13th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Recently, the British PM addressed the House of Commons, where he acknowledged, amongst other things, that British soldiers had fired on unarmed and fleeing civilians in Derry or Londonderry—depending on which side you take. He did this based on the outcome of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry and consequently, on behalf of the British Government, he apologised to the families of the victims for the event that took place in 1972. Three days later, on the 18th of June, a headline in the New York Times read “In Bloody Sunday Apology, a Promise of Closure”.

Have you notice that the word “closure” frequently crops up from those who seek justice? It is a word which is important to us not just from a personal perspective. For example, the corporate world is constantly looking out for deals to close. It is possible that we have imported this corporate word into our everyday life as we look for closures in our lives. This Sunday, the Gospel may help us reflect further on this need of closures, their significance in our lives and their place in the theme for today: “The Lord we serve”.

First, the arresting line of today’s Gospel is “Jesus resolutely took the road for Jerusalem”. And mind you, this is taken from Luke Chapter 9. We are not even halfway through the Gospel and we encounter a stiffening of Christ’s posture. Actually, I like another translation better: “He set His face for Jerusalem”. The imagery is evocative… Christ has a mission. He is not distracted by anything, not even righteous revenge on the Samaritans, as He is intent on accomplishing His mission.

Therefore, the severity of Christ’s responses to the man who wanted to bury his father and to the man who needed to say goodbye to his parents must be seen in this context. Setting His face for Jerusalem underlines the unconditional nature of discipleship: “Once the hand is laid on the plough, no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God”.

Here we may begin to ask what the connexion is between closures and discipleship.

In the second and third man’s responses to Christ’s invitation to follow Him, we find conditions attached to their responses. If you scrutinise them closely, these men’s conditions simply symbolised the closures they needed in their lives. They were not reluctant to follow Christ. In fact, they were eager to follow Christ but, they just needed to finish some tasks before they embarked on the next phase of their lives.

In many ways, we are like these men. We look for closures in our lives because they befit an enlightened existence. First, we do not just leave something half done and move on. Parents who have children changed their major halfway through know the exasperating cost of transferring. Those of us who have had to clean up after somebody know the annoyance and the irritation that comes with the unpleasant task. When a job is completed, there is a sense of accomplishment that opens up to new possibilities and new beginnings. Secondly, some of us carry the pains of unsaid goodbyes; especially of a loved one. Nothing rends the heart more than a death without proper goodbyes.

Thus, closures are important and necessary to our sanity—spiritual, psychological and also physical. The first reading actually attests to that as Elijah allowed Elisha to go home to kiss his father and mother goodbye.

The question for us is this: if closures were necessary to human existence, why did Christ not take note of them? In fact, his responses came across as cold and quite heartless. Now, if these responses sound alien and if they come across as harsh, it could be that they are upsetting the assumptions we have of life. We have somehow lost a vision of life—of eternal life to be exact--because an exaggerated preoccupation with closures may come from a vision of eternity that is impaired. Unfortunately, this is basically the vision of most people—who cannot see beyond temporal life. Two examples—reality TV and documentaries may illustrate the impaired vision of eternal life. Reality TV and documentaries are both entertaining as well as educational, didactical or informative. [1] But what reality TV and documentaries do is to take apart what might belong to the realm of the mysterious. We do not need to know everything in the private lives of people, least of all the salacious and sordid details of their sex lives nor do we need to know everything about nature. The human drive to know is divinely endowed but it is not an absolute drive. That was why God said to Adam: “Eat anything or everything except the fruit of this one tree”. And our Liturgy confirms this when it says, “And on that day, we will see You, God, as You are”. For now, we see murkily and so it is quite alright that we do not know everything because the need for certainty drives us to immediacy whereas mystery allows us to bear with what is beyond our control.

Because we are driven or enslaved by the phantom of immediacy and certainty, the lack of closure usually means people stop living. Those who have fallen in love with people who cannot return their love know how debilitating the feeling of unrequited love is. There is no closure when one is love-sick and one practically pines away for the unattainable. The same goes for those unable to forgive and are forever trapped in a life-sapping or enervating hurt. A lot of energy is used in trying to force a closure.

When our vision of life is purely temporal, the messiness and the uncertainties of life become added burdens. Now, even though it is good to say goodbye or to complete a task, we learn from the Gospel today that discipleship in Christ falls within the context of His Father’s eternal project. If you like, in the context of discipleship, Christ’s responses to these men were: move on. We move on because in the bigger vision of life eternal, everything, even the unfinished business, has a place. A present and incomplete picture is not always disastrous but rather it may be an imperfection waiting for completion. So, the messiness of life is not a final verdict. We must not let it detract us from giving what we have and all we have to Christ. That is the meaning of service. [2]

Christ invites us to follow Him. His discipleship is intense and often we do not feel up to the demands of the call; we feel that we do not measure up. As a result of this perceived failure to measure up and coupled with a temporal view of life, we will certainly feel the pressure to find closure in this life. It is as if we need to complete everything here in this life. Sometimes we find our closure by “perfecting” ourselves in order to give God a better present than we are. [3] But, St Paul says otherwise. As he tried to get rid of his so-called favourite sin, he came to the realisation that he had only Christ’s strength to rely on. With Christ’s grace, our strength grows out of our weakness. Therefore, when everything is not complete, and even when our lives find no closures, God can still do great things through us…

To serve the Lord, we need a better grasp of eternity but not only that. To serve Him better, we need a spirituality of the “Other” world because a temporal vision of life will only trap us in the closures of false perfection in this life. We ought to seek for closures but we need the wisdom to recognise that some closures are only possible in the next life and because of that, it is possible to serve the Lord despite our pains and sorrows. The other world of Christ our Lord allows us to put our hands to the plough of incompleteness and not look back. According to St Paul, we can run the race and finish it.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] I like the Jerry Springer Show. The hair-pulling histrionics and slapping antics make for great entertainment and titillation. What about emails? How many of us have received emails giving us details on how we can prevent our future stroke. We are being informed to death!
[2] You may begin to see that in serving the Lord, sin (the lack of closure) is not a good reason to stop serving. I guess this explains why divorced Catholics in an irregular relationship, meaning a divorced Catholic in a second marriage outside the Church, [in the old days, we called that living in sin] is still obliged to attend Mass on Sunday even if he or she cannot receive Holy Communion.
[3] It explains why people shy away from confessions. The usual excuse is “Why go for confessions when I am going to commit the same sins again”? The flipside of this question is an assumption that confession is meant to wipe the slate clean (therefore denoting a closure) so that the end result is a perfect gift of ourselves we present to God. It is no less than the pride of Babel in which we are really saying to God, “Let me be as perfect as You and only then will You be worthy of me”.

Holy Thursday Year C

Our liturgy commemorates the first Eucharist. But, it is much more than a commemoration. Ever since that holy night, Christians have gathered faithfully to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. The 2nd Reading, taken from St Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, is crystal clear about this. “This is what I received from the Lord, and in turn passed on to you”. The Church, through the sacred [1] ministry of Her priests, is where the Eucharist we have received from the Apostles is passed on. The Eucharist and the Priesthood were born on the same night!

However, the Gospel seems to go off-tangent because it remains quiet on the sacraments of Eucharist and also the Priesthood. There seems to be a silence in the Gospel because the Eucharist and Priesthood are wrapped in the towel which Christ uses to wash the feet of His disciples. The Gospel’s focus may be on service.

In a sense the focus on service is not so off-tangent because priesthood together with marriage are sacraments specifically directed to the service of the community—each according to its vocation—priesthood to serve the Church and marriage to serve the family. What is not so clear is the link between the Eucharist and service.

How is the Eucharist related to service? We take our cue from the great commandment which echoes both Deut 6:4-5 and Lev 19:18: Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. Love your neighbour as yourself. In Christ, the Eucharist is His love for His Father and service is His love for His neighbour. Tonight, in the Washing of Feet, Christ teaches us that both the Eucharist and service are inseparable. The Gospel’s focus may be on service but it actually leads us back to the Eucharist.

The command to love God and neighbour is best lived through the Eucharist and service.

Firstly, the Eucharist without service often degenerates into a form of spiritual selfishness. It is like using God to legitimise who we are and it may even lead to self-righteousness. Take a look at the Carmelites or any of the cloistered religious orders. They live behind walls and seemingly have nothing to do with the outside world. What relevance is the Eucharist to them? The fruit of the Eucharist is selflessness as it draws a person out even to the sacrifice of his or her life. And that is precisely what the nuns or monks do—the life of prayer they lead is directed to others—they sacrifice themselves for the good of the Church. In that sense they mirror the Eucharist as the sacrifice of Christ’s life. Once we have this understanding of what the Eucharist means, it will lead us out of ourselves, our comfort zones, our securities to risk all for Christ. You see this in every saint of the Church. It was their love of the Eucharist that led them to all sorts of endeavours for the Kingdom of God.

Secondly, service without the Eucharist is humanistic activism. It is bound to fail because it will never be the kingdom of God. It might be a political or economical solution but it will never satisfy the spiritual need of people. There are many people of goodwill and they have great desires to serve. However, have you noticed that goodwill is just good for a while? When goodwill runs out, people usually end up fighting. Look at the current state of the opposition coalition—there was goodwill at the beginning but now infighting.

Service without God, at its worst, is like communism. But, if you look at the history of religious life, you will find that every religious congregation of the Church will have a sense of devotion to the Eucharist. The Congregation with a strong emphasis on service, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta’s Missionaries of Charity leads the way in Eucharistic adoration. This link of service to the Eucharist is a reminder to those who serve that Christ alone saves the world and that we are merely instruments in His service. Otherwise, we would be tempted to think that we can save the world. Communism was humanity’s pride in thinking that it, not God, is humanity’s saviour.

The Washing of the Feet within the context of the Eucharist is a reminder that the Eucharist leads to service and service is strengthened by the Eucharist. It is natural that some of us want the benefits of the Eucharist without embracing its responsibility. But, Christ has shown that the Eucharist must come alive in us through our service of our neighbours. And some of us are convinced that goodwill is enough to sustain our service but we are shown by the examples of the saints that our service always brings us back to the Eucharist to beseech our Saviour for strength so that we give the best of ourselves. [2]

In conclusion, for Catholics, the Last Supper is by no means the last. Instead, it is perpetually the Lord’s Supper given for the love and service of the world and Christ Himself showed us the best example of loving service when, at the Eucharistic table, He also washed the feet of His disciples.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] The crowd is phenomenal and it could be an occasion to take a swipe at those who come only once in a while etc… but no, I shall not take that path. People are here for some reasons of their own. Sometimes people stay away from the Church because the Church has hurt them in the past. It is funny that no matter how much we try to “deny” the Church, somehow, we are connected to her. For example, people who do not want to be Catholics define themselves as ex-Catholic. In the face of the current crisis, and we read every day the same salacious and sordid exposé, let me comment on this. Earlier, I deliberately used the word “sacred” in reference to the ministry of the priests because our morality has become too “earthly”. Have you noticed that we judge the truth of a statement or even an institution based on the failure of those who are supposed to uphold it? As such morality has become “earthly” simply because we are now the gauge, rule or standard of what morality should be. We fear the use of the word “sacred” because of the failures of the members of the Church. But, do not judge the truth of Christ’s Church by the failure of Her priests and religious. Despite our failure as priests or religious, Christ’s Church is sacred or holy because She is forever the faithful Bride of Christ. And we lovingly call the Church our Holy Mother and for that reason, Her liturgical actions are considered sacred because they are actions of the Church done through fallible men. Therefore, in the face of seeming systemic failure, when everything seems hopeless, as these days do feel, instead of withdrawing, all the more we ought to turn to our Saviour to ask for His help rather than depend on our own strength. It is the right thing to do because our entire liturgy is centred on the proclamation that Christ is our Saviour. To whom do we go if not to Him? Further to the current imbroglio, perhaps we can better understand how we ought to proceed if we know where the world is coming from. The world's reaction is indicative of how sad the world has become. The world looks at itself and it does not like what it sees. Since salacious scandals are staples for the entertainment media, it should come as no surprise that the world is in such a sordid state. However, I suspect that the world actually does not like what it sees of itself. Thus, when the world looks at the Church it realises that some members of the Church are reflecting back its ugliness. Instead of saying, "we have a problem and we need to change", what has happened is the world re-channels the rage it has against itself to the Church. It is a form of self-hatred and also it is more convenient that the fault lies elsewhere. [Here I am not giving excuse for the wrongs of the members of the Church. We have a lot to answer for].
[2]Our cynicism with regard to failed governance can probably be explained by the fact that we believe that goodwill is enough to will the good. It is not enough and when goodwill fails to achieve what we have set out to do, we turn cynical. If you think about it, most "activists" are people of goodwill who desire to change the world. They are fired by a vision of a better world. And they set their hearts and minds on the goal of making the world a better place. Often they get burnt out and after years of service without any result, they become cynical. Is there not a saying that "Cynics are failed Idealists"? Whereas, the previous footnote highlights the need to turn to our Saviour for salvation. A corollary of trust in Christ who redeems is courage not to succumb to despair or cynicism. The failure of governance does not negate the need for it and therefore, instead of cynicism, we reaffirm our dependence on the Lord as we endeavour even more to engage civil society in the enterprise of justice, love and peace. This is how Christian hope can be lived.

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

The theme for Mission Sunday is Christ the Suffering Servant of God. The word that strikes at our Catholic heartstrings is “suffering” because the Church seems to have a passion for suffering. The passage taken from the Prophet Isaiah reinforces the perception that the Church and suffering come as a package. The truth is, as the two sons of thunder jostle for a place of honour in the line-up of the future glorious Lord, He draws their attention to the fact that authority is for service and only then, service and suffering become two sides of a coin.

The place of honour sought by the brothers has its appeal and its grandeur is even more alluring in our age of celebrity. We live in an age that has gone beyond the simple categories of fame or notoriety. In the past, one was either famous or notorious. Today, it does not matter as long as one opens that 15-minute window of glory to celebrity-hood. But, the craving for celebrity status is not our concern. What is of greater concern is that the authority that James and John sought from being honoured with Christ has lost its credibility.

The 19th/20th century gave us three great thinkers whose thoughts or reflexions correspond to 3 vital areas of our lives. In the area of psychology, we enter the world of Sigmund Freud’s psycho-analysis. In the arena of economics, Karl Marx is no stranger to us as he tries to level the playing field. In the realm of politics, Friedrich Nietzsche introduces us to power.

Now, great thinkers they may be, but, collectively, they are called the Masters of Suspicion. Their hermeneutics or their principle of interpretation is basically one of suspicion or distrust. Freud, in the area of psychology teaches that motives are often impure and cannot be trusted. Marx shows us that capital is the struggle between the rich and the poor. Capital cannot be trusted because it is basically the rich oppressing the poor. Finally, Nietzsche’s genius is found in the will to power. Everything is about power or control and as such those who are powerful cannot be trusted.

In the last 100 years or so, we realise that these 3 Masters of Suspicion have been proven right—time and again. People who are honoured because they have good intentions are often not trustworthy—holy men and women betray their vocations and often the more holy the more hypocritical. [1] Those who have money will make sure that the status quo is maintained. How can a person be rich, if there were no poor people beneath them? Finally, power is corrupt. We have witnessed coercive power at work—coercion and the treat of punishment are a lethal and corrupt mixture in the disguised service of the greater good.

In short, the crisis in our age is trust. If we lament that the defining feature of this age is characterised by a loss of faith in God, it is perhaps an indictment against humanity more than it is against God. Loss of faith in God is symptomatic of the loss of faith in humanity. [2]

Hence, the Gospel is timely today. Firstly, it is not focused on the suffering. Christ and His Church do not look for suffering in itself; that would be masochism. On the contrary, suffering is often the consequence of the sacrifice entailed by serving that allows us to say that suffering and service are two sides of a coin. Once we accept that the consequence of service is suffering, perhaps we can now understand that Christ, the suffering servant is more relevant than ever. You may experience that honoured people cannot be trusted. You may meet people for whom riches have not made them more graceful but instead have turned them rather disgraceful and you may come across people for whom power is only self-serving. All these experiences may discourage you to the point of cynicism or drive you into a self-contained but asphyxiated world—a world choked by its pessimism. [3]

But, Christ shows us a way out of our current malaise or crisis. The greatest redemption for authority is to be found in service. In short, the best way to be honoured for your good intentions, to be wealthy or to be powerful is to serve. Last week, I mentioned that proper development of the conscience with regard to wealth as blessings begins with our direct involvement with the poor. Why? The answer is found in Matthew 25. The service of the least of Christ’s brethren is to serve Him. Anything that wields us authority—honour, wealth or power—anything that places us a rank above others, now in Christ, becomes a responsibility to serve Him.

In summary, more than ever, the healing of our intention, the rehabilitation of wealth and the restoration of the proper use of power must take place in the arena of service. [4] In the olden days, kings stood at the head of their army leading the charge and were often the first to be killed. How else to be an effective leader if one does not know how to serve and be the example or model? Christ, who is pure in His love, whose wealth is His divinity and who has power as God, has shown us the path of service. He who is everything has shown us what it means to wield authority. The more honoured you are, the richer you are and the more powerful you are, that is, the more authority you possess, the greater must your service be. A tell-tale sign that you have come into the authority of Christ is this: no one, not even a beggar and nothing, not even washing the toilet, is below your dignity to serve or to do. Service, at the heart of the Christian message, is rooted in strength. It is not a sign of weakness but really an exercise in strength. Only the strong dares to serve. The weak will cling to authority.

FOOTNOTES:
[1]People avoid the term “holy”. We simply cannot trust people’s motives.
[2]There are people who think that bringing new life into the world is an act of grave irresponsibility. Such thinking illustrates not only the loss of faith in humanity but also is symptomatic of the tiredness of the human spirit. There is a dearth of inspiration that cries out for the Holy Spirit.
[3] The hermeneutics of suspicion can only take us so far. We may distrust everything but only so much. Otherwise, a radical distrust will only end up with paranoia or the inability to function. Ultimately, we begin to doubt the very ground we stand on. Thus, the hermeneutics of suspicion is balanced by the opposite which is the hermeneutics of trust. The hermeneutics of trust ties in with a God who is also Providence.
[4]Authority accorded by honourable intention, wealth or power is redeemed by service.