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Just so happened that 2nd Feb was World Day of Consecrated Life and there was a talk given which coincidentally centred on the Gospel verse of being light of the world and salt of the earth. Light and salt define the vocation of a Christian.
Last Sunday we covered the Beatitudes. Their sole aim, as we navigate through the treacheries of life, is to prepare us for eternity. This preparation does not take place in a vacuum. Instead, we are placed directly into the world to cooperate in the work of our salvation as well as to establish the Kingdom of Christ. The reminder of John the Evangelist that Christians are in the world but are not of the world sums up the attitude that Christians are to take with regard to their mission.
The call to be both light and salt is not to focus attention on us per se but rather to highlight our roles in illuminating the world and flavouring the earth. Yet, we are aware that these metaphors of light and salt might be a bit problematic today. There is too much artificial light in our environment. Light pollution has Man confused between light and darkness to the point that the clock revolves around a “permanent” day. Furthermore, our food is also loaded with salt that high blood pressure has become a major health issue for society. Our tastebuds have been unhealthily primed to crave for more and more enhanced flavours.
How then do we appreciate these metaphors?
Firstly, to explain the function of light, we might refer to the rite of baptism. Either the baptised adult or the god-parent of the baptised infant is given a candle lit from the Paschal torch. The exhortation given to the person who receive the light comes from the narrative of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. “May they keep the flame alive in their hearts. When the Lord comes, may they go out to meet Him with all the saints in the heavenly Kingdom”. The light is kept burning brightly through the consistency of our faith and action.
One of the best illustrators of what it means to be a light is our political scene. The present motto for public life, not just here in this country, but everywhere, is basically to “never get caught”. Once a scandal breaks out, the so-called honourable thing for someone caught is to resign.[1] If one probes further, the main inclination to be “honourable” is that this course of action is still coming from that space where there is supposedly a gap between a politician’s public behaviour and his private morality. There still remains a chasm because we still maintain that morality is merely an individual’s private business whereas his public personality is simply a façade. For that pretence to hold, one should never be caught.
One might be forgiven if one were to think that this so-called credibility criterion, that is, the honourable resignation is derived from a Christian ideal. It is not. This benchmark or yardstick of honourability ignores the painful truth of life after the Fall. Everyone is a sinner because no one is born immaculate. A true leader is not a person without a misstep. An authentic leader can also make mistakes because credibility and integrity, as important as they are, do not mean that we have never made mistakes. Mistakes or sins merely highlight the reality that we are saints in progress and that credibility and integrity represent our attempt to close the chasm between our profession and our personality. We ought to live privately as if we were public personalities.
And this brings us to how we as salt can enhance and flavour our community. The useless salt to be trampled underfoot after losing its purity is not a repudiation of our true selves but simply a reminder that while we are sinners, we are supposed to maintain our flavour through a regimen of personal purification. Each one is a work-in-progress.
Thus, it is a heresy to believe that one has to be perfect before daring to stand up or to open one’s mouth. Since no one is conceived sinless, except Jesus and Mary, waiting for a perfect world-class person before one starts to speak or serve might take forever. The sad reality is when everyone is waiting for everyone to be ethically upright, the general standard in morality drops. Why? Instead of morality being right or wrong independent of the person uttering it, we have reduced the measure or standard of right and wrong to our credibility. As long as I am not credible, I have no right to state what is objective wrong. To give an example: As long as I have killed I lose the right to assert that killing is wrong. I would be a hypocrite and have no “standing” to advise anyone regarding the immorality of killing. In this case, even the devil can state the truth proving that credibility whilst crucial is not the standard of morality but the action itself has a morality that commands both the holy and the hypocrite. Thus, our task, if we were to use a business term, is to be a value-added person in the community.
It does not mean being perfect persons. Despite our brokenness, we are still disciples cooperating with grace for our salvation and as well as participating in Christ’s programme of building up His Kingdom. Sometimes Catholics are led to think that being light and salt is a mission within the Church. But that is not the focus of our Christian call.
The vocation of a Christian is out there. There is a world waiting to be shaped into Christ’s Kingdom. It would be safe and comforting to limit our engagement to Church activities etc. Whereas the Kingdom that is waiting for our participation is where we live, in our Tamans and condos, where we play, in our pitches and stadia, where we mingle, in our malls and our food courts, where we study, in our schools and universities, where we work, in our offices and factories. These are the areas where the Beatitudes are to be embraced and the Kingdom to be established.
It is indeed a Herculean task. We crave the security of familiarity because it is easier and comforting. When we are out there, we need to be on our toes, like driving courteously on our roads and byways, especially if you have a rosary dangling from your rear-view mirror. We are all failures, one and all, from popes to priests, from married to monastic, from parishioners to prisoners. Everyone is a failure. Everyone is a sinner. Our credibility does not come from managing our public bearing and our private behaviour as if they were separated. Instead our credibility must come from the perspective of conversion because every sinner has a future and every saint has a past. By walking our talk, we are transformed or “Christified” through the alignment of both our public and private personae. We grow as committed Christians, faithful images of Christ to light the world brighter and to enrich the earth better.
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[1] The point of resignation has no connexion to forgiveness because the issue is not about making a mistake as suggested by the adage, “to err is human and to forgive divine”.
As He immersed into public life, Jesus presented a picture of what the People of God should be like and plotted the moral and spiritual chart for arriving there. In fact, the grand scheme of God’s people can be gleaned from both the 1st and 2nd Readings. According to the Prophet Zephaniah, from the remnant of Israel, God will form a people humble and lowly. This will be a people of integrity. Prosperity will no longer be a sign of God’s blessings. Instead, those who trust in God will be blessed by Him. Furthermore, St Paul reminded the Corinthians that God’s choice of them was not based on any merit of theirs. All throughout history, the Lord has routinely chosen the weak in order to shame the strong. His power shines through the powerless.
It is with this that we come to the Gospel. The Beatitudes are the magna carta for the shaping or the forming of the people that Jesus wants for His Kingdom. But a blue-print is never without its context and this is important for our appreciation of the Beatitudes. At the start of Jesus’ public ministry, the people were inspired by His preaching and impressed by His actions until He began to challenge their orthodoxies—whether their beliefs, convictions or ideas. In general, people are not contextless or tabulæ rasæ, meaning that they are not blank slates but they have notions of who they are and how things are supposed to be. The problem begins when worldviews are fossilised or codified and nobody likes to be told that what they have held on to dearly is wrong. It unsettles them. They react.
In the face of opposition, proclaiming any alternative worldview can be challenging. The radically bold pronouncement of the Beatitudes unsettled the audience then as they do us today. Even more so today. For example, the Declaration of Independence of the United States which lays down the principle that every individual has the right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness feels tame in contrast to our aspirations. Note that the Declaration sprang from a background in which the quest for “personal” fulfilment or happiness was set within a religious framework, that is, a nation under God. Today, the objective standards are personal and individualistic and they are framed as the rights to good health, great wealth, personal prestige. These are usually grouped under the umbrella of a “good life”. Never mind the fact that a “good life” is more of a moral imperative than a description of an easy and comfortable life. Life is good and a good life are two different realities.
In fact, the programme outlined by Jesus to be numbered as His people has, in many extreme cases, led to the deprivation of life. To be fair, to be blessed or happy in the way that Jesus enumerated in the Beatitudes, is not a condemnation of our natural aspiration. Why? Creation is God’s endowment for man to enjoy. God did not give grudgingly. However, everything has a place in God’s creation. What has happened is the inversion of our perspective. From blessings as gifts, we have come to view material wealth, prosperity and health, as our entitlement. We deserve them and God owes them to us.
This sense of entitlement makes the Beatitudes hard to embrace. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are you who are abused, persecuted and have all kinds of calumny spoken against you. Are you kidding? Every statement runs counter to our native appetite. It may not be that accurate to speak of this inclination as natural but more precise to view our faculty of passion from a perspective that it has been damaged by sin.
The priority of life is not so much to be successful as it is to live a good life, that is, a moral life of excellence and virtue. The goal in life is not to live forever. It is to live in a manner that dares to lay down one’s life for a greater value or better still for a person who is worth dying for. It sounds alien but it is not because a father or mother will give his or her life for his or her child. It is part of our constitution or make-up. The grace is to convert that dying from “egoistic” to “altruistic”, from selfish to self-effacing. It is within this magnanimous framework that the Beatitudes make sense.
We are living in troubled times. When a society becomes decadent, it will begin to close in on itself. Luxury, or the good life, instead of it being a consolation along the pilgrimage of life, will soon become a value in itself. We are fatter and lazier. Lost in the clutches of hedonism, we cannot see beyond the here and now. As a result, whatever aspirations we may have, they have to be fulfilled. Otherwise, life becomes meaningless.
The good thing is that society is not entirely lost. It still retains a semblance of right and wrong even though its sense of morality is misguided. It appears that our desire for the good is influenced by a therapeutic moralistic deism. Within such a belief, the primary mark of society is to feel good. Goodness is measured by feeling more than any other values.
The aim of life is to be and not to feel good because we have been created for an eternity that cannot be satisfied temporally. In other words, eternity cannot find its fulfilment in the temporal. The knowledge that we have the possibility of everlasting life is both a consolation as well as a compensation for sorrow. It makes the unrequited yearnings of the heart bearable. Take a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon starring both Chow Yun Fatt and Michelle Yeoh. Whatever “sexual attraction” they had for each other was never fulfilled. When our notion of life is restricted to the temporal, these two characters would basically be lost souls because of their “unfulfilment” but if our vision is more eternal, whatever cannot be resolved in this lifetime, there is an eternity for the final resolution. For example, “adultery” can be excused by claiming that “you have married wrong person”. Consider a man who has a wrong wife, already three children but who chose to uphold the vows of his marriage. Stupid in the eyes of the world for not giving in to the excuse to cheat on the wife. But in the eyes of God, a man of integrity.
The spirituality of the Beatitudes is based on this principle and that means that the troubles we encounter in this world, even though they can be overwhelming, they do not indicate a permanency. No matter how tested we are by circumstances, they do not define who we are.
This realisation makes the Beatitudes a bit more comprehensible even though it is not entirely palatable. The question we need to ask ourselves is what sort of philosophy of life should we hold on to? The answer can be helped if we consider this scenario and that is this: when we have gained everything, what is next. The richest or the most successful person in the world will have arrived at the pinnacle and there they must ask the question of what the next is. Is there anything more?
In summary, the Beatitudes prepare us for eternity. They help us to see a realm beyond this world. There the values are different from this world of incompleteness and inadequacy. Whatever we experience here will never satisfy us completely. Whatever we achieve here will never fulfil us fully. Sadly, the response is more hoarding and accumulating, be it wealth or even health. The drive or passion we have was never intended “solely” for this life. The fatal mistake is to consider what we find in this world to be the final satisfaction or fulfilment. Whereas, in eternity, what the world prizes will no longer be what attracts us. Instead, we shall live the Beatitudes with a kind of peace and integrity that the world cannot give. In conclusion, the Beatitudes only make sense when we realise that whatever we are on earth or have in this world is only a stepping stone to the next. The Beatitudes are less commandments and more invitation from the Heart of Christ to seek the values of the eternal Kingdom through a life of excellence, well-lived in this passing world as a preparation for the next. We hold on despite our losses here because of the promised gain of heaven. Blessed are you for trusting that God will never be outdone.
From John’s Gospel, we cross over to Matthew. The Baptiser bows out permanently as he has been arrested, imprisoned and soon enough beheaded. The background of the Gospel passage is that after Jesus had heard of John’s detention, He withdrew to Nazareth before settling down in Capernaum. Matthew takes pain to make the connexion between the 1st Reading and his Gospel narrative in which the itinerary of Jesus fulfils the Old Testament prophesy of Isaiah. The returning exiles from Egypt had settled in Galilee, also known as the back of the beyond where the people live in the shadow of death. The Gospel shows that by Jesus’ settling in Capernaum, those who dwell in darkness will now see the Light who is Christ Himself.
The Gospel also points out that the baptism signalled Jesus’ entrance in public ministry. He does it by preaching a message of repentance, by proclaiming the Kingdom of God, by curing the sick and by calling Peter, Andrew, James and John.
We are familiar with the scope of Jesus’ public life. In the last few decades ever since the Church entered the “modern” world, the proclamation of the Kingdom took centre-stage but with a more temporal twist. Values such as justice, peace and love have become critical. As the world shrunk, the global village grew more conscious of how unequal the post-war, post-industrial society had become. There were nations of great wealth and prosperity that occupy Europe and North America mostly. Whereas a large swarth of the global south remained undeveloped and trapped in poverty. Such a picture seemed to run contrary to the revolutionary vision of the God of Jesus Christ. The idea was that God had intended a world of justice and equality. The outcast, the poor and the underprivileged who were the focus of Christ’s love should now be the preferential option for the Church’s ministry. Through social and political change, those marginalised and deprived of their rights will be brought into the fold of the Kingdom of justice and equality that Christ had come to establish.
In a manner of speaking, this project of liberation also blends in with a mindset which sees societal inequalities as both a challenge to be solved and after a Pelagian remedy is found, it becomes an oblation to be offered to God. We are technologically capable, inclined and driven to engineer society believing that we can achieve a perfect state of human existence.
Would a perfectly structured society be an indication that God’s Kingdom has been established? Look at this country. We possess first-world facilities and yet we operate with a third-world mentality. The ideology that changing structures politically and socially will transform the human person is naïve. Even our cousins down south know this. They too have first-class infrastructure much better than ours. But what is the price of maintaining this perfectly functioning society? Intimidation or fear through hefty fines. When they visit us, a few throw rubbish out of the cars. The point here is not a criticism of the need for political or social change nor is it a rebuke of our cousins. The question is where transformation should be located.
Christ did care for the poor, especially the oppressed and marginalised. Yet, of the four descriptions that marks the beginning of Christ’s public ministry, two of them revolved around the human person in his spiritual being. As important as it is to ensure that all are equally treated, the Gospel message is spiritual because man’s primary need is spiritual. Why? If the poor needs liberation, so too the rich. Everyone needs salvation. Remember, a couple of weeks ago, at Christmas, both the Kings and the Shepherds visited the Christ Child. The preferential option for the poor is not meant to discriminate against the rich who also need to be saved by Christ.
In the curing the sick, notice that on numerous occasions, Jesus had to contend with the forces of evil. As it was then, sickness was a sign of sin and thus, those who were sick were considered to be sinners. In many cases, they needed forgiveness but more than that, they also needed deliverance from the oppression of evil spirits. Both healing and deliverance occupied 2/3 of His ministry while preaching took only about 1/3 of his time suggesting that Jesus’ work was deeply spiritual. For instance, even as He came down Mount Tabor after the Transfiguration, He was immediately confronted with the possession of a boy whom the disciples themselves could not cure.
Satan tempts, oppresses or possesses. We seldom think of this but Satan is hell-bent on destroying the salvific work of Christ. When we focus on the liberation of man, a danger is to reduce the goal of emancipation to a merely material plane. When we restrict the progress of the Kingdom solely at the level of social or political, we tend to neglect how Satan works. He is present in our material world. Matthew 12: 43-44 tells us that the Devil upon leaving a person will wander around looking for a place to rest and finding none, it returns to its former host.
In other words, Satan even though a spiritual reality works through his human slaves. Social structures are not evil in themselves but they are only so because of evil that resides in the hearts of men. The Prayer to St Michael the Archangel acknowledges that there is a cosmic battle taking place in the human heart. The proclamation of the Kingdom was a deeply spiritual enterprise as Jesus sought to cure the sick and also deliver souls from the influence of Satan. Everyone here knows how difficult the conversion of heart is. As the Pauline dilemma in Romans 7: 15 reminds us that “we do not do the good that we want to do but the evil that we hate is what we do”. We also know this perversion of the heart as we are sinners who need Christ’s redemption.
In summary, Christ’s ministry is basically to free us from Satan’s power so that we can cooperate in establishing the Kingdom. In terms of vocation, some understand the call of the disciples mostly in terms of social justice and presently, there is also a push towards environmental justice. Both the establishment of a fairer society and the conservation of the environment are expressions of discipleship. But, at the heart of discipleship is the task of conversion. The Kingdom is more than material fulfilment or even environmental protection. The Kingdom begins here on earth but it has an end. The goal is to be truly liberated from sin, to worship God and so to gain eternal life.
Though we have entered into ordinary time, the saga continues with John the Baptist. Even as he bows out, he does so by pointing out to the world that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Today identity politics is central to a community, a society or a country’s self-definition and aspiration. It may be good to explore the identity of Jesus as the Lamb of God because Who He is has implications for us all.
Firstly, the title itself gives us a good reason to be grateful for our identity as Catholics. It reveals how Sacred Scripture is intimately linked to the Liturgy. Most possibly, the label predates our Gospel passage today, meaning that the early Church was already worshipping Jesus as the Lord and exalting Him as the Lamb of God long before Sacred Scripture came to be written. Thus, when the Evangelist composed his Gospel, he could have borrowed the title from the then existing Liturgy.
One of the consequences of the Incarnation is that Catholic practices are, in principle, profoundly sacramental. By definition, any sacramental expression has to be “rite-dependent” so that through the essential elements of both form and matter, the validity of a sacrament can be guaranteed. Hence, the rite, which is an external articulation of a hidden reality, must be regulated through symbolic action using fixed formularies and tangible materials. The one who performs the rite cannot say whatever he wants or use whatever he pleases. An illustration can be gleaned from the way we define our national breakfast—Nasi Lemak. People debate over what ingredients should go into making a good Nasi Lemak. Never mind the diversity-inclusive culinary world that tries to fusion the food. For example, to be a bit more “atas”, how about Nasi Lemak with Foie Gras instead of Otak Otak? A connoisseur or an aficionado will tell you that a Nasi Lemak should have a determined set of ingredients for it to be a Nasi Lemak.
The same can be said of sacramental rituals. They are regulated to ensure that what we receive is genuine, the “real McCoy”. Hence, water and the Trinitarian formula are necessary for Baptism’s validity. Bread and Wine with the Institution Narrative are necessary for transubstantiation into the Body and Blood of Christ. Laying on of hands and Chrism with the formula, “Be sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit” for Confirmation. And so forth. Why am I bringing up the examples of “Nasi Lemak” and what goes into it and then the essential elements of “form and matter” for the validity of the Sacraments?
Due to the highly regulated nature of the sacramental system, much of what we do in our Liturgy feels disconnected or even alien from Sacred Scripture and sadly this may have given rise to the idea that Catholic practices are therefore, unscriptural. Both the recitation of the Agnus Dei in the Eucharist and the inclusion of the Lamb of God in John’s Gospel highlight that the dichotomy between Sacred Scripture and the Liturgy is a false divide. Our liturgy is steeped in Sacred Scripture[1] to the point that we no longer think of it.[2] In the Eucharist, we breathe Sacred Scripture. Like the activity of walking. Unless one is in physiotherapy after an accident or a brain injury, one walks without second thoughts and this brings us to the second point.
The Lamb of God is a title that describes who He is supposed to be—a scapegoat. Submitting Himself to be baptised was an act of self-oblation as the only sacrifice that can take away the sin of the world. He was sacrificed on our behalf as He personally took upon Himself the burden of our sin. The challenge for each one of us is this question: “Why is the world still stuck in sin? Has He not taken away the sin of the world?”.
The answer is found in the way we have been shaped since the Fall. Somehow or rather, when everyone is scolded, there is a feeling that one’s personal culpability is lessened. It means that when everyone is sinful, then no one will feel personally responsible for sin. An interesting facet about humanity is that even if one were conscious of his or her sin, somehow, one’s sin is not as grave as others’. In general, when a sin is named, we tend to think in terms of others who are more sinful. It is not “self-righteousness” per se as it is a tendency to hide behind the general.
The grace is to visualise or imagine Him bearing the burden of “my” sins, not anybody else’s, but mine. Rather than hiding behind “our” sin, admitting that it is my sins that have nailed Him to the Cross should generally cause me to be ashamed. All the Saints have this sense of their unworthiness arising from their acute knowledge of their personal sinfulness.
The point is that the combination of both the lack of personal responsibility and our improper disposition to the Sacraments are perfect conditions for sin to fester in the world. Each one of us contributes to the sickness of sin in the world because we have placed obstacles for the Sacraments to work. Coupled with the lack of personal responsibility for our actions, the world remains trapped in sin.
So, the Lamb of God died for every sin of mine. If through the Sacrament of Baptism, I have been inserted or grafted into His Body, it follows that I have a personal duty to live according to His teachings. I am obliged to cooperate with His grace in the remedy of my life. As the 2nd Reading suggests, I am a light to the nations. It sounds arrogant but it is not. I carry the torch of sanctification so that the world may be brightened by my light and my holiness.
Repeat this to yourself and it will sound different from saying “we carry the torch”. This is the truth of discipleship, plain and pure. Tell yourself this: I have not been baptised merely. Instead, I have been grafted into the Church, the Body of Christ to continue His work in the world. Even though I am broken, I am still a member of the Church founded by Christ. I might not be as “scripturally” literate as I should be but still, I belong to the Lamb of God and I rejoice in my affiliation with Him.
In conclusion, the Church is older than written scripture. Some might think that it is Sacred Scripture that gave birth to the Church but it is the other way around as seen in how John adopted the liturgical title of Jesus as the Lamb of God into his Gospel. This title is not only salvific but it also gives me my identity as son or daughter of the Church He founded. In a world afflicted by identity politics, maybe Catholic is the one identity I ought to forge because it gives me a holy reason to be a good Christian. Therefore, in gratitude for my baptism and for my identity, I pledge to undertake my mission be a light of Christ in the world. Amen.
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[1] The entire Mass can be traced to Sacred Scripture because many of the words spoken by the priests and the people are direct quotations from particular biblical texts.
[2] While it might be good to be more aware of how scriptural our liturgy is, the validity and efficacy of a Sacrament is not dependent on our awareness of it. Instead, the Sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which grace is dispensed to us. It does not mean that they are magic because the fruits of the Sacraments do depend on the disposition of the one who receives them.
Two fantastic events will take place today and tomorrow. In fact the etymology of the word “fantastic” is related to these two celebrations. Sunday is the Epiphany and Monday is a theophany. These two Greek terms are definitions concerning divine revelation wherein God is manifested. In the Epiphany, the divinity of Jesus is highlighted by the Visit of the Magi. When they saw the Child, they fell on their knees and did Him homage. Whereas tomorrow at the baptism in the Jordan, it is a theophany because the Blessed Trinity is revealed by the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove and the voice of the Father coming from heaven declaring that Jesus is the beloved Son.
In the past, some scholars believed that in the early Church, the Nativity (or Christmas), the Visit of the Magi (or the Epiphany), the Baptism of Jesus (a theophany) and the Wedding at Cana (yet another theophany) were commemorated on the 6th of January. Over time, these developed into separate events in the liturgical calendar. Once again, we have a thematic kind of a homily because we know everything or almost nothing about the Magi except their famous offerings: gold for the Shepherd-King, incense for a Priest-God and myrrh to prepare the Redeemer-Prophet for His mortal death.
Perhaps we can dwell on the notion of manifestation or showing forth. It is not the ghostly or the horror movie type. Rather it is of the divine revelation in which God is shown to the world and this has implication for each one of us. In the Epiphany, the wise men were able to recognise Jesus whom they had been searching for. For us, our epiphany or theophany is that God shows Himself to us and through us He reveals Himself to the world. Will the world be able to recognise Jesus in us? This is definitely challenging as Gandhi pointed out. “I believe in Christ but I do not believe in Christians”. A slap on the face indeed but it illustrates what it means to be a Christian and how frequently our behaviour does not measure up to our belief. A good example would be as simple as being mindful in the manner we park around this neighbourhood.
The truth concerning performative contradiction is our lack of awareness. We might not realise that our conduct in a way negates or invalidates what we profess or claim to believe in. It may not be wilful but still, it feels like a form of hypocrisy to the observer. Therefore, the often-repeated accusation that the Church is hypocritical should not surprise us. Everyone is a hypocrite because everyone is a sinner. But, we seem to have forgotten this existential reality and instead, we have unconsciously assumed a construct which is sinless, as if everyone were immaculately conceived.
Within such a framework, our reaction to sin arising from our fallen nature is that we are often taken by surprise that people are flawed. And our reaction to failing imperfection may come across as “enlightened”. Take a look at the performing arts where leading actors are celebrities we look up to. In the matter of public behaviour, some who are permanently offended will judge a past action of an actor using the criteria of present-day standards. There seems to be an unwritten rule that one should never have sinned in the past. Once a blot has been discovered, the actor is supposed to apologise for doing something which was in the past acceptable but is now in the present unacceptable.[1] If not an actor, a public figure like a politician. The minute a politician is discovered short of his calling, he should resign. We esteem that as accountability or professional standard, believing that it is an enlightened response. How many of these celebrities or politicians have had to apologise for the wrong thought they had or expressed when they were young and found out now? Better still, “leaders” apologising for their ancestors’ behaviour!
Is there a more sober kind of spirituality that is more in touch with our fallen nature? There is, in fact. The sacramental system is tailored to fit in with our brokenness. Our depraved nature on its own is incapable of doing anything for itself. Instead, it needs grace to be lifted up onto the plane of a supernatural life. The more we fall, the more we need God. Hence, in His infinite wisdom, the Lord has left us, through His Church, the Sacraments. They are His personal help to us in the ascent to holiness.
Sadly, the world thinks otherwise. The more we fall, the less we need the Sacraments. After all they are “ineffective”. As a result, we need to rely on ourselves. This self-reliance that believes that it is possible to achieve supernatural life on our own volition is Pelagian. The simple truth is, without the Sacraments, we can never go to heaven.
This is indeed a loaded assertion. Almost arrogant because it discounts the others who do not have access to the Sacraments. How about those who, through no fault of theirs, have not been baptised? Such a statement only makes sense when we accept that the Sacrament of Baptism is the ordinary means of salvation intended by Christ.[2] At the cusp of the Ascension, He commanded His Church to go and baptise all nations using the Trinitarian formula. It was not a suggestion and furthermore, He added in John 6, “If you want eternal life, eat my flesh and drink my blood”. There was no equivocation about the necessity of the Eucharist for eternal life.
In a way, the Epiphany in which Christ is manifested to the world can be linked to the challenge of living the sacramental life to its fullest. Why? We are witnesses to Him despite our sinfulness or brokenness. An “immaculately” conceived world is not really a perfect world. Rather, it is a world steeped in despair. How many of us have reasoned that the Sacrament of Confession is useless simply because we continue to sin and are canonised in a particular habit of sin? In our despair, it does not take much for us to relativise the necessity of the Sacraments and by extension, the Church for our salvation.
The gap created by our performative contradiction should invite us to embrace a more vibrant sacramental life. We need more of the Sacraments and not less. Chesterton remarked that the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. It explains our insipid or tasteless witnessing. We are neither here nor there because we have no faith that the Sacraments are powerful.
Finally, Monday or tomorrow is the Baptism of the Lord. It is an important theophany in which the Blessed Trinity is revealed through the baptism in the Jordan of the 2nd Person. What is the point of manifestation, that is, of an epiphany or a theophany if not for the attraction of people to God? Indeed, God becomes more attractive if we live a more convincing life. As St Therese de Lisieux said, “The value of life does not depend upon the place we occupy. It depends upon the way we occupy that place”. Thus, the Epiphany, together with the theophany of Christ’s baptism are meant to carry us into the ordinariness of life, no matter who we are, a Tan Sri or a Tong Sampah Collector and no matter where we are, in a tower or on a tree. Who we are and where we are, in our encounters with the world and the world that encounters us, Jesus Christ is manifested through our thoughts, words and deeds. The Sacraments, properly and faithfully received, are there to help us narrow the gap between what we believe and how we behave.
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[1] The Black Minstrel Show used to be entertainment. Today, it is called “black face” and considered to be highly offensive. Some of us might recognise the toothpaste brand, “Darkie” which has since been rebranded as “Darlie”. The point is “standards” do evolve and change. What we canonise today as the “standard” might be considered primitive 50 years from now. Perhaps, judging should be a little bit more nuan
[2] If there is an ordinary means, there must be an extraordinary means. We are bound by the ordinary means because that is what God has intended. God Himself is not bound by that means.
Preaching on Mary, Mother of God is both easy and difficult. Easy because it is thematic as it focuses basically on Mariology. Difficult as there is only that much one can speak on the subject matter because many would heard the same things said about her.
Today we inhabit a politically charged arena where speech has to toe the accepted lines on matters of race and gender. However, long before “wokeism” came along, Catholicism had already been dealing with nearly 500 years of the Reformation dissent. If there were no Protestant rebellion, the landscape for devotion to Mary might be different from what we have now. The Church has laboured under the scrutiny of “theological correctness” and in the desire for rapprochement, Catholics have had to be mindful that they do not sentimentalise Mary and with that, trivialise Jesus Christ.
Given such sensitivity, why does the Church still dedicate the first day of the year to Mary, under the title Mother of God. This title actually predates the Reformation revolt. In fact, the term “Mother of God” is more than relational because the early Church needed to define Jesus in Himself. Was He one person or two? Both the Councils of Ephesus (AD431) and Chalcedon (AD451) settled on the title “Theotokos” (or God-bearer). The use of “Theotokos” has to be understood in the context of the dispute concerning Mary as “Christotokos” or the “bearer of Christ”.
There is a logic for calling Mary the Mother of God. It comes through the event or the phenomenon of the Incarnation. Jesus, who is the Word made flesh, has two distinct natures—a divine nature and a human nature. How do these natures relate to each other? If we follow logic, having two natures would mean that He has two separate sources and modes of operations—divine and human. The danger is that we might end up with Jesus being a composite of two persons. It explains why Nestorius called Mary “Christotokos”[1]. Whereas the early Church depended on the principle of the “Communicatio Idiomatum” to explain the relationship between the two natures of Christ. To understand this principle, we need to clarify what the terms nature and person mean.
The term “nature” answers the question of “what”. What is He? He is God and He is man because He has a divine nature and a human nature. However, having these two natures does not equate to two persons. Through “Communicatio Idiomatum”, every action, be it divine or human, must be attributed to the Person of Christ because “person” answers the question of “who”. Who is He? He is the 2nd Person of the Blessed Trinity and He is God. Nature is where the action originates from. But the person is the doer of the action meaning that Jesus can act in a divine manner or a human manner. As God, He can perform divine activities or can act in a divine way, like raising the dead, multiplying loaves of bread, walking on water and changing water into wine. As man, He can also perform human actions or can act in a human way, like being born, sleeping, eating, feeling fatigue, agonising in the Gethsemane and dying on the Cross. The “Person” is always the same even at one time He is called God because of His divine nature, and at another time, He is called man because of his human nature.
In summary, if Jesus means God-who-saves, then Mary must be the Mother of the God-who-saves. It is as plain as that. This is the Mother whom Jesus gave us. As we emerge from the pandemic, what lessons can we learn from the Mother who stood by her Son at the foot of the Cross? Entering 2023, if we were to make resolutions, we might consider two of her virtues that can assist us to navigate the challenges of our times.
Firstly, consider the Marian virtue of humility. Even if this sounded tired and boring, the truth is, we can never get enough of this virtue simply because we are a me-first generation. It is tiring to be reminded of humility because we are self-obsessed and self-centred. Have you noticed in our conversations how we tend to be “absolutists”? Meaning? Almost everyone speaks as if he were the PM or the Pope. We can be so pig-headed without even realising it. Placing others first has a powerful effect because it allows let go of our selfish and arrogant ways. The humility of Mary is the antidote to pride and selfishness as it opens up space to tune in to God’s will. If we intend to shape the world according to the image of Christ, without humility we will never be docile instruments in the hands of God. Instead, we will dictate to God what to do.
Flowing from humility is the virtue of simplicity. The idea of living simply ties in with Pope Francis’ effort in this time of climate crisis. We have just marked Christmas, which in the place of being linked to the coming of Christ, it is associated with materialism. To celebrate, we are encouraged to spend and buy more. The premium is placed on material accumulation like chasing the latest gadgets or the fanciest cars. Presently as travel regains traction, we are infected by revenge travel. But materialism is not the solution to the need for connexion and fulfilment.
Imitating Mary’s simplicity reminds us that our ultimate happiness is spiritual rather than material. It is a hint that this world is not our permanent abode whereas eternity awaits us at the end of our earthly journey. Furthermore, simplicity gives us the possibility of living out Pope Francis’ exhortation outlined in "Laudato si" in which knowing that we are basically terrestrial transients, it is our duty to ensure that future generations do not pay the price of our irresponsible exploitation of the world.
Just these two resolutions can start us on the Marian path to holiness. To do this, we turn to the Mother of God for her maternal assistance. Sadly, the eagerness of Protestants to focus on Christ alone as the Saviour and sole Mediator of the world, has had a chilling effect of making us forget how powerful the intercession of Mary is in this path to holiness and redemption. The other ancient dogma of Mary’s perpetual virginity provides us with a glimpse of her role in mediating Christ’s salvation. It is true that her perpetual virginity points us in the direction of the future where there will be no more marriage. We hear how Jesus told the Sadducees that in the Resurrection, no one marries nor is anyone given in marriage. Instead we will be like angels in heaven. But that is not the reason for Mary’s strength in interceding for us.
Mary’s perpetual virginity is a sign of her total consecration to God, her single-minded service of Her Lord and Saviour. In other words, the saints all have a deep love for Mary because they all see in her the icon of whom they themselves want to be—totally given to God. Mary by her total consecration to God is not a goddess or a mini-deity. Instead, she leads all to Her Son as St Louis de Montfort used to say: “To Jesus through Mary”. St John Paul II took “Totus tuus” as his motto and had it engraved on his coat of arms. “I am all yours and all I have is yours”. He dedicated himself entirely to Mary because he knows that by being totally hers, she will do the only thing she knows, to lead him to Christ.
Buffeted by the strong winds of Protestant discomfort with Mary, we take on their fear that our love for Mary might diminish our reverence and love for Christ. Au contraire, the more we love Mary, the deeper will our love be for Christ because she always leads us to Him. It was she, at Cana, who directed the steward: “Do whatever He tells you”. Just maybe, if we do not want people to love Jesus, then we should diminish our love for Mary. That would make the devil happy.
Finally, in an age of celebrated “victimhood”, we might want to honour the womanhood in Mary as the Mother of God. Man was created from dirt whereas woman was created from the living flesh and bone of man. If we accept the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, then perhaps we can say that Eve was created based on the image of Mary, the solitary boast of our human nature. St John Chrysostom, one of the Four Eastern Fathers of the Church, dedicated a part of the Eucharistic Prayer to our Lady which might offend the Protestant sensitivity: “It is truly proper to glorify you, O Theotokos, the ever-blessed, immaculate, and the mother of our God. More honourable than the cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim, who, a virgin, gave birth to God the Logos, you, truly the Theotokos, we magnify". Finally, as St Maximillian Kolbe assured us: 'Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did.'. Indeed, to Jesus through Mary.
Pray for us, O Most Holy Mother of God.
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[1] She is the bearer of Christ and not the bearer of God because the title “Theotokos” suggests that she is the originator of God. St Cyril’s objection was that a mother can only give birth to a person and not a nature.
We all like numbers. The bigger the better. Most Solemnities have at most two Masses—the “Vigil Mass” and the “Mass of the Day”. Christmas has four and each of the Masses has different sets of readings. The “Vigil Mass” and “Mass during the Night” are both celebrated on 24th Dec with the latter (second one) being as close as possible to midnight. On 25th Dec, the two celebrations are “Mass at Dawn” and the “Mass during the Day”. Having that many Masses lined up surely suggest that the Solemnity of Christmas ranks higher than Easter but it does not. The four Masses simply help us to appreciate different aspects of Christ coming in the flesh.
We anticipate Him at the Vigil Mass. There is an air of expectation. In fact, the Gospel is possibly one which is most dreaded because of the tongue-twisting names of Jesus’ ancestors. However, its intent is to prepare us for His birth. Both the Antiphon and the Collect remind us of His coming and how we can be confident in facing Christ as our hearts are gladdened by the joy of salvation.
As we proceed further into the heart of the night, the Good News or the Gospel proclaims that the awaited Saviour has come into the world. The Collect contrasts the enveloping darkness with the bright Light of Christ as Luke’s Gospel presents us with the familiar narration of the annunciation by the angels. The hosts of heaven appearing to the shepherds in the field urge them hasten to the City of David, where they shall find the Lord and Saviour of the world born and laid in a manger.
The next morning, in stillness of dawn, we savour the radiance of Christ’s birth. Our prayer is that through His brightness which illuminates our minds, our deeds too may shine with the brilliance of His presence. The simple petition is that our actions will match with our confession and the Gospel continues from the previous night with the shepherds as they visit Mary, Joseph, the new-born King and they worship Him. If the previous celebration is called the Mass of the Angels, this makes it the Mass of the Shepherds.
Finally, in full light, we celebrate the Mass during the Day. Also called the Mass of the King, we enter deeper into the mystery of the Incarnation. The Gospel is taken from the beginning of John’s Gospel. The Collect reminds us that as God humbles Himself to share in our humanity, He restores our dignity by giving us all a share in His Divinity.
These four Masses give us a bigger picture of the mystery of God’s Incarnation in order that we can be saved. Is there a smaller picture?
There is. We have two challenges to face. The first is the loss of the ability to anticipate as indicated by the Vigil Mass. Waiting is a part of life. Waiting for a fruit to ripen to enjoy its fullness and sweetness is a good analogy. Those who eat an unripe fruit know its taste is sharp and bitter. The dilemma we face is a widespread loss of the art of anticipation. In fact, we have forgotten this important virtue of patient waiting and instead, we demand instant gratification.
There seems to this tide of “I want it now” that can never be stopped. In fact, some priests have tried. For example, carols are usually like “Angels we have heard on high”, or “The First Noël” are supposed to be sung only about this time but they are played or carolled early on because we no longer make a distinction between Advent Season and Christmas Season. For many Advent is Christmas. A priest who dares to insist on not singing until the 12 days of Christmas, which starts on 25th Dec, will be considered a wrong kind of a priest. Does the inability to delay gratification explain why we struggle to abstain from meat on Friday or fast during Lent? It may even clarify why co-habitation has become the norm rather than waiting for the proper Sacrament of Marriage to take place first? This loss of anticipation may have also contributed to our loss of the sense of heaven. The result is an entitlement that we must be happy in this life or not at all.
There is always “suffering” while we wait and that is not because we are deserve to suffer. Our myopia is to focus on the pain without realising that in delaying gratification, we increase the beatitudes of our Christmas joy. Wine are aged to perfection only if we were patient. Heaven requires waiting but we are too eager for it. And it brings us to the description of St Bernard for the coming of Christ.
His description of the 3 Comings can help us appreciate our second challenge. According to the “Doctor Mellifluus”, He came in the past, He is with us now and we await His return. It helps to think of Him being with us as both objective and subjective realities. Historically He came and that is the objective fact of the Birth of Christ about 2000 years ago. But currently and personally, where is His subjective presence? The popular Christmas song: “Christmas isn’t Christmas till it happens in your heart” captures this pointedly because further in the lyrics, it says “give your heart to Jesus and you discover when you do, that is Christmas for you”.
An essential element of anticipation is to prepare the heart for Christ so that He can also take flesh in our souls. We need Him not only because He is our personal Saviour. We need Him because the world needs Him through our thoughts, words and actions. We can be caught up with the necessary festivities of commemorating His historical coming, forgetting that the vital preparation that is here and now, must also take place. At Christmas, the God the Father invites us to respond generously to His Son’s coming. Jesus, even as He lies in the manger, is saying: “Look, I am standing at the door, knocking. If one of you hears me calling and opens the door, I will come in to share a meal at that person's side” (Revelation 3:20). The best Christmas response is the ancient prayer: Come, Lord Jesus, come. Maranatha.
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