the itch which signals that a wound is healing. We want to do away with the itch because we find it difficult to endure the slow progress of healing. In short, banish the process, just jump to the result. We carry this mindset into our religious practices.

But Holy Week requires that we submit to the process. Keep close to Jesus.

The suffering which Jesus undergoes will be excruciating. In the Garden, Jesus begs His Father if He could be spared, not the torture but rather the torment associated with crucifixion. The Cross is one of the most intense instrument of execution fashioned by man. It is designed to inflict optimal bodily harm not in the shortest possible time but stretched to the longest conceivable duration.

The etymology of the word “excruciating” actually brings us back to the cross or the “crux” or “ex cruciare (crucis)”. The taunts, the torments and the tortures are not restricted to Calvary. The cross starts from the get-go. The trial before Pilate with the jeering of the mob, the relentless scourging at the pillar with the soldiers capping a night of tyranny when they fashion a laurel of thorns to mockingly crown Him. The mounting climb must wind through a blood-thirsty swarm of Jerusalem. In the end, the One who survives the disfiguring ascent to Golgotha will be stripped naked and nailed to the Cross.

The next time when we lament  that our agony is "excruciating", remember that we are comparing ourselves to the One who hangs on the Tree who is to be shamed by His denudation and as He breathes His last, the loosening bowel leaves nothing to the imagination. The point is that everything is intended for the utter humiliation of He who dies on the Cross.

This entire week, at least until the morning of Holy Saturday is to be filled with the pangs of death. Instead of running away because death is discomfiting, we linger, we stay as we embrace the proximity of redemption.

The nearness to Jesus is NOT a detached indifference on our part. “Not” is the operative word here. We cannot remain uncommitted from our side because we have safely established that salvation history is fundamentally a chronicle of Divine condescension. God called Saul whereas Jesus chose Levi. In other words, God wants to save and He calls out to us, time and again.

We also read of the woman with the haemorrhage who reached out to Jesus to touch the fringe of His cloak. We accept the need to be near to God and even though it might not feel like it, we are like Paul who had mistakenly thought that killing the early Christians was the right way to keep close to God. In the case of Matthew, he readily walked away from his lucrative livelihood at the invitation of the Saviour, which begs the question why. The wealth he had amassed could not fill the emptiness of his hunger for God.

Proximity to the Saviour is our salvation. So, if you are here after an absence, now is a good chance to come nearer to the Redeemer. To cherish Him, we keep a close watch, follow and stay with Him. The liturgy is not designed to make us “feel good”. What we may have done is to reduce it to a love-fest, a kind of therapeutic Woodstock or self-absorbed carnival that “celebrates” God’s care for us. But it cannot be simply a one-sided love to feed our narcissistic appetite to feel good.

It is true that He died for us, but the gate of Jerusalem represents His entrance into the darkness of our fallen world. He enters to triumphantly shine upon it the Light of His grace. If we have not the strength to follow Him in this final act of salvation, at least, stay alert to await Him. Mindful that the palms we held up for blessing earlier are but soulless symbols. We spread not our outer garments but lay for Him the inner garments of our souls graced by the Sacrament of Baptism. Like every process that leads to the good, we are not in control. But, even if you do not feel good, we are certain that salvation is near. To fully grasp His resurrection, we first need to accompany Christ to His death for we will never rise from the dead if we dare not follow Him into the tomb. Echoing His footsteps, we are made partakers of the Cross so that we may also share in His resurrection and His life.

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord 2020

As we enter into Holy Week, the underlying emotion is one of disappointment. It is almost surreal that we will be celebrating such an important liturgy without popular participation. That being so, perhaps the denial or the lack of people may just highlight for us the true nature of the Eucharist, that absent of people, it is still a public celebration for its purpose is for the salvation of the world. Hence, “private” or “public”, the Mass does what it is supposed to do—to save mankind. The liturgy, properly speaking, is not just our worship of God but it is also God’s service to His people because every Eucharist has for its main celebrant, Christ Himself, who serves through the agency of His instruments, the priests.

We have two Gospel Readings and what is interesting is that first Gospel read after the Blessing of the Palms, is a kind of prelude to the Triumph of next Sunday—Easter. It marks the triumphant entry of God into His own city. Over the last one week or more, our daily Gospel passages were taken from John. There we hear of a Jesus who is in total control—His time has not arrived yet. Therefore, He was able to elude capture by His opponents. But in the second Gospel, taken from Matthew, we witness the full weight of the religious and political machinery brought to bear upon Jesus. We watch how quickly the tide of popular acclamation turned against their Lord and God.

Here is a God who for the love of His people has decided to give Himself into their hands so that He can work His salvation. To accomplish our salvation, this King who entered Jerusalem rode not on a beast of war but a beast of burden. The humble manger He was laid in will soon become the humiliating wood of the Cross. In short, we have a King who came as human as we are. The veiling of the Cross that symbolises the hiding of His divinity shows His humanity now on trial. The whole idea of a God who saves is put on trial by the humiliation of Christ’s humanity. Our salvation is staked on the Cross. What can we learn from this turn of event, that is, the exaltation of Christ that so quickly descended to His humiliation?

His humanity on trial also means that our humanity is on trial which poses these questions. 1. Does our humanity need to be saved? 2. Can our humanity be saved?

In the past, when people sneezed, the automatic exclamation is “Bless you”. Of course, this came about from an era long forgotten. When bubonic plague struck Europe, people dropped dead like flies. And symptomatic of the plague was sneezing. When a person sneezed, people would say, “Bless you” for good reasons. Firstly, one is falling sick and what better way to get well than to ask for God’s blessing. Secondly, one is falling sick and is in danger of death. “Bless you” acknowledges that life is truly in God’s hands.

Today, when a person sneezes, immediately our Covid-19 senses tingle and our radar goes into overdrive... “Bless you” will be the last thing on our mind whereas the first should be, “Hold your breath and run”.

Again, does our humanity need to be saved? Can our humanity be saved?

In this climate of Covid-19, there is a stigmatisation of humanness—that is, there is a denouncement or indictment of what makes us human. We eat, drink, sleep and even defaecate, if you like, pass motion—all human activities or rather normal bodily functions of what it means to be alive. We cough, sneeze and fall sick. Again, these are routine human capabilities. At best, we are just weak when we are taken ill or at worst, it is the natural reality of ageing and the process of dying.

Even Christ Himself submitted to this human process: Christ died. In our Mysterium fidei, we say this “Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again”, suggesting a fact that while human progression of dying is typical, it also indicates that death is not the end of it and that there is life after.

Today we are urged to wear masks, sanitise and to socially distance ourselves. While these enter into the array of precautions taken to minimise contact and contagion, the underlying message is that Covid-19 is not the virus, man is. We are the virus and as such, everything “human” about us has become deadly. Clearing one’s dry throat is already suspect for those who are obsessively compulsive. There is a denunciation of what it is to be human. The new normal is that our humanity is not the road to “salvation”. Rather, death should be avoided because our humanity does not need salvation. We only need to survive. This stigmatisation of our humanness is only made possible because of the virtualisation of life—paved by the information superhighway.

The Church exists only because the work of Christ’s salvation carries on. She is the sacrament of His salvation for the world. But there seems to be a divorce between the Church and salvation (not to mention the Church and evangelisation) because the deprivation of Mass and therefore of the sacraments does not really constitute a problem at all. So easily we turn to live streaming as if it were the new normal now. The virtualisation of Mass through live streaming might seem to be a bonum, a good, an advantage brought about by the advancement of technology but ultimately the central message is that firstly, the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, is no longer necessary for salvation. Spiritual Communion is a good, but it has to be an exception rather than the rule. If it becomes the rule, then the Church is no longer necessary in the economy of salvation and therefore, the priesthood is totally useless.

But starker than a useless priesthood is that we have conceivably arrived at a point where there is no humanity to salvage. God is unnecessary and the Church is no more than a spa, a luxury we afford on the way to a more pleasurable long life. This escape from the stark reality of our humanity (eat, drink, sleep, contact, and etc) is to shrug off the necessity of salvation. The fear which grips the Church is symptomatic of the triumph of the spirit of the age. GK Chesterton said this: “We do not want a Church that will move with the world. We want a Church that will move the world”.

Perhaps, in this time of social distancing, rather than run and hide, we must stand up (not foolishly) for humanity through our Sacramental presence. Otherwise, the prolonged absence of the sacrament will create an incongruence between “faith” and “action”, between what we truly believe in and how we ought to behave. We hold the truth that the Eucharist is truly a food for the journey our viaticum, but our survival instinct articulated through enforced social distancing fundamentally renders that belief empty or useless. That some priests try to be present through creative ways of making the sacraments present is indicative of an attempt to bridge the gap between belief and action—lex credendi, lex vivendi.

As the 2^nd Reading reminds us, “His state was divine, yet Christ Jesus did not cling to His equality with God but emptied Himself”. He became human because humanity was worth His condescension. He came to be with us so that we may have the possibility to be like Him. We are worth saving because we have been created for eternity, not merely to survive. Humanity’s honour has been restored by the journey that Christ makes during Holy Week—a path that necessarily takes us through His passion, death and resurrection. We accompany Him, our Lord and our Saviour.

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord Year C 2019

If the occasion were right, Our Lord would not mind wearing red shoes. This poor Jesus who rode the donkey, rode it not because it was a proud symbol of poverty but rather it was an expression His humility. And if there were a political statement to make, He rode an animal of peace rather than of war. Looking at the stately entrance into Jerusalem, one can surmise that humility and splendour are not mutually exclusive for this poor Jesus did not eschew or renounce pomp and pageantry. In fact, this grand entrance opens the curtain to the great salvation which He will soon wrought with the humility of the Cross. So, even if the people were silenced, as demanded by the Pharisees, the stones would cry out with joy for the real King of Jerusalem has come to reclaim His city—the city of righteousness and peace.

Though His coming was prophesied by Isaiah, the acclaiming crowd had no idea how He would save the city. In reality, they were expecting a King powerful enough to overthrow the occupying Roman forces.

They were wrong. They may have been clamouring but amid the noise there sits a silence which is almost uncomfortable. This poignant silence is not of hopelessness but rather a silence pregnant with possibilities. In the stillness before Calvary, we recognise the depth of God’s will acting in the life of Jesus. Interestingly, the Lord’s prayer according to Luke (Lk 11:2), makes no mention of “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Instead, it is inserted into the Passion—“Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless,let your will be done, not mine”. He went to the slaughter, not relying on His divinity. Instead, emptied of His divinity, He embrace our death in order that we may regain life eternal.

Perhaps it is no big deal that He should divest Himself of His divinity. For some, it is a fact, maybe a useless fact? For if it meant something, I suppose it could have been more impactful; perhaps evoking a bit more heart-wrenching regret on our part. Someone willingly laid down His life for our sins and naturally, we should, in gratitude, be moved to conversion. For example, the cathedral should be packed to the rafter every Sunday and not just for Holy Week/Easter or Christmas. Every Sunday the congregation should be like at Easter or Christmas. Sadly, closer to the truth is, it may be yet another fact which bears little consequence in the way some of us live, that is, if you judge the way some of us park our cars outside in the taman or honk at a driver who is slow on the way out of cathedral grounds. We have been getting a spate of irate home-owners who shout abuse at our Rela volunteers or the security guard for our inconsiderate parking. If not, some annoyed parishioners will give the Rela volunteers a hard time when exiting the compound.

Why are we unmoved by the sacrifice of Christ?

The answer is perhaps located in our self-sufficiency. We are a people confident of our achievements like “Malaysia Boleh”. We place our trust in the structures of our making. We are constantly tweaking the system to make it more perfect. Is that not why we have “new” this or “new” that with better formula, enhanced capability or improved engineering. And, the wealthier we are, the more secure we feel, the less we worry about salvation. In fact, an unspoken assumption today is that everything human, including our gender, is a social construct—all within our control to manipulate. We are who we want to be and we should be able to create society the way we want it. This is evident by our laws struggling to address this assumption.

The irony is, we, who have everything we need to be happy, we are still unhappy. In this vacuum of unhappiness, our book shelves are crammed with books that does nothing more than to shout the mantra that we are in effect our own saviours. We are saved by our own strength through the frameworks that we design. If only we can find the balance, that would be perfection. Furthermore, if not through structures or frameworks, then through our own efforts. Through self improvement, we should also arrive at perfection, which is another word for salvation. The very notion that someone has to save us definitely defaces the illusion that we are self-made.

Deep down, there is a brokenness over which we have no control and the wholeness we crave remains a Utopian project, a Sisyphean task that points to the need for a Saviour to come. Since we are enamoured of human capacity, He should come from our ranks. But unlike us, He must have the power to save us. So, we need a Saviour not only from within but also from without—a Saviour who is everything like us and yet, He alone has the power to save us from ourselves and to heal the brokenness we are.

If we want to avoid the mere motion of enduring yet another Holy Week, we seal these days with silence so that the gratuity of God’s divine condescension can manifest itself more clearly to us. Jesus did not cling to His equality with God but emptied Himself to assume the condition of a slave. To appreciate this Man and the Saviour, we soak in the drama of a Man who loves us unconditionally; a Man for whom even stones would sing. We give Him time and space so that His suffering which saves may slowly embrace and envelop us, soothing our ache and satisfying our hunger. We embrace a silence which is not devoid of sound but rather a silence which is the absence of noise—both electronic and social media noises—thus giving Him time and space so that our heart will be moved, our spirit contrite and our soul repentant.

Palm Sunday Year A

Today I want to answer two questions. Firstly, what lesson can we draw from the Gospel read before the start of our procession. Secondly, there is a shift in mood. Is it significant?

The Gospel before the Blessing of Palms is anticipatory in mood. Christ comes into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. There is an Old Testament reference to the Prophet Zechariah cannot be missed [Zech 9:9]. The Messianic King will come riding on a donkey.

The donkey is an animal of peace. Kings of old would ride on horseback during wartime whereas ceremonial processions were accomplished through the lowly donkey. Whilst Jerusalem erupted into a frenzy befitting a military commander, Christ came unexpectedly as the King of Peace, riding a donkey never ridden before, thus signifying the sacred task the animal was conscripted into.

The crowd shouted rightfully so: Hosanna. Analogous to our SOS, it meant “save us”. But, they were actually asking for nothing. They merely wanted a “god” who could do their bidding. In this case, a saviour to liberate them from their political overlords: the Romans. But, the God who came to save was not a military saviour. Instead, He came to save the people; He came to save all peoples from sin. This King riding on the donkey actually challenged the “status quo” because his liberation was not limited by political or geographical constraints. Moses may have initiated a geo-political liberation but this King was leading an exodus that was more than earthly, more than geo-political and socio-economic liberation because it involved the definitive passage from the reign of evil to the reign of God; from the rule of sin and death to the rule grace and life.

It might not mean a thing to you to know this. Why? Well, life is hard. We struggle through life and in our struggles, many of us will pray and ask that God be generous to us as He listens to prayers and grants our petitions. It is natural we do that but are we asking too little? Sometimes we aim so low without realising that God wants to give us more.

Thus, the shift in mood is necessary. The mood is deliberately sombre. We even covered statues or religious images from last Sunday so that we can better appreciate the immensity of God’s generosity. In fact, the solemnity requires that we put aside even our deepest concerns and focus on the Passion narrative. Before the Blessing of the Palms and the Procession, the King rode a lowly. Here at the Passion Narrative, the King has become the lowly donkey. He has become the beast of burden Himself for He now carries our sins and heals our wounds. This realisation does not come so easily but bereft of “earthly” comforts and pleasures, Holy Week is the graced moment to recognise the immensity of God’s generosity. Do not settle for less than what God wants to give. Holy Week reminds us that God wants to give us eternal life and no less.

Palm Sunday Year C

The liturgy helps us to fix our eyes upon Christ. Even though His suffering is brought to the fore, the point is not its graphic details but rather His love. Love led Him to this oblation. The root of the word “oblation” is offering—His entire life was directed to this oblation/offering of love.

How is Christ’s offering relevant to us? Remember our Lenten practices? They are on praying, almsgiving and fasting. These three devout practices pertain to three relationships: God, others/neighbours and self. Our relationship with God is enhanced through fervent prayers. Our relationship with others/our neighbours is improved through our works of charity. Our relationship with ourselves is purified through our fasting. In other words, we become more of who we are called to be through purification.

These three practices with their attendant relationships are linked to Christ’s oblation. Firstly, Jesus confirms His availability to God through the offering of Himself—by being obedient unto death. Prayer strengthens His availability, His obedience. Secondly, He seals His friendship with us by offering us His very own body and blood so that we might have eternal life. Thirdly, He lives the truth of who He really is—God and Man—by the purity or singleness of His self-offering to His Father and for us , thus, confirming what St Paul tells the Philippians: His state was divine, yet Christ Jesus did not cling to His equality with God but emptied Himself to assume the condition of a slave.

This relevance of Christ’s oblation therefore is found in what St Paul says in his letter to the Romans: When we were baptised into Christ Jesus, we were baptised into his death. By our baptism into his death, we were buried with him so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glorious power, we too should begin living a new life. (Rom 6:5ff).In other words, Christ’s Passion is ours. As Christ offered His life, so are we to do—the Passion simply outlines for us the pattern for Christian oblation. Thus, if Christ is truly our pattern, if we want to emulate our model, we would do well to keep holy these days as we fix our eyes on Christ our Lord; on Him and nobody else. The silence, the pokey palms, the excruciatingly long Gospel, the solemnity allows Him and His loving oblation to become present to us beckoning to follow Him.

Therefore, to those not incapacitated by old age, lack of mobility, pregnancy or suckling babies, the ritual of the gathering, the palms, the procession is important. Some of us come here early to book our usual place… our habitual place. We act our survival instinct and that is natural. But, when Christ was born, He did not gun for the Cross. It was not as if he was born and immediately He chose the Cross. Rather, it was His choices, His opening, His availability and His love that finally led Him to the Cross. So, when you come in, after the gathering, the blessing of the palm and the procession, to find your place taken, it’s akin to Christ’s life and that gives you the chance to say to God: “Here I am, Lord. Life has led me to this place not of my choice but I am open to Your will”. Our desire to do God’s will can never be from an arm-chair; it is never at our convenience. Hence, this routine is practice for us. It becomes a symbol of our desire to make our offering to God, like Christ did.

In the days to come, the readings will be long, the weather will be uncomfortably warm and people will probably be inconsiderate in their parking. Do not think of these as inconveniences but rather as a kind of training for the days to come, when God will take up our offering. If you offer yourself to God, He will accept you and it will be on His terms.