2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

The Child last Sunday has become the Man. Actually, the Monday after the Epiphany itself, we celebrated the Baptism of the Lord, marking Christ’s entry into public ministry. This Sunday could very well be “Vocation Sunday”. Even though at first glance, the 2nd Reading does not seem like it, the thread that runs through every reading is very much centred on God’s calling.

Our duties and responsibilities are related to the mission of Christ the Messiah. The Church draws her meaning and identity from His vocation which, effectively, can be distilled and expressed through the two-fold ministry that is commonly known as the Sacraments of Service. They are Holy Orders and Matrimony.

The word “mission” has an evocative ring to it if we were to think about “Mission Impossible”. However, what can make Christ’s mission impossible is because we are distracted by what we can achieve rather than how these two Sacraments are to shape the manner or the way we ought to think and live.

Apart from it being suggestive, the word “mission” can also be ambiguous. What does it entail to state that the Church has a mission? Is the mission of the Church to increase the number of Christians through baptism? Or is it her role to “make the world a better place”?

Both are not mutually exclusive. But there is a calling within the Church which is crucial for her mission ad extra—to be salt of the earth and light of the world. The Church being the Body of Christ will need to be fed with His Body. Unless the Church sees herself merely as another “philanthropic” entity, like any charitable body, then we must take a look at the dwindling vocation to Holy Orders. It is the means through which Christ feeds His Body so that His Body can carry out His mission of evangelisation, of making more Christians and also of changing the world.

The number of priests is dropping. In these two short months, 4 priests in the different dioceses of the country have passed. Each time a priest dies, water has to find its own level. It is an unenviable task for the Archbishops and Bishops to shuffle and reassign priests to cover parishes and provide services to the laity. If Holy Order is an essential component of the Church’s identity and if she is to be faithful to the mission of Christ, where should our vocations be coming from?

The aim of vocation promotion is mainly to encourage young men to embrace Holy Orders but still it does not answer the question why we do not have enough vocations. The uncomfortable answer to this lack of vocational response is because it possibly reflects the loss of faith or lack of belief in this Sacrament as instituted by Christ Himself. God is calling and it is not that we are not listening to Him. The lack of vocation just exposes the dissonance in our belief system that on the one hand, we affirm the necessity of the Eucharist for salvation but on the other hand, we actually do not appreciate what the Eucharist truly is. If we know what the Eucharist truly is, there will be a floodgate of vocations to the priestly life.

This fall in priest vocation raises serious questions for us. What is the Church? How should it be shaped, particularly in the matter of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. As priesthood is suffering a decline in number, should we follow the Anglican model? Experience has shown us that the model adopted by the Church of England and those who follow in her footsteps is not the solution. The solution must come from knowing what the mind of Christ was and is with regard to Holy Orders? Recently, the Holy Father made the timely call for us to recognise the Church as feminine. It is precisely that the Church is feminine that there exists a complementarity which translates into a masculine Holy Orders. This brings us to the challenge to be chaste as found in the 2nd Reading and it is closely linked to the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

St Paul’s Letter to the Corinthian is a vocation too. Just that it is not one which we want to hear or are comfortable listening to. St Paul spoke of fornication and linked his abhorrence to it by connecting the human body to being the Temple of the Holy Spirit. It is a call to chastity which in today’s myopic search for meaning or fulfilment we are incapable of appreciating. Why? We have arrive at a rather sad state of life where we associate the fullness of life with earthly satisfaction or pleasure. Many people can no longer live with or are patient enough to wait for a life of eternal fulfilment. Such a vision entails sacrifices which many are not willing to pay.

Let us take for example, a man who is married. He is expected to give up his roving eyes for other women. That sacrifice is essentially an articulation of fidelity in marriage. It is not easy but it is made possible through the grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony. Marriage’s faithfulness is a mirror of God’s covenant with humanity and Christ’s fidelity to the Church because of all the permutations in human relationships, that which is between a man and a woman in the sacrament of matrimony is the most appropriate sign in which faithfulness is both fruitful and life-giving.

But our sight falls short of the Resurrection and in our unwillingness to wait for eternity, what we have done is to widen the net of permissibility. There are many models of relationships that are possible. The bounds of faith that corrals us in is felt to be too stifling under the present philosophy which regards fulfilment only in this-worldly terms. We continually try to rationalise and accommodate whatever relationships possible in order to satisfy this short-sighted philosophy. Therefore the Church is at a crossroads. What is the Church? And what should her response be to God’s calling?

The most beautiful definition of the Church is expressed through both the Sacraments of service. If there is failure in the Sacrament of Matrimony one can be sure that the same will be detected in the Sacrament of Holy Orders and vice versa. Both these Sacraments are at the service of the Church and the world at large. When society becomes self-referential, it will not be able to fathom or appreciate God’s calling. Perhaps, this explains the ease of divorce in marriages and the lack of priestly vocations. Christ’s invitation to Peter and Andrew, Paul’s chastity challenge to the Corinthians should help us better appreciate the link between the vocations to Holy Orders and to Matrimony.

The lack of seminarians can be remedied only to a certain extent by a vigorous promotion of priestly vocation. The proper solution to this crisis of vocation is to recognise that the faithfulness of married couples is enlivened by the commitment of priests and the dedication of the priests is supported by the vows of marriage. Without the full strength of these two Sacraments of service, we will always struggle and stumble in our service of the Church and our witnessing to the world.

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2022

From someone who considered himself too young last Sunday, this week we land on a prophet with unclean lips. Today we continue with the theme of vocation and the spotlight seems to shine on the merits of those who have been missioned by God. Isaiah or even Paul’s sense of unworthiness stands in stark contrast to the self-absorption of our current age which is epitomised by the self-confident tagline from the L’Oréal advertisement: “I am worth it”.

Lack of self-confidence and poor self-esteem appear to be the twin scourges of modernity. Could it be that we have conflated self-worth with achievement? If you are unable to do anything, you are useless and you might as well not live. Fused into our notion of a person is the important criterion of utility. The prized individuality we seek, which we think ultimately defines us, has been hijacked, in a manner of speaking, by a need to prove or make a name for ourselves. Is it a wonder that the old and aged are apprehensive when they have outlived their usefulness? Here again, we encounter an amnesia that we are a reflexion of who God is—ours is an unmerited “imago Dei”. The image of God, not what we are capable of, is the basis for our unique individuality.

Self-worth or self-esteem are funny concepts to grapple with. Present practice is not to admonish children or employees in full view of others because we recognise that public dressing down can affect one’s future performance—akin to PTSD. There was a time when parents would pinched their children for fidgeting during Mass. Today some parents allow their children the full expression of their enthusiasm believing that unfettered freedom essential to the full flowering of their creativity and talents. This is not a criticism of parenting style but an acknowledgement that a modicum of self-confidence is needed for a person to flourish.

What is ironical is that self-esteem does not seem to be in short supply when we consider how, for a select few, the confessional is the place to proclaim and declare their sanctity. “I have not committed any sins and in fact I have been good. I do not know what sins to confess”. This is not pride and not even a lack of humility but more an expression of the loss of the true sense of self before God.

What is the difference between our “distorted” sense of “self-confidence” and these great prophets and saints’ self-abnegation? We may miss the subtle difference in our rush to embrace the mission entrusted to us by God because we are to task-focused or task-oriented. There is a mechanical or programmed quality to the way we conceive of our vocation. The notion that “there is a job to be done” fits into our pragmatic, productive and performance psyche. Contrast our calculative and control criteria with the 2nd Reading of last Sunday. Paul spoke of love. What was central to the vocation of the Prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Apostles like Peter and Paul was not their credentials, capability or competence. At the heart of their ministry was not duty but devotion indicating that everything we do must be marked by love.

Here we are not speaking of the love we are accustomed to hearing from popular music or watching romantic movies. Instead, it was love that occasioned Isaiah’s declaration of self-contempt. However, this unworthiness is less about Isaiah’s self-estimation but more a profound realisation that in God’s holiness he gasped in shame at his own poverty. So, “I am a man of unclean lips” was not self-denigration but instead, it pointed to God who should be his everything and to himself, the remorse that he has not love God enough. When our heart is bursting with love for God, we will never stand before Him feeling worthy and that is not an indication of the lack of self-esteem. Rather, it is a liberating recognition how much more one ought to love God.

Vocation in an era delineated by self-definition, meaning that one’s status or stature is established through self-manufacture, the mission of God is going to be conflated with one’s personality. Mission and personality are not mutually exclusive, in the sense that Jeremiah the prophet was shy and St Jerome was belligerent and yet one spoke and the other translated God’s word. What is damaging is when personality takes precedence over the mission. This can be noticed in the liturgy where many instances of “saying the black and doing the red” feel inadequate. For example, the introductory greeting “The grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you” sounds rather formulaic and therefore not personal enough. After this scriptural salutation, the celebrant injects a personal hello with a “Good morning” and the congregation responds with a “Good morning, Father”.

Jeremiah, Isaiah, Peter, Paul and countless saints made a name for themselves by putting God’s will first. Their singular passion flowed from their intimate relationship with God. No doubt they had a mission to accomplish and they set their hearts on it but it was always “Zeal for your house will consume me”. For them, the mission was not a task because it flowed from the love for God.

Thus, the criteria of success or achievement or competences are not measures of our love for God. It is not how much we can do that proves our love for God. Instead, an inability to sense our unworthiness could be a sign that we may have accepted performance indices as the keys to the success of our mission. Where is the love? Think of the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son. He did a lot for the father but it was out of resentful duty.

St Ignatius makes the connexion between love and action by asking these relevant questions.
What have I done for Christ?
What am I doing for Christ?
What will I do for Christ?

These questions may fall into the category of “doing” more than they express our love for Christ. But they are not mere questions from the perspective of “utility” or “achievement”. Rather, given that we love Jesus, then what will we do for Him, mindful that we are at the same time, unworthy. Take the example of Peter. In fishing, he was a man over-confident in his experience. In eagerness, he falters as he steps into the raging seas. In bravado, he overstated his courage to follow Jesus. In defence, he overstepped his mandate by cutting off Malthus’ ear. In Peter’s life, we begin to appreciate that mission is not just a task or burden laid on our shoulders, although in reality, it always feel like that. Instead mission is love as witnessed by Peter’s impulsive leap into the water half-dressed in order to get to the Lord whom he had come to love and would ultimately lay down his life for. It was a realisation that his desires and actions could never exhaust the love for God that he cried his own unworthiness: Leave me Lord, for I am a sinful man.

Staying on the theme of mission and merit has been good for it allows us to appreciate what should animate our vocation. The pandemic has removed the burden of duty or obligation and instead it has allowed for a possibility that our obligation flows into devotion or love. For now, in this Diocese, there remains no obligation to attend Mass. Devotion or love is why we come to Church and not duty or obligation. May this devotion lead us into a deeper passion for Jesus our Lord which allows for a fuller embrace of our vocation—to be the best of who we can be for Him, for His Church, for our country and for humanity.

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2022

We enter deeper into last Sunday’s focus on the Word of God by taking a look at three inter-connected themes. The first point is centred the vocation of a prophet. He is called to act on behalf of God. He does it primarily by speaking God’s truth. Second, aligned with this mission is the certainty of rejection. “No prophet is ever accepted in his own country”. In the context of repudiation we turn our focus to the third point. For a prophet, identity and rejection are two sides of a coin. Both God’s will and the experience of rejection are tied to one’s identity and this is clearly brought out in the Gospel today.

In terms of our vocation and mission, no one is ever qualified to be called. Jeremiah, the “weeping Prophet” acknowledged that much: “Look, I do not know how to speak: I am a child”. The unworthiness that one feels with regard to vocation could also be a kind a “proud forgetfulness” that it is God who qualifies the one called. The Lord reminded Jeremiah that even though the people to whom he has been sent to would fight against him, it would be against God that they would be fighting. If we are enlisted in God’s mission and because it is “opus Dei”, we should rest assured that God Himself will be right in the heart of the mission.

This confidence that God is resolutely on our side is profoundly existential and humbling because “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you came to birth, I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations”. (Jer 1: 5). Even as Jeremiah protested his inadequacy or his lack of experience, what is inescapable is that our consecration in the womb gives us our identity. Therefore, apart from “forgetfulness” which could border on “ingratitude”, the impression that we are poorly suited to carry out God’s bidding could come from our lack of trust in Him for the identity and the qualification that He will supply.

Let us see how Jesus’ identity as the Son of God was played out in Nazareth. He has returned to His home town where, in the synagogue, He read from the Prophet Isaiah a passage which promised the Messiah. They were impressed with Him until He, straight-faced, without equivocation, pointed to Himself as the fulfilment of their expectation. Naturally, His audience gasped at what they felt to be arrogance or temerity. He had set Himself as the benchmark which for them hitherto was thought to be a mythical standard or an unattainable ideal. They could not reconcile His claim with His background.

Who did He think He was? Jesus of Nazareth whose father was merely a carpenter. Who was this audacious Son of Mary? From our enlightened pedestal we might judge the audience as narrow-minded with regard to their view of Jesus’ origin and identity. However, the question is “Are we that enlightened ourselves?”. Do we not have the same problem judging people by their origin and background?

Our present social landscape is narrowly defined by “identity politics”. Apart from judging according to religion, class or status, now we assess people according to race, age, political affiliation, gender classification or sexual orientation. In fact, identity has become even more important for us because the social fabric that has held communities together has broken down. Like Jesus, we could have references to our family and extended family of grandpas, grandmas, uncles, aunties, cousins, to our community and neighbourhood and to our circle of friends.

All these moorings should be sufficient to secure our identity but unlike Jesus, the family is now basically the nuclear family—parents and children. In some cases, as a result of separation and divorce, a father and children or mother and child. What used to be a spectrum of social ballasts for self-definition is slowly disappearing. Many of us barely have contact with our extended families—kinship gatherings are reduced to weddings or funerals. We hardly know our neighbours. On the side of technology, our social standing is scaled down to a number. Our MySejahtera ID is simply a repeat of our mobile Nr. From a medical perspective, the imposition of a vaccine passport will only drive us further into a digitalised existence. Digitally, our self-definition has to run the gauntlet of faceless barrages that come from trolling, flaming and cancelling. The present “woketopia” also complicates our sense of belonging because anachronistically, it is eager to condemn our past as not pristine or pure enough to meet the currently accepted norm of behaviour or social justice. Without the safety net of shared narratives, rejection looms large in one social standing.

These cyber-experiences, in a way, reveal to us that our self-perception is culled from or is based on a rather horizontal plane of life. This means we draw our sense of the self from what others think of us or feel about us. Take the case of bullying, which is an issue in school, at work or in cyberspace. In no way does this observation condone bullying and neither is this a counsel to remain silent. When bullying becomes such an overwhelming ordeal that debilitates a person, “could it be” symptomatic of a lack of vertical dimension in one’s self-perception?

Today we heard that the people of Nazareth rejected Jesus. They were not a nameless bunch of people. They were most certainly friends, neighbours and perhaps, even relatives. We all recognise rejection and rejection. We offer a kind act to someone we scarcely know and when that kindness is turned down, like Taylor Swift, we may shake it off and say, “No skin off my nose”. Say you are benevolent to your wife or your husband, or a close friend—in short, to someone you care enough about. What happens when that generous gesture is rejected outright? There will be drama, trauma and possibly karma. In Nazareth, Jesus was not rejected by strangers but repudiated by the very people who constituted His background, His identity.

I remember a scene from a movie on St Bernadette. She was bullied by one senior nun for over a period of 11 years—this nun could not believe how God could have chosen Bernadette instead of her. This older nun felt that she herself, rather than this lowly peasant, was more worthy of the apparition of Our Lady. Did Bernadette go for counselling? Possibly unavailable then and so no access to it. However, that is not the point and not even the fact that Bernadette bore her suffering stoically. Rather, her identity did not come from this other nun nor did she need of validation or approval from this “bullying” nun. Even the hard truth that she would not be a beneficiary of the healing powers of the waters of Lourdes did not diminish her self-worth before God. How is that possible? We find the answer somewhere in the desert where the vertical dimension of Jesus’ identity was revealed. As He got out of the River Jordan, a voice was heard “You are my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased”. The same vertical element can be seen in Bernadette’s life. Likewise, the vertical connexion that gives us our identity comes through the Sacrament of Baptism.

Our vocation or God’s calling, our mission or His sending, His Word or message, all these define who we are. It is the only identity we need more than anything in the world. Overshadowed by identity politics, we forget that personhood requires this vertical contact. Who I am is not determined solely by what other people think of me! We are defined by God because He has a relationship with each one of us even before we were formed in the womb. With our identity established in the Lord and secured by Him, rejection will not destroy us. Embracing our God-given identity we can resolutely make our journey to heaven the way Jesus, Jeramiah and Bernadette did. God has called us. He has sent us. He is our message. He will be our destiny.

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2019

The 4th Sunday of Easter dedicated to vocations but sometimes it feels like there are more than one Vocation Sunday as the readings today fit perfectly into this theme of calling. The truth is, there should be more “calling” stories because salvation history is nothing but a prolonged call by God beginning with creation. 

Ex nihilo, that is, from nothing, God called creation to be and He continues to call it forth whilst sustaining it. A watch-maker God would presumably have created something and then leave it to run on its own. Not this God of ours. He is actively involved in His creation. (If we have a complaint that creation is not behaving well—like global warming—do not blame God. Blame us).

Earlier we heard the calling of a man with unclean lips—Isaiah. Presumably, in a culture which values ritual purity, his defilement may mean a questionable religious observance—like eating pork? Yet, God overlooked his iniquities as He called him. In the Second Reading, we encounter another man who was anxious about his religion’s integrity. Saul saw the early Christians as an aberration of the belief system he knew and loved and set himself up to purge the religion of such deviant behaviours. Christians were heretical Jews. In God’s vocation, Saul became Paul and through his deep knowledge of Judaism, he became the preacher and teacher to the Gentiles that God has invited into the fold. Finally, we have a sinner to whom God revealed the divinity of His Son as well as upon whom He chose to establish the early Church from the remnant of Israel.

What glorious calls that God made through Isaiah, Paul and Peter’s lives. Since God is not a watch-maker, the vocation continues. When we read St Augustine’s famous Confession, that is, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord and our heart is restless until it rests in you”—this human longing for God is no more than our response to God who continues to call us to Himself.

God calls in a manner that no one is excluded. Vatican II reads this as the universal call to holiness. Whatever station we find ourselves, God is calling us to praise, to revere and to serve Him.

Today I would like to speak of a special calling and it might involve laying down one’s life for others. Firstly, we all speak of meaning a lot. It is important. For example, whenever we do not understand something, we tend to relegate it to the margin of uselessness and we mutter, “It is meaningless”. But, if one were to reflect on meaningfulness, one begins to realise how “self-referential” it is. Meaningful is basically about “I, me and myself”. We all enter into relationship and unwittingly we might be calculating on what we can get out of it. The usual measure of our gain is meaning. Thus, relationship falls apart whenever we can no longer derive “meaning” from it. Think in terms of pre-nuptial agreements. People might term it as “prudence, safeguard” etc but the bottomline is purely “What will I get out of it, should the relationship fail?

There are two callings in life which are not self-referential but they are not less meaningful. In essence these callings are directed to service of the Church and the community. The Church has seven Sacrament and two of them are called the Sacraments of service—marriage and priesthood. Both these callings are not alien to us. I could be wrong because one them is an option people rarely give much consideration to. And it is this option that I would like to talk about.

Yesterday, after Mass there was supposed to be an anointing for the sick and elderly. The organisers had asked that those who wanted to be anointed should register themselves. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, only a baptised can be anointed. Just like Holy Communion can only be given to a baptised and practising Catholic, the Sacrament of Anointing is not an open invitation to all and sundry. Registration allowed us to respect the integrity of the Sacrament because we would have ascertained from the registration that the person is a Catholic. Secondly, only a priest or a Bishop can administer this sacrament. Thankfully there were two of us and the registration helped tremendously in crowd control. There have been instances when the whole congregation would walk up to be anointed and there was only one priest available. Visualise that.

The shortage of the ordinary ministers of the Sacrament might not seem urgent. At Mass we have no shortage of volunteers for extra-ordinary ministers and also the other ministries. In normal English usage, the word extra-ordinary connotes something which is remarkable, amazing, astounding and definitely out of this world. However, in Church terminology, the ordinary is preferred over the extraordinary as it pertains to the ordered or standard arrangement of things. Ordinary means this is how things are supposed to be. Whilst the presence of so many extra-ordinary ministers might be taken or read as a wonderful sign of ecclesial participation, it is more likely an indication that there is a failure somewhere, a failure to provide.

What do I mean by the failure to provide? When there are no priests, what is the point of the extra-ordinary Ministers? Here I am not denigrating them because they do provide a valuable service. When there are no priests, who will provide us with the Sacraments? The Church stands on the Eucharist. Without the Eucharist there is no Church. But, without the priesthood there is no Eucharist. We may have a crisis of confidence in the people in the priesthood considering that we seem to hog the limelight for the wrong reasons—priests are paedophiles or nun-rapists. But, whatever the outcome of our crisis of confidence, the Eucharist will always be needed if we heed Christ’s teaching on the necessity of eating His Body and drinking His Blood for us to go to heaven. Thus, the Church exists to provide the Eucharist, the food for the journey heavenward. If that be the case, there will always be a need for the priesthood of Jesus Christ.

One of the reasons for scarcity of vocation to priestly life and by extension to religious life is because our “factories” run on the basis of two—meaning, if the first one is boy, pray the second one is a girl or vice versa and voila the factory shuts down.

Moreover, parents these days try to protect their children from danger to the point that they may just over-compensate. What their generation never had, they make sure that the young have plenty and more. What their generation suffered, they make sure that the young do not have to endure it. This over-compensation has not generated greater meaning in the lives of our young. Instead, without struggles, without challenges, life does not become more meaningful. Thus, there is a compelling demand to challenge the youth to rise above themselves and even to the point of laying down their lives for others. The essence of nobility is the giving of oneself to an endeavour much bigger than oneself and it this which gives meaning to life. Meaning is never found in selfishness. It is gained through selflessness. As someone rightly remarked that the next evolutionary step for mankind is to move from man to kind. From selfishness to selflessness. As Martin Luther King Jr rightly pointed out, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity”. When we lament about the selfishness of society, that is because we have not taught the young to look at the horizon beyond the self.

God has not stopped calling Christians to a life of service, in particular, a life of service to both Church and community as a priest (and by extension a religious)—a life which places others ahead of one’s own advantage. If the Church is necessary for salvation, then the Eucharist will always be needed. For that the priesthood must go on. The vocation crisis is no indication that the priesthood is irrelevant but more because we have stopped listening. To all the young men (and not so young) present here, is God is calling you? If you even have a faint inkling that He is, be brave. Respond to Him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Novena of Grace of St Francis Xavier 6th Day, 9th March 2010

From Spain we cross the Atlantic and we surf over the Andes to a country thin and long, a country quite in the limelight these days but for the wrong reason. We shall get acquainted with a man so close to us in time and yet quite far from us in spirit. Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga—the Chilean saint.

He was born in 1901; he was orphaned when he was four years old by the death of his father. His mother had to sell, at a loss, their modest property in order to pay the family’s debts. As a further consequence, Alberto and his brother had to go to live with relatives and were often moved from one family to another. From an early age, therefore, he experienced what it meant to be poor, to be without a home and at the mercy of others.

He was given a scholarship at the Jesuit College in Santiago. Here he became a member of the Sodality of Our Lady and developed a lively interest in the poor, spending time with them in the most miserable neighbourhoods every Sunday afternoon. At 16, he wanted to join the Jesuits but was told to delay so that he could take care of his mother and younger brother. He studied as he worked and graduated with a law degree from the Catholic University. When he was 22, he entered the Society of Jesus in Chile. He was sent first to Cordoba, Argentina and then to Spain. But Spain entered the Civil War and the Society was suppressed and so he continued his studies in Belgium. He was ordained a priest at 32. Armed with a doctorate in pedagogy and psychology, he returned to Chile after his tertianship in 1936.

He taught religion at Colegio San Ignacio and Pedagogy at the Catholic University of Santiago. He was entrusted with the Sodality of Our Lady for the students, and he involved them in teaching catechism to the poor. He frequently directed retreats and offered spiritual direction to many young men, accompanying several of them in their response to the priestly vocation and contributing in an outstanding manner to the formation of many Christian laymen.

In 1941 Fr Hurtado published his most famous book: “Is Chile a Catholic Country?” as he alerted to his contemporaries the grave problem of the lack of priestly vocations. The same year he was asked to assume the role of Assistant for the Youth Movement of the Catholic Action, first within the Archdiocese of Santiago and then nationally. In October 1944, while giving a retreat, he felt impelled to appeal to his audience to consider the many poor people of the city, especially the numerous homeless children who were roaming the streets of Santiago. “If Christ could come down tonight, He would repeat to you as He looked at this city, ‘I take pity on it’ and turning to you, He would tell you with great tenderness ‘You are the light of the world. You must illuminate this darkness. Who wants to work with Me? Do you want to be My apostles'?” And it was for this that he became famous: a form of charitable activity which provided not only housing but a home-like milieu for the homeless: “El Hogar de Cristo”.

By means of contributions from benefactors and with the active collaboration of committed laity, Father Hurtado opened the first house for children; this was followed by a house for women and then one for men. The poor found a warm home in “El Hogar de Cristo”. The houses multiplied and took on new dimensions; in some houses there were rehabilitation centres, in others trade-schools, and so on. All were inspired and permeated by Christian values.

In 1945 Fr Hurtado visited the United States to study the “Boys Town” movement and to consider how it could be adapted to his own country. The last six years of his life were dedicated to the development of various forms in which “El Hogar” could exist and function.

In 1947 Father Hurtado founded the Chilean Trade Union Association (ASICH) to promote a union movement inspired by the social teaching of the Church. Between 1947 and 1950, Father Hurtado wrote three important works: on trade unions, on social humanism, and on the Christian social order. In 1951 he founded “Mensaje”, the well-known Jesuit periodical dedicated to explaining the doctrine of the Church. He died from pancreatic cancer in 1952.

Within a period of 15 years, Fr Hurtado lived and accomplished all the works described above. His apostolate was the expression of a personal love for Christ the Lord characterised by a great love for poor and abandoned children, an enlightened zeal for the formation of the laity, and a lively sense of Christian social justice. Fr. Hurtado was beatified by John Paul II on October 16, 1994 and canonised by Benedict XVI 23rd Oct 2005.

At the beginning I mentioned that he was a man close to us and yet quite far away. He is temporally close to us. He lived and died within the lifetime of some of us. But he is also quite far from us. Why? Well, he is famous for his social action. In our mind we conjure up images of a man fighting to right the wrong. No doubt, with electronic media beaming images of shanty towns in the megacities of the world, we all are introduced to the immediacy and the immensity of the problem of homelessness.

But how wrong can we be? This was a man whose spirit and vision are far superior to ours and thus, the closeness of his time to ours may indeed be fortuitous but deceptive. Instead of leading us into the slums, he is actually inviting us to climb or rather to ascent the hill of spiritual perfection with our heads in the clouds and our feet firmly on the ground. What does this mean? He may be temporally near but his vision or his spirituality of social action is far superior to some of us who are involved with his type of work. His social action was centred on Christ and the Church.

In a way, his temporal proximity means that hagiography about him is more sober. But, his spirituality is neither mundane nor pedestrian. In fact, temporal proximity means that we have many of his words available to us. So, I shall let him speak to your hearts.

“There are people who wish to advance in holiness but without suffering. They have not understood what it is to grow. They want to develop themselves by chant, by study, by pleasure, but not by hunger, by anguish, by failure and by hard work of each day, nor by accepting the powerlessness that teaches us to rely on God’s power, nor by letting go of their own plans, which enables us to recognise those of God. Suffering is beneficial because it shows me my limits, purifies me, makes me stretch out on Christ’s cross, forces me to turn to God.”

There is a strong element of the Cross in his vision of life. He was never afraid of failure. In fact, “In Christian work, there is the triumph of failures! Delayed triumphs! In the world of the invisible, that which appears useless is the most effective. A total failure accepted wholeheartedly yields more supernatural success than any triumph. Sow, with no concern for what will grow. Continue to sow despite everything. Thank the Lord for the apostolic fruits of failures. When Christ spoke to the rich young man in the Gospel, He failed, but how many others have learnt the lesson as a result! And when He announced the Eucharist, how many fled---but yet, how many come running. Your zeal will seem still-born, but how many will live, thanks to you”.

And the Cross looms largely in this social vision too especially in the context of Church. In a way, he challenges many of our social workers especially when our vision is dichotomised by having Christ on one side and the Church on the other. The failure of so many people in the Church, especially the hierarchy is a cause of scandal—not in the sense of salacious smut but in the sense that scandal causes people to lose faith. As a result, there is a disdainful scepticism of Church authority as we tend to view the Church as a prime example of what structural sin is about. For example, the Church’s hierarchy by virtue of it being a male hierarchy is already suspect. But, this you will not find in Hurtado. It may explain why people are burnt out so often simply because a large part of the energy is expended due to this divided loyalty. To Christ, one is loyal. To the Church… hmmm, doubtful.

Hurtado's social vision was firmly rooted in Christ and the Church. We know that even as he loved the Church, in the end, he suffered at the hands of the very Church he loved. In his case, the Church was represented by Christians—people, priests, bishops of good standing and good intentions. We often think that pain is the result of a clash between a good person and a bad person. But, pain comes too despite good intentions from two good persons. Two persons may be armed to the teeth with good intentions and yet both end up hurting each other. From there was born a wisdom that says,

“If someone begins to live for God, in self-denial and love for others, all possible difficulties will come knocking at his door. I am often like a rock that is battered on all sides by the towering waves. There is no way but up. For an hour, for a day, I let the waves break against the rock; I do not look toward the horizon, I lift my eyes to God. O blessed active life, entirely consecrated to my God, entirely given to neighbour. Its radicalness itself forces me to turn to God to find myself. He is the only possible way out of my worries, my only refuge”.

However, what he accomplished through his social ministry paled when compared to his spirituality. As he suffered towards the end of his life, that part of his life was marked by a joyful trust in God. “How can I not be happy? I am entirely grateful to God for it. Instead of a violent death, He has given me a long illness so that I can prepare myself. Life have been given to man so that he may cooperate with God in carrying out His plans; death is only a completion of that collaboration, a return of all our powers into the Creator’s hands. Before me, eternity. I am an arrow, shot towards eternity. May I never be attached to anything here, but in all things keep my eyes on the life to come.”

So, what lessons can we derive from him? In building homes for the poor, he provided a roof, a sense of security for so many who do not have it. This is where we have something in common with Fr Hurtado. Everyone here works in order to have a roof over the head—a home. And this is where we may part ways with him. For some of us, a home is part of a good life. A good life in turn is synonymous with “life is good” and "life is good" is measured by convenience and comfort. But, a good life in spirituality is nowhere close to this. Fr Hurtado’s temporal closeness challenges us to rethink that a good life should be a life that is good—a life that is marked by goodness, not measured by convenience or comfort.

Novena of Grace of St Francis Xavier 5th Day, 8th March 2010

Yesterday we were in Spain. Today we shall linger there a little longer because the person for our inspiration is none other than John of the Cross. A brief biography will make up the first part of the homily. A more comprehensive biography is easily accessible through the internet. What is of interest to us are some of the details of his life which are relevant to the sanctity which he models for us. This will be the second part of the homily.

John was born Juan Yepes in 1542 to a poor Jewish convert family near Avila. He learnt the importance of self-sacrificing love from his parents. His father gave up wealth, status, and comfort when he married a weaver's daughter and was disowned by his noble family. After his father died, his mother kept the destitute family together as they wandered homeless in search of work. When the family finally found work, John still went hungry in the middle of the wealthiest city in Spain. At fourteen, John took a job caring for hospital patients who suffered from incurable diseases and madness. He came into contact with the new order of the Society of Jesus but it was into the Carmelites that he entered. He took the name John of St Matthias. He was ordained when he was only 25 years old. He was disposed towards solitary and silent contemplation and indicated his desire to join the Carthusians order. However, he met St Teresa of Avila (Santa Teresa de Jesus) and that was to change the course of his life.

Saint Teresa of Avila asked him to help her reform the Carmelite movement. John supported her belief that the order should return to its life of prayer—a return to the primitive rule. But many Carmelites felt threatened by this reform, and some members of John's own order kidnapped him. He was locked in a cell six feet by ten feet and beaten three times a week by the monks. There was only one tiny window high up near the ceiling. It was within this narrow confine that he had many mystical experiences of God’s closeness. After nine months, John escaped by unscrewing the lock on his door and creeping past the guard. Taking only the mystical poetry he had written in his cell, he climbed out a window using a rope made of strips of blankets. With no idea where he was, he followed a dog to civilisation. He hid from pursuers in a convent infirmary where he read his poetry to the nuns. From then on his life was devoted to sharing and explaining his experience of God's love.

The followers of Ss John and Teresa differentiated themselves from the unreformed by calling themselves the “discalced”, that is, the barefooted as opposed to the “calced” Carmelites. He died in 1591, was canonised in 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI in 1926. He is called the Mystical Doctor.

St John of the Cross provides some points of reflexion for us today. First point is about a cynical response to life. Second, the experience of his imprisonment highlights the reality of structural sin. Third, how do we know that we are doing God’s will?

Firstly, life’s many vicissitudes have a way of reducing us into cynics. To those who are involved with the Church, this is a grave danger. Many of us have this illusion that those who preach holiness are the ones who should live holiness. But, the Pharisees are our first teachers. Christ criticised their hypocrisy because their actions did not match their words. However, our response to hypocrisy is often a heart coarsened by cynicism. Cynics are actually hurt idealists. In St John we see the contrary. His mprisonment by his Carmelite brothers did not harden his heart. Instead, it gave birth to a compassionate mystic. He asked a pointed question: "Who has ever seen people persuaded to love God by harshness?" and "Where there is no love, put love -- and you will find love." This leads us to the reality of structural sin, which is the second point.

Imagine the Carmelites Order and this young upstart reforming friar. The Carmelite friars thought that they were in the right when they imprisoned him, thinking that John’s reform disturbed the status quo. Mob mentality is no respector of status or even intelligence. So, the idea that religious life should embody everything that is of God is disabused by our long Catholic history of reform as we witness the different tides of reform that took place simply because of corruption that had crept into religious life. [1]

Long before Liberation Theology popularised the term “structural sin”, the Church already had reformers who understood the need for structures to be reformed. The Benedictine family is a great testament with their reforms: the Cluniac, the Cistersian, the Camadolese and the Trappist reforms. The Franciscans too gave us the Capuchins as one of their reforms and from the Capuchins, there is a renewal in the form of the Community of the Friars of the Renewal. Both Ss John of the Cross and Teresa de Jesus took the same path of reforming the Carmelite Friars and Nuns by embracing their primitive and stricter rules. What this says to us is this: that structures need reform because it is made up of sinful people. Structures in themselves are neutral. What make structures sinful are sinful people. And we all know the stubbornness of sin. Today’s Gospel is proof of the collective resistance to conversion. The people when pointed out their faults were indignant and they hustled Jesus out of town intending to throw Him off the cliff.

Thus, personal conversion is fundamental for any structural change. Change of structure does not guarantee that people will change. The change of state governments after the last election is a good example. Sinful structures are often protected by sinful men.

Finally, that we believe that we are doing God’s work is no guarantee that we cannot err. The detritus of history is proof enough. The more we feel inspired, the more we need to be humble. If a person feels that he or she has this fool-proof plan that God has communicated to him or her about a vision of how things are to be, it helps to think that the Devil can appear as an angel of light. The more I am convinced that I have the truth, the more I ought to be wary of the Devil’s intention. Furthermore, it is useful to know this difference: when we are persecuted, it does not mean that we are doing God’s work. It is easy to fall into this temptation when our inspiration meets opposition, that we are being persecuted for doing God’s will. Often, we are also the cause of people’s resistance.

However, what is true is the contrary. When we embark upon God’s work, we will be persecuted. The difference is very subtle. Why? There are a lot of times when we are opposed or persecuted simply because we are doing our own thing, we have an agenda, etc. But, if we persist in God’s work, know that the path will be difficult. And, only time can tell if our inspiration is of God and the only way forward is humility and deep faith in God. If I am mightily convinced that what I am doing is God’s will, then let my humility be even greater because I am nothing more than a servant and secondly God’s enterprise cannot be stopped.

Finally, I leave you with an inspiration of St Ignatius, a contemporary of St John of the Cross, whose humility teaches us an important lesson. There was a Cardinal named Giovanni Carafa who was really opposed to the founding of the Society of Jesus. He had founded his own so-called society of priests, called the Theatines. He felt that the ideals of the Society of Jesus were similar to his priestly order and was of the opinion that anyone who wanted to be a Jesuit should join the Theatines instead. As fate would have it, Carafa was elected Pope Paul IV. St Ignatius was reputed to have trembled when he heard that news. He was asked what he would do if the Pope were to suppressed the Society of Jesus. Ignatius’ answer was simply this: “I would spend 15 minutes in prayer and I will think nothing of it after”.

FOOTNOTE:
[1] Just as an aside, the health of the Church can be measured by the health of religious life. The Preface of Virgins and Religious gives a clue to why I make this assertion. It says: Today we honour your saints who consecrated their lives to Christ for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. What love you show us as you recall mankind to its first innocence, and invite us to taste on earth the gifts of the world to come. If anything, religious life is to be the embodiment of the eschatological community to come. They are to reflect, by their love, what the new earth is to be like. If you like, if you see religious life, you see heaven—as taste on earth of the gifts of the world to come. Religious life is a form of beatific vision granted not to mystics but rather to those who are caught very much in time and space. However, the truth is religious life is often hell and there is no greater scandal and a source of cynicism than brothers or sisters in religious life fighting it out. However, this is where grace comes in. Where human efforts fail, we must continually turn to God to tame the pride that separates us. The making of a religious community is truly a work of grace and not of our machination. It can only be crafted from humility and conversion.

Novena of Grace of St Francis Xavier 3rd Day, 6th March 2010

Yesterday we were in France. Today we cross into Poland. Some time into the night, the train from Prague to Krakow is bound to cross a city the Poles called Oswiencim which we otherwise know as Auschwitz. Our saint today leads us there: St. Maximilian Kolbe—a Conventual Franciscan.

His life story is not easy to tell within a space of 20 minutes so I shall delve into some salient points for our edification. First, the role that Mary played in his life. Second, I would list some of his achievements. Third, I would like to say something about his martyrdom and how it is connected to us today.

First, Maximilian was a precocious child when at 12 his life changed after a vision of Our Lady. "That night, I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me. Then she came to me holding two crowns, one white and the other red. She asked me if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity, and the red that I should become a martyr. I said that I would accept them both".

To understand Maximillian’s (and also John Paul II’s) devotion to Our Lady is to understand the Polish psyche. The Black Madonna of Czestochowa is more than an icon of religious reverence. Her status as an emblem of Polish nationalism dates back to the Swedish invasion of 1655. The Swedes surrounded the monastery Jasna Gora for 40 days whilst the monks prayed to Our Lady for deliverance. Finally, the Poles prevailed, driving the Swedes out of the country. King Jan Kazimierz, in gratitude, dedicated his throne and the country to "the Virgin Mary, Queen of Poland." Furthermore, if you look at a series of maps demarcating the border of Poland down the centuries, you would find the boundary of the country ebbing left or right subjected to the cruel tide of political expediency. Furthermore, we have here a country in which one day you are Polish by nationality and the next you become either a Ukrainian or a Prussian. Thus, the only thing constant for the Polish psyche was their Catholicism and their devotion to Our Lady is unparalleled. This is the reason why she featured largely in the spiritual vision of Maximillian (and also John Paul II). [To those who do not understand, it feels “idolatrous”].

Secondly, what were some of his achievements? He was famous for at least three things. A) Neipokalanow. B) For his print and broadcast media and C) For his missionary endeavour to Japan. He founded a friary which he named the City of the Immaculate or Niepokalanow. This project grew to become the large friary that was self-sustaining. In 1939, it housed 762 inhabitants: 13 priests, 18 novices, 527 brothers, 122 boys in the junior seminary and 82 candidates for the priesthood. No matter how many labourers were in the vineyard, there was always work for more. Among the inhabitants of Niepokalanow there were doctors, dentists, farmers, mechanics, tailors, builders, printers, gardeners, shoemakers, cooks. The place was entirely self-supporting.

His media output was astounding. For example, the demands for Knight of the Immaculate, a publication, at its heights reached to about 750,000. There was no doubt that Niepokalanow was going from strength to strength, a unique situation within Poland. The results of the work done there were becoming apparent. Priests in parishes all over the country reported a tremendous upsurge of faith, which they attributed to the literature emerging from Niepokalanow. In fact, years later, after the war, the Polish bishops sent an official letter to the Holy See claiming that Fr Kolbe's magazine had prepared the Polish nation to endure and survive the horrors of the war that was soon to follow.

His mission to Japan was a repeated formula of Niepokalanow, though on a smaller scale. With nothing, he went, trusting in Mary. When asked whether he had money to finance it, he replied: "Money? It will turn up somehow or other. Mary will see to it. It's her business and her Son's".

Such faith he had and that leads me to the third point which was his martyrdom.

He was arrested in 1941, February 17. As a religious he was singled out for harsh treatment. He was deported to Auschwitz in May and there he was branded with the number 16670. He was put to hard labour and despite having only one lung, he did not complain. The commandant conceived a relentless hatred against him giving him heavier tasks than the others. Sometimes his colleagues would try to come to his aid but he would not expose them to danger. Always he replied, "Mary gives me strength. All will be well". At this time he wrote to his mother, "Do not worry about me or my health, for the good Lord is everywhere and holds every one of us in His great love". In Auschwitz, where hunger and hatred reigned and faith evaporated, this man opened his heart to others and spoke of God's infinite love. He seemed never to think of himself. When food was brought in and everyone struggled to get his place in the queue so as to be sure of a share, Fr Maximilian stood aside, so that frequently there was none left for him. At other times he shared his meagre ration of soup or bread with others. He was once asked whether such self-abnegation made sense in a place where every man was engaged in a struggle or survival, and he answered: "Every man has an aim in life. For most men it is to return home to their wives and families, or to their mothers. For my part, I give my life for the good of all men".

In reprisal for an escaped prisoner, ten men were chosen to die. Fr Kolbe chose to take the place of a prisoner: Franciszek Gajowniczek. The ten condemned men were led off to the dreaded Bunker, to the airless underground cells where men died slowly without food or water. At every inspection, when almost all the others were now lying on the floor, Fr Kolbe was seen kneeling or standing in the centre as he looked cheerfully in the face of the SS (Schutzstaffel, the elite military section of the Nazi party) men. Two weeks passed in this way. Meanwhile one after another they died, until only Fr Kolbe was left. The authorities felt it was too long as the cell was needed for new victims. So they gave Fr Kolbe an injection of carbolic acid. With that he died.

The heroism of Fr Kolbe echoed through Auschwitz. In that desert of hatred he had sown love. "The life and death of this one man alone," wrote the Polish bishops, "can be proof and witness of the fact that the love of God can overcome the greatest hatred, the greatest injustice, even in death itself". He was beatified on 17th October 1971 and canonised by John Paul II on 10th Oct 1982.

On the third day of our Novena we ask what relevance is he to us. At his canonisation, he was declared a martyr. A person is declared a martyr only if he or she died for the faith; what we call “odium fidei”. But, he did not exactly die from hatred for the faith. The correct title for him would be a “confessor” but that John Paul called him a “martyr” is relevant if you remember that he was offered both crowns: the white and the red. Very few of us are called to red martyrdom. Instead, most of us are called to white martyrdom. It means that we are called not to shed our blood in defence of the faith but to die daily for love. This is a form of protracted martyrdom which is even more painful than shedding the blood at one go.

Today, the couples involved with the CMPC [Catholic Marriage Preparatory Course] met and they discussed how they wanted to update the programme they use for preparing couples to get married. What they do fits in with what is relevant to us. In the Gospel, Jesus gave the parable of the “fruitless” fig tree. In the context of marriage fruitfulness is not restricted to just having children. Fruitfulness is better understood as a subset of holiness. Married couples are called to holiness and their holiness is fruitful and therefore life-giving. This holiness to which married couples are called is a form of martyrdom. Marriage is a form of martyrdom. Christ said, “No greater love a man has than to lay down his life for his friends”. We think of friends in a generic sense, just like how we think of Christ’s other commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you”. We seldom think that these two commandments apply to marriage. But, in truth, they both apply primarily to marriage. Marriage is martyrdom because you are in a sense, laying down your life, as you cannot do what you like and when you like. You often have to consider the feeling of the other. You lose yourself for the other. It is akin to John’s “He must increase, I must decrease” and that is really painful.

Granted that most of us will never see “red” martyrdom but instead are called to white martyrdom, how are we to walk that road? This is where we encounter a modern weakness and it has to do with the perception we have of the self. A good illustration is our idea of holiness. For many of us, the idea of holiness is not about God who is holy but rather about us because we have come to believe that holiness is our gift to God which ties in with the cult of personality, the cult of the self. That is when the question of “worthiness” comes in. We always feel we are unworthy of God and we struggle to make ourselves worthy of God so that we can finally present ourselves to God. It is a futile task. We can never be worthy. Only God can make us worthy.

Thus, St Maximilian Kolbe has shown us something concerning white martyrdom. He did not plan to die. It was at the moment when he needed it most, God supplied the grace. We must trust that at the time when we most need it, God will allow us to be His instrument. The only thing left for us is to believe that He will, and in the context of the people involved with CMPC, marriage is a good example of white martyrdom because it often involves silent suffering but where there is most pain, there is also great holiness. It is much harder to live a martyr than to die one. St Maximilian Kolbe teaches us that.

Novena of Grace of St Francis Xavier 2nd Day, 5th March 2010

Do you know where the Church of St Philomena is? It is in Tampin. Today, the Church of St Philomena is known as the Church of St Jean-Baptiste Marie Vianney or John Baptist Mary Vianney—the Curé d’Ars. The saint for our edification and sanctification is him. He had a particular devotion to St Philomena. Who was Philomena? Well, in1802, bones were discovered in the catacombs of St Priscilla in Rome in a tomb shelf marked out to be the bones of a martyred girl: Filumena. After the discovery, popular devotion took off and even though this cult never achieved official Church sanction, John Vianney had devotion enough to build a chapel in his parish in her honour. In 1961, the feast was removed from the Universal Church calendar. For us, it was one of the quirks of historical coincidence that the parish of St Philomena should be re-dedicated to St John Baptist Mary Vianney.

So who is he? I remember a lecture given once by a Jesuit psychologist. This psychologist classified John Vianney as an idiot because he had the intelligence of an idiot. And there is some truth to this assertion. He was born on May 8, 1786 in the village of Dardilly in France. After serving a time in the army during the Napoleonic period he entered seminary formation to become a priest. He had a very difficult time. He struggled with all of his studies, particularly with Latin. Many, including his formation directors and instructors in the seminary and his own bishop, had very serious doubts that this man, who did not have strong intellectual gifts, would be suitable for the priesthood. However, John Vianney persevered and finally was ordained a priest in 1815. His bishop, acting on his estimation of this new priest as a man of few gifts, sent him to the remotest backwater village of his diocese, the village of Ars. This was a village of about 200 people. That he was born at the turn of the century is important to note. The French Revolution brought about freedom but also the political upheaval set France along the path secularism. Ars was no exception. There it was that Fr John was to labour. He spent the rest of his life there except for one brief period when he tried to flee the duties and pressures of parish life and to find a quiet place where he could pray in peace and solitude. That was not in God's plan for him and he soon returned to Ars.

He was a man of great dedication to his call to be a priest and to serve his people. He preached in a very simple manner, had a great love of the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessed Mother and as mentioned above, a special devotion to St. Philomena. Through his work as a confessor he brought about a spiritual renewal that touched not only the people of his parish but all of France. He regularly spent 14 to 18 hours a day in the confessional surviving on only a few hour of sleep and a diet of boiled potatoes. He was abstemious because he would boil his potatoes all at once, to be eaten over a few days. In order to prevent rats from attacking his potatoes, he would string them up and hang them from the ceiling. Often the potatoes would be covered with a layer of mould. But, as the word spread of his extraordinary abilities as a confessor, thousands, including bishops and aristocracy made the journey to Ars in order to receive his spiritual counsel. Thus a man who started his life as one whom very few thought would ever amount to anything became, by the time of his death in 1859, the vehicle for thousands of conversions.

What lessons can we learn from this man, this so-called idiot? He said something about the priesthood which would sound alien to many of our ears: "Since the priest is important, he will only be understood in Heaven. If we were to understand him on this earth, we would die of love”. And: “After God, the priest is everything. Leave a parish without a priest for 20 years and beasts will be worshipped there". These two quotes do sound alien to us and understandably so. For one, they seem to exalt the priest.

So, a question to ask is this: What does he mean that if we understand the priest, we would die of love? To appreciate his sentiments, one has to look into his understanding of the Eucharist. He has this to say of the Eucharist: "All the good works in the world are not equal to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass because they are the works of men; but the Mass is the work of God. Martyrdom is nothing in comparison for it is but the sacrifice of man to God; but the Mass is the sacrifice of God for man”. And further, he says, “If I were to meet a priest and an angel, I would greet the priest first and then the angel.... If there were no priest, the passion and death of Jesus would serve no purpose. What use is a treasure chest full of gold if there is no one who can unlock it? The priest has the key to the treasures of Heaven”.

This sounds very much like a glorification of the priest but it is not. Instead it points primarily to the place the sacrament of Holy Order has in the economy of salvation. It is certainly not about the priest. Here, at least two comments may be made about his exalted view of the priesthood.

First, it challenges us on our understanding of the Blessed Sacrament. Never mind that people come to Church dressed inappropriately, etc. To focus on dressing or to insist on behaviour is to miss the fundamental point because our dressing or behaviour, these are shaped largely by our sense of what the Eucharist is. The matter of how we behave is fundamentally couched in this question. “Do we really believe that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ”? Reading John 6, the discourse on the bread from heaven, we realise that Christ meant every word when He said: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. And unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you”.

Only a priest can give us the bread of life because he alone has been given the power to confect the Eucharist, that is, to change bread and wine into no less the Body and Blood of Christ. You realise how closely related these two sacraments are. Therefore, if faith in one suffers, the other will too. My guess is that we have yet to arrive at that level of martyrdom, that is, the willingness to defend the Eucharist simply because we have not truly appreciated its meaning. We need grace!

This leads to the second point as it speaks about the man who is priest or rather it speaks to the man who is priest. I am deeply aware that many of us, even though we believe that we have been called by God to this vocation, are actually career priest or maybe “professional” priest. Many of us may have zeal in the beginning but often graduate to some form of professionalism to the point of clinical efficiency but is that a priest? St John Vianney challenges each and every priest on his understanding of what being a priest means. There is no such thing as a moment when a priest is not a priest. Even he himself knows it because he attempted to run away but was thwarted each time by his own parishioners. Thus, he who spent more than 15 hours a day hearing confession has blazed the trail for other priests to follow. This exaltation of “priesthood” is more a challenge than an exercise in adulation. Before John Vianney, every priest feels inadequate before this giant of a man.

Finally, a lesson to be learnt from this humble servant of God is that God does not choose the worthy to do great things. He chooses the willing. As mentioned before, he had difficulties in studies, particularly with Latin. His tutor was so frustrated with him one day that he yelled out in exasperation, “John, you are a total donkey!” John paused and quietly replied, “Well, if God could have Samson use the jawbone of a donkey to kill a thousand Philistines, imagine what He could do with a full donkey like me”. Really, God chooses the weak and make them strong in bearing witness to Him. Today, perhaps in our prayer for priests, we too might think of how God can use each of us in whatever station in life for His greater Glory. All He asked of is our willingness and the rest He will supply.