7th Sunday of Easter Year B 2021

This is a Sunday of preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit. According to some writers, we are in the midst of the “proto-novena” on which all subsequent novenæ are based upon. While waiting for the promised Advocate, the Gospel chosen features the High-Priestly prayer of Jesus where He lifts up His followers. He asks the Father to keep humanity united so that they can reflect the oneness between Him and the Father.

How is that union achieved and what does it consist of?

Firstly, unity can be a slippery concept to grasp. The modern era may value diversity and inclusivity, but in reality, our notion of unity is not exactly bound by these two defining characteristics. Instead, unity is markedly designated by uniformity. Just ask Facebook or Twitter. They have policies that enforced a kind of “group-think” even if they were to vehemently protest that they do not. If a platoon of soldiers marching across a bridge in unison can cause a bridge to collapse, then “group-think” imposed by societal pressure can only result in an environment known as the “echo chamber”. It is a phenomenon[1] where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect or reinforce their own. Solutions to problems will always be less than optimal which could have catastrophic results. In short, unity cannot consists in uniformity.

Unity has to breach the suffocating walls of “group-think” and “echo chamber” in order to thrive. The 2^nd Reading offers a clue that for unity to flower, it must be planted in the soil of love. It goes without saying that the unity we yearn for must be set in relationships. Without love, without connexion to each other, how will unity take root?  However, the difficulty we encounter with regard to love is its definition. The current meaning of love bears a close resemblance to licentiousness. What lust does is to wound love as Black Eyed Peas cautioned us because “fools in lust could never get enough of love, love love”.[2] Therefore, love must be grounded in truth as St Paul reminded the Corinthians in the famous ode we often hear at Wedding Masses and Services: “Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the truth” (1 Cor 13: 6).

Given the fondness of blaming conflicts on differences in terms of race or religion, language or learning, sexual orientation or social status and etc, we are, in some ways, driven to look for the common denominator of unity. We have come to think of unity, not in terms of love but of rationality—a product of our highly technical and mechanised mentality. In a sense, “Modernity” is the proud mother of the French and American Revolutions symbolised by the figure of “Marianne” who personifies the familiar values of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” and is the embodiment of Reason. Unfortunately, this same “reason” also gave birth to the Jewish Holocaust[3].

Sadly, the history of Modernity and Rationality has shown us that the unity we desire for mankind cannot be achieved without the truth of love. Love cannot paper over the ugliness of sin. In our idea of unity as one, we think that love means ignoring differences which are substantial. For example, Holy Communion, the powerful symbol of unity. In an endeavour to fulfil the high-priestly prayer of Jesus for unity, some think that Holy Communion, instituted by Christ at the Last Supper, can be a means of unity. Yet, the differences in our approach to this ritual meal are substantial. What the Eucharist is for many Protestant denominations and Catholics is as different as between a disposable piece of wafer and the Real, True and Substantial Presence.

Furthermore, in an attempt to accommodate Modernity’s paradigm or model of love without truth, the Church has become divided. We have a faction that holds fast to the Church’s teachings on love and a bloc that believes that such teachings should be brought up to date to coincide with modern sensibilities. Thus, the battlefield today is observed in a concerted effort to expand the definitions of marriage and family so as to make room for alternative lifestyles. The unity we all believe in is not made easy because everyone is convinced of the “truth” his or her position.

Today we celebrate Communication Sunday. To arrive at the unity prayed for by Jesus, there is no other way except to preach, teach, and manifest the truth in love. In order for unity to grow, love has to be anchored in the Truth. If the Truth is Jesus Christ, then this Novena to the Holy Spirit makes sense. If the Truth is Jesus Christ, then the Spirit of Truth is the Spirit of Jesus the Lord who teaches us how to love as we prepare to receive the gift of unity.

Thus, we are invited to a relationship with the 2^nd Person of the Trinity—Jesus Christ. Where we stand in terms of our belief is always relative to Him. In the first reading, it is shown that who stands in the place of Judas is not really that important. What is central is that the person who takes the place of Judas, be it Barnabas or Matthias should always stand in relation to the Truth, to Jesus Christ. In other words, we stand on the side of God and that side is secured by our relationship with Him.

This requires a change in our perception because the Truth is not an object over which we have control. It is never a possession through which we exhibit strength. In such a scenario, “truth” as an object opens up the possibility of coercion and manipulation as exhibited by the phenomena of “group-think” or “echo chamber”. Truth as “Personal” is always Jesus Christ before Whom we are humble and under Whom we serve. We preach Jesus Christ crucified.[4]

In the daunting depth of Deepfake, in the fearful face of Fake News, in the menacing mischief of misinformation, the electronic media is the new Wild, Wild West where the powerful hold sway over what is “truth”. But we are unafraid especially when our communication, that is, our proclamation of Jesus Christ is shaped by love. Through discourses, exchanges, dialogues that “strive to be clear and honest, in the press, on the internet, in the Church’s daily preaching and in political or social communication”[5] we pave the path of love for the Holy Spirit so that He can forge the unity that we desire. With human technology, we can go only so far in forging the unity prayed for by Jesus. With the Holy Spirit, heaven is the limit because unity is His gift for our cooperation and for our love.

 

 

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[1] Think of Google, Facebook and Twitters’ algorithms. They, especially Google’s, are not geared towards “free” information but subtly, they act as a corral towards businesses that can feed our queries or searches. What you frequently search for will subsequently turn up as blinking pop-up advertisements that are targeted to stoke your curiosity. At best, they are distractions. At worst, one ends up buying what is not necessary.

[2] Black Eyed Peas, “Shut Up”.

[3] Modernity as a rational process, seeks to remove from the person, the uncertainties of life and also to increase security for the individual. This requires personal freedom to be sacrificed in order that uncertainties are lessen and security heightened. To achieve that, attempts will be made to control nature, structure hierarchy, impose rules and regulations, and to enlarge control over people through social and telecommunication media. In an effort to “control”, obedience to the “diktat” of the state is considered a moral good which if unchallenged will result in the exclusion of some people because they do not fit into the organisation of a picture-perfect society. The Jews did not fit the programme of “beauty and excellence” of the Aryan race. Hence, the Holocaust.

[4] 1 Cor. 1: 23-24. Here are we preaching a crucified Christ; to the Jews an obstacle that they cannot get over, to the pagans madness but to those who have been called, whether they are Jews or Greeks, a Christ who is the power and wisdom of God.

[5] Cf. Communication Sunday 2021

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2019

We like to believe that we are truthful. After all, investigative journalism is born of an era fighting for truth that has been obscured by the establishments or agencies. Think Watergate and all the subsequent “-gates”. However, if we readily give credence to conspiracy theories, then we are in a way, accustomed to being lied to by governments. It means that we are already operating under a hermeneutics of suspicion because our mind has been framed to see conspiracy in everything. Whilst it could be true that people are conspiring but constantly being suspicious may reveal a psychosis of a kind. In short, delusional paranoia.

It just makes truth so much more complicated in an atomised and individualised world. Watch a family of five in a food court, all apparently eating together but each one is engaged with his or her device. That is how an atomised society looks like. Today’s Gospel gives an idea of how fraught the journey to truth is.

Jesus was feted by the crowd because He was eloquent and was able to hold the crowd’s attention but when He got near to the truth, it sat uncomfortably with His hearers. In general, we shy away from unvarnished truth preferring a sugar-coated version of it. In this, I am reminded of the movie which propelled Tom Cruise to celebrity status and also starred a veteran Jack Nicholson: A Few Good Men where Jack exploded in a contemptuous sneer at Tom:“You can’t handle the truth”. 

This disability applies to many of us as it it did to the throngs surrounding Jesus. For many of us, truth is akin to the icon “Like” on your facebook. As long as people like it, then what is posted must be “good” and therefore “true”. In a sensationalised world, clicks are all that count, not the substance. Thus, in 2016, “post-truth” entered the Oxford English Dictionary and our imagination. It was followed closely by “fake news”. The algorithms of our social media do what they do best. They do not really challenge us; instead, they gather our likes and exclude our dislikes. This kind of separation works rather well with our ghetto mentality. Investigative journalism does pride itself as a purveyor of truth but in reality, it merely uncovers a point of view. Sometimes what we want to search for will lead us to the conclusion that we desire. “Echo chamber” is the proper term to describe a post-truth universe that is hyper polarised and parochially partisan—in other words, we preach to the choir because we often believe more readily that which we prefer to be true, rather than what happens to be true.

But truth remains our deepest calling as we heard in the Prophet Jeremiah. It is our vocation. In the context of the second reading, truth must be preached in love. In fact, truth is best served by a loving attitude. There is a person I know who prided himself as a pillar of righteousness. He could be right in most of cases but he was right in a way that was not helpful others. When someone got hurt by what he said, his usual reply was, “It is true what”.

His version of the truth is a timely reminder that it does not take much for truth to be a form of power. This makes truth more a possession than a persuasion. For the longest time I have been looking for an anecdote of one of the greatest minds we had last century—Albert Einstein. Here, I am going out on a limb to paraphrase what he said because he provided a humility that inspires us to seek the truth not so much to possess it but rather to serve it.

Apparently, he was asked what he thought about his greatest achievements. In regard to his discoveries he replied, “I don’t want to be right. I just want to know if I have been right”. To be right is fantastic but a desire to know if one had been right is a moral and ethical stance. It is a posture which puts a person in the service of the truth. Just to be right alone does sound as if truth has become a prized possession. Whereas the desire to know if one has been right keeps one humble in such a way as to allow for God to break through our defences, our prejudices or righteousness. For example, in giving an assessment on a person, I may state the facts and the facts speak for themselves. However, what prevents me from arrogance would be questions like, “Was I fair to the person in my judgement? Was what I said true?”. In other words, have I been right? Such a humility gives space for truth to persuade rather than it being an expression of power.

We all pillory or excoriate the ex-PM, do we not? In many a conversation, we “taruh” him and everytime his name is mentioned, some of us roll our eyes or we just smirk. The thing is, even the devil can speak the truth. When the devil tested Jesus in the desert, every fact he described of Jesus is true—(1) the Son of God, (2) who can turn stones to bread and (3).would definitely gained material wealth if he just worshipped the devil. For us, in our collective consciousness, our King of Trolls has committed crimes so unspeakable that there is nothing about him that is redeemable. But, just like the devil our enemy, Najib could say something true. Our love for truth should encourage us to ask the question rather than simply dismissed what has been posted in his facebook account: “Is it true”? Sadly, we have lost the civility of listening that we no longer see past a person’s crime, behaviour or sins. Our brand of justice may just be thinly-veiled vengeance.

Whilst there is a need to uncover the truth, truth in a post-truth, fake news and echo-chamber universe is characterised by power in that he who shouts the loudest often holds sway. I once lived with a Jesuit whose line of argument was not reason but rather a loud, raised and close to a shouting voice. And that “was” truth that no one would engage with him. The partisan divide of the USA is another cogent example because neither is hearing the other side but each preaches to its own choir. Just watch CNN and Fox News and you know what I mean.

Within a world which is so broken and in need of fixing, the search for truth cannot be divorced from love. In fact, truth and love reside in one person: Jesus Christ. For in Him, we have logos and agape, wisdom and love. Thus, the path to truth (logos, wisdom, reason) is at the same time, the path of love. Without love, truth becomes hard for it is mere facts which often does not inspire change. But without truth, love becomes sentimental for it pretends that nothing is wrong and thus, it sugar coats without the challenge to change.

It does not appear so but our engagement of social media exposes a longing whereby we all hunger to be right, yearn to be heard, need to have the last word and finally to win an argument. To this truth-deficit world, St Augustine teaches us an attitude which might assist along the way. He says that, in all thing essentials, let there be unity. In all things unessential, let there be diversity. Above all, let there be charity. So, you do not have to be right all the time. It is possible to do things differently but most all, whatever it is, let there be love in our actions.

Triduum Day 2

Today, we continue with our Triduum. Tomorrow, Fr Colin Tan, our Regional Superior will preach the final homily. Despite the best of intentions, Murphy’s Law applies to the situation in the Parish Office. I live the tension of organised chaos. My constant companion in the last ten years has been this phantom standing next to me: “Homily. Homily. Homily. Have you done it?” and as I struggle these days, the emails, letters and things administrative are stacking up around my table and as a result another part of me is screaming out, “Clear the mess. Clear the mess”. It has been like this each time we arrive at Thursday or Friday of the week.

Today is also the calm before the storm—the big day being tomorrow. This is the “What shall I do?” in between Day I and Day III—neither here nor there. I spent the whole day trying to mould the homily and it has not been easy. Let me take my cue from yesterday. For many of us, truth is what works. That being the case, our concern with what works is expressed through the arena of economics, technology, business and for some the corridors of power. But, I am concerned about the truth of being because John Paul II did in his encyclical Fides et ratio say this: the neglect of being inevitably leads to losing touch with objective truth and therefore with the very ground of human dignity (FE, 90). Nothing is as important to us today as the very talk of human dignity. One of the reasons we give in to the dictates of political correctness is because calling a person retarded would somehow injure his “human dignity”. Indeed, let us ask the grace to return to the truth of being so that we may live the being of truth.

How can we live the being of truth?

We need to take care of our ideas.

A loaded automatic machine-gun can kill tens of people. But millions die from an idea. For example, Hitler’s idea of the purity of a race sent millions of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and retards/disabled to their death. What we consider to be nothing today can be the Godzillas of tomorrow! Suffice to say that the basis of our living the being of truth is founded on the ideas that we have. The trouble with ideas is the more fundamental they are, the more we seem to assume or take for granted. Therefore, part of the process of breaching the walls of the entrapped “I” is a painful need to re-look at some of the fundamental ideas we hold to be important in life.

One of the most important ideas of all is the idea of progress. This is my point. In seeing something we do not see the eye. It is only when we cannot see well that we begin to ask if something is not right with the eye. To see the eye, we need to look into a mirror. Thus, the idea of progress is like the eye. We can see progress in leaps and bounds but we do not really examine its foundation. What is progress? Not only does it connote an inevitable march but it also carries with it a threat. We invoke the march of progress to justify almost everything that we want to do. And dare you stand against its march?

The most optimistic expression of the idea of progress is technology. You would have heard me speak about technology here and there and it seems that I am attacking technology, coming as it were, from an obscurantist position. But, have you heard of Odysseus? He was the protagonist of the Homeric poem Odyssey which in part was a sequel to the Illiad. Troy, Trojan Horse and Helen the face that sank a thousand ships, etc. Odysseus, post the Trojan war, was making his way home. In his sojourn, he and his men came to a place where the inhabitants ate lotus-flowers. Subsequently, two men ate of the lotus-flowers causing them to forget their home-coming.

What is the moral of the story? Apart from the use of narcotics to induce a mystical state of mind, the moral here is that we are often enamoured by whatever takes our fancy thus forgetting our original intention. Progress is like the lotus-flower for it entrances us. We assume that progress is advancement, amelioration, breakthrough, development and certainly evolutionary. In the field of reproductive technologies, the Church is viewed as really behind time or worse as an enemy of human progress. Yes, we know that under the sway of technology, mankind has been subject to the tyranny of progress. Progress does not follow laws, least of all, the law of morality except that it is itself the law meaning that progress is inevitable.

Is it?

Thus, we need to look into the mirror. And for many of us, technology will never allow us that freedom to look into that mirror. Imagine that you can shrink a picture with the pinch of two fingers or enlarge it by spreading two fingers and how that would look like to people a hundred years ago. Transport yourself back and you would be an instant magician. We crave connectivity and I suspect that our aching to be reached instantaneously is a symptomatic cry of loneliness of the entrapped “I”. We live in a world, should I say, environmentally hostile world, where we are not really in control and technological progress steps in with gadgetry that promises control, feeding our fantasy that all these gadgets will promise us everything and asks nothing of us. That is why technology has to be sexy.

Some of you know that there is a blog of homilies which are posted hopefully after each Sunday. I resisted it for a long time but even I succumbed to the allure of reaching a ready audience. Fr Michael and I joke in this manner: “Hey, have you worshipped at my temple yet ah”? Well, I usually do not go to his temple even though sometimes I am amazed at how good a few of my homilies are. Have to be honest here. The point is not the homilies. The point is captured by the phenomenon of Facebook. “To like”, as a verb, is now transformed into a click. Imagine how much we now want to be liked and in the world of Facebook, we are instant stars or celebrities of our own movies. An idea, unexamined, may lead us to places we never would think of going and the temptation of the entrapped “I” in a technologically progressive world, is narcissism—self-worship.

I love gadgets to tell the truth. I am fascinated by the progress of technology but I am always conscious that progress is not a journey of inevitability. We are on a journey somewhere and for Christianity, somewhere is not even a place. If the Church is the Body of Christ, then somewhere is where the Head is. If we are to be “rescued” from the lotus-eating stupor of progress, then it requires that we step back to examine and to reflect through critical thinking. Critical thinking is needed but not of the kind that we are used to—critical. Or the kind of conspiratorial thinking we feed on. Critical thinking is concerned with precision when we define things, even if it should border on pedantry. Why? Ideas have grave ramifications. Otherwise, the entrapped “I” of yesterday’s homily will become the individual of relativism.

How are we to achieve critical thinking? The use of reason, informed reason and not just practical reason, is one. Reason here is not the reason of the Enlightenment but rather the reason guided by faith because faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. There is also the need to widen our knowledge of how ideas came about and this is done through a careful historical research. What is important to note about critical thinking though is that it is as much a methodology as it is an attitude.

In this regard, I must say that the Society of Jesus is to be thanked and loved for whatever that I have shared with you. Six years acquiring the degrees in philosophy have not gone to waste. An attitude that I think is important is to recognise and accept that truth can be approximated. In speaking, I am not known for subtlety because I suffer not from “foot and mouth” disease but from “foot-in-mouth” disease. But, listen again to the language used or better still, read the language employed. Of course, some slip-ups may take place but the language used in almost all the homilies is propositional. In what sense are they propositional? I often begin my sentence with “maybe” or “perhaps”. Underneath this seeming uncertainty is “an” assumption, not “the” assumption, that “I do not possess the truth”. Instead, I am a poor servant of the truth. Therefore, the philosopher Habermas comes to life. He speaks of the “unforced force of the better argument”. Here, you detect an assumption which is important: There is truth to be known. And every encounter we have should lead us into the light of truth.

Why is such an attitude especially in dialogue important in the light of truth? This attitude is important because the person is located in community.  You see our idea of person is “individualistic”. We conjure up in our head a discrete individual with his/her range of powers and everything else. However, the word “individual” even though it suggests distinctiveness, in truth, it is not separated from the community. The very idea of an individual really leads us back to the community. For example, one cannot say, “I am alone” without saying it to someone else. Even the very thought of “I am alone” presupposes that you are having a conversation with someone in the head. Thus, for an individual to be totally discrete or distinct he must remain silent.

But, silence is not a calling. It may be an option because we definitely need it in order to hear God and a large dosage of it might just be the remedy the soul needs. Still, our calling, in the midst of progress, is to re-ground or re-establish the individual in the community. Even the most remote or archaic hermitage of monks or nuns are in a way linked to the community. As long as they pray the Divine Office, they are part of the Church.

There is a subtle shift here. The community is Church. Here, the community is not an amorphous idea that is romantically defined according to the principles of egalitarianism or if you like, a “kumbayah” non-threatening community that makes no demands on the individual. This form of community as we conceive of is basically sociological or political organised along principles of functionality. Whereas, the Church, as community par excellence, makes demands on us because she is by her very nature hierarchical because she is markedly sacramental. How? Christ and the Church are variously described as bridegroom and bride, head and body. Apart from the spousal or the anatomical analogy we use to describe the relationship between Christ and the Church, there is also the sacramental definition. She, the Church, is the sacrament of Christ and therefore as a sacrament, she is also hierarchical and as such, she makes demands on us. And as a corollary, there is no such thing as Christ without the Church. In being hierarchical, now you know why in the Catholic Church, there is only one Pope.

Perhaps you can see, there is more than meets the eye in the renovation of the Church. All the beauty of the Church points us in the direction of Christ the Head who is no less than the definition of beauty Himself. Not the shallow cosmetic beauty offered through physiological augmentation technology but beauty which is cosmological (heavenly) and therefore aesthetically pleasing. This is the journey which I have committed myself to in the last ten years and wish to share with you. It is a journey that requires that we make moral judgement as well as decisions instead of being carried along the inevitable tsunami of technological progress. In a way, we must make the crucial decision that we want to become a part of something larger than ourselves.

Now you understand why I am unabashedly Catholic. There is a universality about the Catholic Church which transcends the individual but not a kind of transcendence which patronises the individual as if it were something to be rid of. No, amidst the struggles that people have of Church, I behold the beauty of the Church reflected in her teaching, in her governance and certainly, in her worship. Therefore, I desire with every fibre of my being to be a servant of the Church—Holy Mother Church.

I am coming to the end now. And I have to sort of wrap up my part of the Triduum for tomorrow, it will be Father Colin Tan. Let me tell you that it is no fun doing this because my natural instinct has been basically why to work when you can skive. However, let me just recap some of the points that I have made thus far so that I may land.

There is objective truth, a concern with being, so that our ethics may be expressions and reflexions of the truth of being. To get to the truth of being, we need to be critical of the assumptions that we have. I made a long excursus on the idea we have of progress and how progress is not really the be all and end all of existence, no matter how captivating it may be. I ground the whole search for truth in the community and the community in our context is Church. The Church is our Holy Mother whom we all sometimes take for granted and I see how everything I have done thus far has been to serve she who is none other than the Bride of Christ. It now makes sense that I am a Jesuit for the Society of Jesus was founded for the sole purpose of serving the Lord alone and His bride, the Church under the Roman Pontiff, his Vicar on earth.

7th Sunday of Easter Year A

This Sunday, some parts of the Catholic world are celebrating both Ascension and World Communications Sunday. For us, the 7th Sunday does feel like a straggling Sunday searching for a purpose. Perhaps, Communications Sunday is significant enough as it straddles two great events, Ascension and Pentecost, nourished as it were by the fertile soil of the first novena. Take note that 9 days after the Ascension, the Holy Spirit will descend upon the Apostles. Those 9 days marked the ancient Church’s first novena. What has communications to do with Pentecost? In recent weeks, Christ has been speaking of the coming Spirit as the Spirit of Truth. So, the Spirit who testifies to the Truth testifies to Christ. That is the link that makes Communications Sunday relevant: Communication is of the Truth.

That, in a nutshell, defines the essence of communication.

But, as usual, we are a forgetful people. [1] We seem to have forgotten the primary aim of communication.

For some of us, communication is basically a measure of its medium. Let me explain. We have heard it said that the “medium is the message” and in a sense this is true because we are engrossed or captivated by the technologies of our communication. Remember those heady days when a gangster or a nouveau riche would sit in a hawker’s place publicly parading the precursor of the present mobile phones, an act symbolising that he has arrived. Today, our preoccupation is to reduce the size of our communication devices. Have you watched Star Trek? We look forward to the day when a touch of the badge would be enough to let us communicate. As you can see, we have always been fascinated with how we can communicate better. But, we are by no means unique.

Let me tell a little about the Mediæval Ages. Do not be fooled by what historians term as the Dark Ages. Despite its name, it gave birth to the university system. In those “Dark” times, it seemed that theologians were speculating as to how many angels can dance on top of a pinhead. [2]

We are no different. We somehow equate “more” with “better” as evidenced by our preoccupation with the number of terabytes we can compress onto our solid-state drive. We started with kilobytes, to mega, to giga and now terabytes. [I am sure there must be some bytes I know not of]. We continually chase a faster speed for our computer processors. We are obsessed with effective methods of communication and you would be surprised that this obsession with speed and space is fuelled no less by an industry our taboo-ridden culture is too shy to acknowledge. According to an American social critic, “Great art is always flanked by its dark sisters, blasphemy and pornography”. [3] Pornography, in large proportion, has determined the speed of our communicative technologies.

Between the aim of communication and its means, we will always be side-tracked by media’s ability to promise us instant gratification. You are having steam-boat in Cameron Highlands and immediately your circle of Facebook friends can see you savouring the fish-balls or blanching the fresh pickings of vegetables direct from the ambient farms. The immediacy we want of our experiences expresses what the Holy Father in his message says: entering cyberspace can be a sign of authentic search for personal encounters with others. The impetus for immediacy draws attention to our desires to encounter and to be encountered, to know and to be known, to accept and to be accepted and finally to love and to be loved. Sadly, we also know that the effects of immediacy often do not lead to genuine encounter. The many means often do not facilitate the aim.

Communications Sunday reminds us that nothing is more personal than an encounter with Christ Himself. In fact, the Gospel today, a preface to Pentecost next week, speaks of the hour when the Father will glorify the Son and the Son will glorify the Father by giving eternal life to those entrusted to Him. What is eternal life? To know the one, true God and Jesus Christ Whom the Father has sent. All throughout her history, the Church stands as that beacon emitting and transmitting this message of eternal salvation inviting all men and women to this personal encounter with Christ the Saviour of the world. All media of communication must be harnessed for this purpose.

Let me bring in last week’s second reading which comes from the 2nd Letter of St Peter. He provides us with the motivation as to why Christians ought to embrace the technologies available. He says: “Always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have”. The different media of communication, apart from merely communicating and bringing us together, serves this one purpose—that we always be ready to give the reason for our hope in Christ.

In conclusion, in our search to connect with one another through the different media of communication, let us not forget that their sole aim is to convey the truth. Truth is not baring it all; it is not naked truth and certainly not the same as “Wikileaks”. Instead, truth is the person of Jesus Christ Who is our very life and He is our mission in the world. These 9 days we pray because we need the strength of the Holy Spirit to continue to emit and to transmit the message of the eternal salvation of Jesus Christ, the Lord.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] Now you know why the Mass is also referred to as a memorial; a memorial that is more than merely remembering.
[2] A trite question which effectively dismisses the contributions of the Schoolmen to the advancement of Western civilisation.
[3] Camille Paglia in Sexual Personae.