5th Sunday of Easter Year A 2023

We witness a period of the early Church where organisational challenges were beginning to manifest themselves. In order to serve and provide for the widows who were plaintively ignored in the distribution of food, the ministry of “diakonos” was created. Despite the shortcomings in this nascent Church, St Paul in the 2nd Reading pointedly reminded the people that by virtue of their faith and baptism, their incorporation into the Church has consecrated them into holy nation, a people dedicated to God.

Indeed, the 1st Reading portrays the unavoidable growing pains of the post-Resurrection Apostolic community. Even though the Gospel is taken from a time before the Jesus’ Passion and Death, it can still be applied to this situation. The Lord’s Farewell Discourse took place right after He had washed the feet of the Apostles. As He faced His impending death, Jesus exhorted them not to be afraid. He asked the Apostles to trust Him because He is heading towards the eternal homeland to prepare a place for them. When quizzed on how they are able to get there, Jesus replied that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

What can we learn from the readings and the Gospel?

Firstly, trust the Lord no matter the shape of the present. The situation of the apostolic community is instructive for us. There has never been a time where the Church was perfect. Instead, Church membership is made up of fallible humanity which in turn undermined the Church’s witnessing. If anything, the brokenness of mankind should be an incentive to pray most especially for the leaders of the institutional Church. The Apostles did not simply select seven deacons but they gathered first to pray before confirming their choices. An action-oriented culture tends to act first and only then pray to sanctify their actions. Prayers should always precede our actions.

Secondly, the absence of the Institution Narrative connects the Eucharist to service. The Eucharist is central to the life of the Church, not just as food for the journey. It nourishes and deepens the spirit of service. Almost instinctively, our focus is directed to the orphans, the widows and the poor. In other words, service is associated with the notion of social justice. But, Christian service should be more “catholic” than merely focussing on the tenets of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The present environment that preaches D.E.I. makes it next to impossible to speak of anything in a definite manner. The reason is because definition will require distinct demarcation. In a world that is afraid of being excluded, to designate Jesus as THE way would run counter to the current sentiments.

The prevailing canon is that there are as many ways as there are people in the world. Each path requires respect if we were not to incur the condemnation of “bigotry”. In a way, the fear of bigotry has censored our missionary outreach. Our silence contradicts our belief. As Saviour, He is either the Way or He is not. We may try to accommodate as many people as we can but ultimately we will need to draw the line.

Thus, apart from caring for the poor and making sure that the environment is sustainable, service is also towards the Truth. In this sense, Sacred Scripture is never afraid to draw the line. Today, for fear of media backlash and cancellation, we are feeble in drawing our moral boundaries. How can the moral line be drawn to respect every private perversion except those that include children? The service of the truth requires that we be not selective in drawing the line because it is a mistaken notion that children are the last line of defence. The last line of defence is actually the family. Without responsible parenting, perverts will always look for loopholes to exploit, weakness in the boundaries that protect children.

Jesus asked the Disciples not to be afraid as He prepared them for the time when He will no longer be with them physically. He promised the Advocate to guarantee that His Church will always have His Spirit even if the missionary landscape is tough.

The love and service we can offer to this world is one of deep hope—a hope that is founded on Christ’s promise and presence. There seems to be a hopelessness that we need to combat. The fear brought about by the pandemic, coupled with the extreme isolation that was necessary may have also driven the young into a selfishness which is now exhibiting itself. For example, the medical condition of dysphoria could be symptomatic of the hopelessness that the young are feeling about the dystopian future. Every weather variation is packaged as part of climate change and while we do need to take responsibility, this kind of scaremongering can only demoralise a hopeless generation.

How can we offer the hope that is based on Jesus Christ? As JPII told the world, “Be not afraid”, he was not advocating a kind of “stoicism”. Rather, he was encouraging

Catholics not to be afraid because we are in a century of new evangelisation. This means we need to believe in Jesus first our lives. Our lives must show the world that Jesus is The Way, The Truth and The Life. The “new” in the new evangelisation just means that more than proclaiming Jesus in words, we live Jesus in deeds to the core of our being.

It is so much easier to shout slogans and to put out captions. Look at “Laudato si” initiatives. Much energy is spent on talking about it but when it comes to making decisions in favour of environmental justice, we are slow. Many of our Church events still feature single-use plastic. We are good at speaking about climate change but inauthentic in our actions.

There will never be a convenient time to believe, never a perfect moment to preach. The challenge indeed is to proclaim the same Gospel that was preached by Jesus Christ. Every Catholic who lives this Gospel personally becomes an open bible to others. The Church exists precisely to proclaim that Jesus is The Way, The Truth and The Life. Even when her mouth is taped up, still she must continue to evangelise. The message is only credible through our actions.

Finally, with regard to Jesus’ response to His Apostles on being the Way, the Truth and the Life, “Western” thinking struggles with the idea of “definition” because to define suggests that there might be absolutes we need to accept. For example, a US Suprême Court Justice, at her Senate Confirmation Hearing, was unable to define what a woman was. Definition comes from drawing lines. Because we are afraid to demarcate, we continue to lament that the world is imperfect and the result is a withdrawal into selfishness. Without the certainty of defining, we necessarily resort to self-definition, making the “self” an absolute. The Coronation of King Charles III is timely because it reveals the consequence of our “isolating selfishness”. It is incredibly alien in a cosmos where the self is deified to have someone who is held above everyone else. In a way, the Coronation becomes an antidote to “non-defining, yet self-defining” selfishness that seemed to have enveloped the West. We cannot define anything except that we acknowledge the self to be the only definition. During the Coronation, we see that for those who bear arms, there exists someone other than the soldier and his self-interest who demands his allegiance, his loyalty and his service. In a manner of speaking, the soldier would even die for that Commander in Chief rather than choose to preserve his own life. The Coronation helps to make sense of the absolute and defining statement that Jesus IS The Way, The Truth and The Life. It is impossible to be a holy people and a consecrated nation if there were no one out there whose Lordship lays claim over us. Do not be afraid. With Jesus as the Lord and Saviour, we shall be persuasive witnesses of His Way, humble servants of His Truth and gentle lovers of His Life.

Vocation Sunday Year A 2023

Divine Mercy is definitely more than just a private revelation. Last week, the Road to Emmaus showed us that the Eucharist, the life-line of the Lord to His Church is actually the most radical expression of Divine Mercy. This Sunday, we shall look at a key component of Christ’s extending His life-line to the Church and that person is called “alter Christus”.

The context is in today’s chosen Gospel passage. It is located between the two accounts of miracles that were proclaimed and heard during Lent. He healed the man born blind on the 4th Sunday of Lent and on the 5th, He raised Lazarus from the dead. The argument against curing the blind man on a Sabbath occasioned for Jesus a catechesis on the relationship between the Shepherd and the Sheep.

In teaching about what a herder should be like, the Lord modelled the shepherd on Himself. More than the ease of moving amongst sheep or that sheep are familiar with his voice, the heart of a shepherd is his willingness to lay down his life for them. There appears to be a thread that runs from the Sunday of Divine Mercy to the Breaking of Bread last weekend and to this Sunday, otherwise known as Good Shepherd Sunday. The link between the Road to Emmaus and the Good Shepherd grants us an opportunity to speak of vocation, notably, the priestly vocation.

The Gospel invites us to reflect on Jesus as the Good Shepherd. For some parishes, it is an occasion for sharing the vocation story of a priest. Sadly, last Monday we buried an emeritus Bishop. So, rather than giving a personal testimony, perhaps it might be more profitable to speak on the situation of the priestly vocation.

The priesthood is suffering a decline in number. If an active priest were to suffer an untimely demise, then the diocese would be gripped by a frenzy of adjustment to the new status quo. At it is, the diocese does not have “unemployed” priests. Our exorcist is already in his 80s. Many amongst the clergy are wearing one hat too many. Why is the number of vocation not increasing?

The dismal statistics may just expose our poor understanding of the nature of clerical vocation, the purpose of the Church and how the Lord intends to save. A common strategy in the last few decades has been to promote the vocation of a priest along the line of a professional career. It uses the matrix of productivity and it is ministry-centred rather than presenting vocation as a call to mirror Christ the High Priest. The ministry does not make the priest. Even a monkey can do the work of a priest. Instead we may have forgotten that it is the priest who sanctifies his ministry. As a result, vocation directors may have sacrificed the priestly vocation at the altar of productivity. A priest is a priest even if he does nothing. His main task is simply to be an “alter Christus”.

To speak of the priest as “another Christ” is not to idolise or put him on a pedestal but to state the truth that the “alter Christus” is a mirror of the Eucharist. If the Eucharist make the Church and the Church makes the Eucharist, then the core of the Church’s identity is the Eucharist. Holding on to the principle that every Sacrament is the work of Christ Himself done through the agency of the Church, then at the heart of this principle is the priest who stands in for the person of Christ.

According to the passage in John’s gospel which corresponds to the Institution Narratives found in the Synoptics, Jesus’ conversation with the 5000-strong crowd He fed, highlights the centrality of the Eucharist for eternal life. “If you desire eternal life, eat my flesh and drink my blood”. Jesus was unambiguous in stating this requirement and this was proven by the fact that He did not stop the crowd from walking away after they had heard Him.

The Church uses the theological term “Transubstantiation” to express how Christ is able to feed us His Flesh and Blood. Through the person of the priest, Christ effects the change of the whole substance of bread into His Body and the whole substance of wine into the His Blood so that we may eat and drink of the food of eternal life.

The whole edifice of our Catholic theology is like a house of cards. Every component of our faith is connected one to the other. If we remove one facet, then the house of cards will tumble. While the decline in vocation possibly conveys a lack of understanding of the nature of the Catholic priesthood, what is more likely is that it demonstrates an unquestioned disbelief in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. In other words, all claim to believe in the necessity of the Eucharist but our actions speak otherwise.

According to the same Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel, Christ intends to feed His Church with the Sacrament of Salvation: His Body and His Blood and the only way to do it is through the Catholic priesthood. It means that Christ continues to call but two facts characterise our lack of response. Young men no longer hear God’s call or people no longer believe that the Sacrament of the Eucharist is sine qua non, that is, the Eucharist is not essential for eternal life.

The second could sadly be the case. If we do not really need the Eucharist for salvation, then we do not really need the priesthood in the Church. And if we remove the Catholic priesthood, is the resultant entity the same Church founded and instituted by Jesus Christ? Can the Lord recognise His Church without the priesthood. If no, the dire situation of vocational response leaves much to be desired. Since the number of priestly vocation continues to decline, perhaps it is a clear indication that we do not really need the Eucharist as much as we proclaim we do.

We should pray for young men to step courageously into the sandals of the Shepherd. Either we pray and beg the Lord to awaken new vocations or if not, we will be driven by whatever faddish winds that blow that try to reshape the priesthood according to the spirit of the times. Either the priesthood is necessary for providing the Eucharist or if not, then we will have to look for a solution to this purported or supposed Eucharistic necessity for salvation.

Finally, the death of a cleric is always a moment of reckoning for any Eucharistic community. The fact remains that many priests and bishops fall short of “Whom” they have been called to be. Yet, this shortcoming cannot mask the truth that the priesthood is a reminder of Jesus Christ’s eternal love for His sheep, His Church and a powerful sign that He is still saving the world, through His Church, through the priesthood and through the Eucharist.

3rd Sunday of Easter Year A 2023

Last week, we marked the Sunday of Divine Mercy. The idea of God being merciful can be an expression of sacramental presence. In a sense, the Lord is always with us even if we do not recognise Him. The Season of Easter even though it points to the glory of the Lord’s Resurrection can also be understood from the perspective of sacramental theology. Jesus is present to us and in the Sacraments, most especially the Sacrament of the Eucharist, He is present in a manner that has no comparison. If salvation history is another expression for God-with-us, then the Eucharist is Emmanuel par excellence.

The post-Resurrection panorama is essentially a vivid display of the apostolic kerygma. One appearance after another and in the 1st Reading, we hear the repeated proclamation of St Peter that Christ is truly risen. It is not that He is merely risen but that He is also present. And through the experience of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus we appreciate how biblically established the Sacrament of the Eucharist is. This Sacrament of Sacraments is grounded in the aftermath experience of the Risen Christ by the apostolic community.

Why is the Road to Emmaus important for us?

There has never been a moment that Jesus is not with His Church. We are never alone. What is more likely is we often fail to recognise Him because we can be overwhelmed by despair and hopelessness that not even the brilliance of God is bright enough to burn off the scales blinding our eyes. In the case of these two disciples, their departure indicated that they had abandoned Jerusalem in despair. Thus, Jesus accompanying these dejected disciples, who could not recognise Him, is critical to a deeper insight and appreciation of the meaning of Eucharistic presence.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is embedded in the story of the Road to Emmaus. The structure of the Eucharist we celebrate today was already captured nearly two thousand years ago. No one can say that the Catholic Mass is “hocus pocus” without being scripturally insulting. In fact, the awesome confession “Did not our hearts burned within us as He spoke to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?” encapsulates the Liturgy of Word. And “While He was with them at table, He took the bread and said the blessing, then He broke it and handed it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognised Him” embodies the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Sadly, we breathe the rarefied air where the mind is prized over the body. Basically, “meaning” is paramount and it is determined by understanding. If a thing were “incomprehensible”, then it is as good as meaningless. Also, meaning is measured by palpable feelings and emotions. For example, you may have come across marriages falling apart because there are no feelings left. Or if not, gone are the days when children will sit respectfully in the company of a group of adults engaged in a conversation they have no understanding of. Instead, they have to be “entertained” endlessly with their handheld devices. Just like what happens at Mass these days. A possible explanation for this phenomenon is because we have restricted “meaning” to the realm of comprehensibility or understanding. In other words, what is real resides in the head.

In this context, the manner in which the Eucharist is celebrated, is highly stylised. It requires formulaic recitations and performative rituals because it deals with mystery, something beyond the senses. When hyper-consciousness values the mind more than the body, repetitive formularies and rituals can come across as mindless, incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. A generation terrified by the loss of meaning will lament: Attending Mass is meaningless.

But meaning is not merely personal as it is also interpersonal. Perhaps the loss of meaning is an unintended consequence of restricting meaning to just the component of understanding. Meaning seems to revolve around what my head can grapple with and that can make the Mass a bit less engaging. If the Mass is both the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, then assisting at Mass, apart from worshipping and praising God, is to feed both the head and also the body. Liturgy directs our attention towards a meaning far greater than what the individual mind can grasp. The liturgy engages both the head and the body.

The ritualised performative actions within the Eucharist can rescue us from a selfishness imposed by the primacy of consciousness. Through the recognition of Jesus, we are led to others. The Eucharist is not just food that sustains but it also shifts our focus from the self to others as exemplified in the two disciples running back to inform Peter and the college of apostles. The communitarian spirituality of the Eucharist leads us to others. Benedict XVI said that “nourishing ourselves with Christ is the way to avoid becoming extraneous or indifferent to the fate of the brothers”. A truly Eucharistic spirituality is the antidote to the individualism and selfishness that characterise life as we know it now. Through the Eucharist, we rediscover the centrality of relationships.

Now that we enter a post-pandemic recovery period, the Eucharist for the Church is even more important on account of the effects that prolonged isolation had on society. The surge in revenge travel is a telling hint that travel is not just for personal enjoyment but it could express the hunger for connexion. The irony is that the same hunger is not expressed through Church attendance. Within the Eucharistic community, there seems to be a gap between what we need and how we express that need.

In the 4th century, 49 martyrs stood against an Imperial edict that prohibited the celebration of the Eucharist. At the trial when interrogated, Emeritus the lector said, “Sine dominico non possumus” meaning “without Sunday we are not”. Another translation which says, “We cannot live without Sunday” shows that the Eucharist is a basic component of who we are as Christians and Catholics. In these days of heightened fear, all the more the Eucharist is the necessary antidote to a “self-ishness” brought about by an enforced isolation. The ease of delivery services, or WFH, all safety conveniences no doubt, have imprisoned some of us behind the walls of “me and my needs”. The Eucharist is where we encounter the Risen Christ to find strength to break the walls of a selfish existence so that we can reconnect with both God and with one another.

Divine Mercy Sunday 2023 Year A

The Gospel is apt for today because in the post-Resurrection account, St John narrated that “8 days later”, the Risen Lord appeared to Thomas. And, ever since 2001, the 2nd Sunday of Easter has been designated as Divine Mercy.

What constitutes God’s mercy and if we were to benefit from it, we should have a deeper appreciation of what mercy truly is.

Historically, this devotion stemmed from a private revelation to a Polish religious named Faustina Kowołska. In our day and age, where scientific progress appeared to have purged out what science considered to be superstitious beliefs and practices, adopting this private piety feels like a step backwards. Voices have raise concerns that the proclamation of Mercy Sunday capitulates to the pietism which the modern Church has been trying to shake off since Vatican II. Moreover, from the perspective of Christian unity, taking on an extra-scriptural devotion sounds like a regressive ecumenical mistake.

Surprisingly, this mindless recitation has sound theological and scriptural foundation. There is a correlation between Revelation in Sacred Scripture and popular piety. The latter is faith taking roots in the religious practices of believers. Two examples are the liturgical celebrations of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the procession of Corpus Christi. Both came via private revelations. Then, there is also the Hail Mary of the Rosary which we have accepted for the longest time and also a prayer based on Sacred Scripture.

The Catechism asserts that belief in divine mercy is central to our faith because "The Gospel is the revelation in Jesus Christ of God's mercy to sinners" (CCC#1849). This makes the Gospel a profound narrative of God’s divine mercy. Pope Benedict would say that Divine Mercy is not merely a devotion but it is truly an integral part of Christian faith and prayer. Mercy is at the heart of the Gospel message.

The central message proclaimed by St Faustina is the overwhelming love of Jesus for sinners. It is true that God’s complete Revelation took place in Jesus Christ 2000 years ago. But today the most glaring lapse in the prophetic message of the Divine Mercy is the wholesale ignorance of sin. We have simply forgotten sin is the reason for God’s mercy. St. Francis de Sales explained that “even if God had not created man, He would still be perfect charity, but in reality He would not be merciful, for mercy can only be exercised over misery. Even though no one deserves mercy, it is available to all”.

This discourse about sins sounds rather anti-climactic since today falls within the Octave of Easter whereas the penitential spirit has been expressed in the previous season of Lent. The truth is, we cannot escape the reality that we are sinners and for that reason God reaches out to us with His mercy. He wants to save us and redemption is premised on the acceptance that we are sinners.

Thus, Divine Mercy has for its aim the salvation of souls. Even the Gospel makes clear that the appearance of Jesus on the 8th day is linked to the Sacrament of Confession. The topic of sin is not as out of place as it sounds for right in the heart of the Resurrection, we have a place for reconciliation. Conversion of sinners is a kind of healing from the effects of sins. Mercy is therefore grace for sinners to turn back to God.

This makes the acknowledgement of sin important because it is the first step to justice. Sadly though, a self-absorbed, convenience-accustomed and therapy-dependent society can only crave for mercy. Added with the harsh realities of life, the lack is sorely felt as some have expressed disappointment at a deity that comes across as cold and distant. In other words, we do not fully grasp the notion of mercy as much as we hunger for what we think mercy should be ours by right.

It follows logically that this devotion will run the risk of irrelevance due to the loss of faith in God. In the absence of God, mercy will lose its mooring to justice. Without justice, mercy will merely be indulgence. This would be the case if we were entitled. It is as if life owes us niceties. This unquestioned premise in an entitled attitude is natural because we expect a loving God to bend over backwards to accede to our demands. Since He is a loving God, His duty is to treat us well and if we were suffering, all the more that “justice” would require a deity who makes life easy for us. He should allow us the freedom to be who we want, what we want and how we want.

But that is not the just mercy of God even though Our Lady reminded us in the Magnificat that “His mercy is from age to age”. Instead, every generation needs to respond to His salvific mercy by not just accepting it but also by fighting against the evils of our time. The excessive sense of the self, the individualism we foster will not lead to peace but our destruction. In place of focusing on what we are entitled to, perhaps attention should be paid to cooperating with God’s grace so that His mercy might be extended to our generation.

God’s mercy grants us time for conversion and to exercise His mercy towards others. “For I was hungry and you gave me food”. Divine Mercy is not just to receive God’s benevolence and kindness but it is also an invitation to each one of us to imitate God’s mercy through our exercise of both the spiritual and corporal acts of mercy.

In other words, there is nothing new in this devotion. Except that we ought to deepen our experience of conversion into God’s great love for us and also to extend that mercy we have received towards others. God’s mercy is not “soft”, instead it is rather demanding. This is evidently so in this culture of death where it is assumed that everyone gets to heaven, no matter what. St John Paul in a 1997 visit to the Divine Mercy Shrine repeated his message in the encyclical “Dives in misericordia” that “At no time and in no historical period…can the Church forget the prayer that is a cry for the mercy of God amid the many forms of evil which weigh upon humanity and threaten it . . . The more the human conscience succumbs to secularisation, loses its sense of the very meaning of the word 'mercy', moves away from God and distances itself from the mystery of mercy, the more the Church has the right and the duty to appeal to the God of mercy ‘with loud cries’” (DM,15).

Mercy is God’s last word with mankind. He always wants to save. But salvation can only be effected if we say yes to Him. The Octave of Easter is a logical continuation of the glorious Resurrection of Christ. He has redeemed us and continues to invite us each to taste His merciful love by submitting ourselves to the conversion necessary for the full flowering of His salvation.

Easter Vigil/Easter Year A 2023

Lent is over and Easter is here. Alleluia, Jesus Christ is Risen. He has passed over from death to life. Last night and today we celebrate, marvel at and savour the great Passover of the Resurrection. St John Chrysostom’s description truly captures the jubilant mood of this solemnity. Hades or Pluto, otherwise the Greek or Roman god of the dead, in our case Satan is frustrated because it seized a body only to encounter heaven and in capturing the visible it is overcome by the invisible. So, Death where is your sting?

Jesus Christ is risen; the angels rejoice and life is freed from the clutches of eternal death.

The different Gospel accounts after Good Friday provide two clear indications that the Resurrection has taken place. Firstly, the tomb is empty. Secondly, Jesus appeared to certain people. Logically, one can argue that an empty tomb merely proved that something did happen like stealing a body and hiding it but what we believe to be the Resurrection has been corroborated by the records of Jesus appearing to some people.

What can the empty tomb and the appearances teach us?

The tomb is a symbol of our human limitations. When we die, we are entombed and there in the enclosure, we suffer the ravages of decay (cremation is just sped-up decomposition) and the oblivion of time. Whereas the empty tomb is a token of our human possibilities. When Selena Gomez sang in 2014 that “the heart wants what it wants”, she may have echoed Blaise Pascal’s “the heart has its reason which reason knows nothing of”. All these expressions about the heart’s own reason reveal that the human heart has been created for the infinite. As such, we always long to go beyond the limits that are imposed by this earthly life.

In other words, an empty tomb signals the fulfilment of the potential that cannot be accomplished in this life. The possibilities that are opened up by the Resurrection are answers to the narrow ideologies of materialism and scientism which seemed to have gripped our consciousness.

The Resurrection is a vision of life that reconciles so many of the imperfections imposed by earthly limitations. The existential angst of our generation is perhaps fuelled by a fear that death would mark the end of all possibilities. Think of an important relationship that needs to be repaired. If there were no Resurrection, one would be hard-pressed to repair what was broken for fear that once dead, there would be no chance of reconciliation. But through the Resurrection, when freed from the yoke of our human constraints, we will have the opportunity to make up for what could not be attained here on earth.

Imagine the sense of freedom and surrender knowing that failure is not the final chapter because the Lord of Life-after-this-life can bring about the needed closure that we have always desired. Reflect on the mistakes we have made in life. For those who have married the wrong person or did not have the courage to propose and missed the boat. Maybe, recall the injustice you suffered and it is accompanied by a restlessness that flows from a despondency that you have been victimised by your superior or employer or even country. So many of us struggle with the disillusionment of being betrayed by a country because we happen to have the wrong skin colour. People do not just migrate for money’s sake. Instead, it is not easy to live with this persistent hurt that you are disadvantaged simply because of your race.

Thus, the Resurrection provides a viable alternative to those otherwise weighed down and crushed by life. For example, a person with a congenital condition that renders life meaningless. Autism is a good illustration. What value does an autistic child have judging by the ability to produce? This corrective mechanism is not a pie in the sky, a kind of consuelo de bobo, or a pacifier. The Resurrection gives hope because it is not hemmed in by what we have no control over—life. In the earlier mentioned case of the unresolved hostility in relationship, the Resurrection provides the possibility that resolution can take place even after death. It is true that death puts an end to the time the individual has been granted for embracing God’s grace or rejecting it. However, with the Resurrection, there is a chance that our prayers can assist the soul along the path of reconciliation and therefore salvation.

The Resurrection guarantees that those who are spiritually weak are not entirely lost. It offers us the great prospect of rising with the Lord even if our lives here are incomplete and unfulfilled. Those denied justice in this life will reap the justice that is rightfully theirs in the next life. The Resurrection allows us to trust that God will give us what we have missed here on earth. Perhaps this is the kind of “democracy”, the type of fairness that we are unaccustomed to because our vision is heavily infused with a materialism or laden with a scientism that is incapable of peering beyond the veil of death.

The Lord appearing to certain people is an invitation to become a people of the Resurrection. This brings us to the heart of the Easter Solemnity, baptism. We have fewer than 10 baptisms for both Mandarin and English speakers. This raises the question if we truly are a Resurrection people. If we were, then we may not be as convincing as we should be. While quality is important but the pathetic number may just reveal our poverty of faith in the Resurrection. The entire premise of our belief is based on the Resurrection. If Christ did not rise from the dead, then everything we do would be a sham. Since we proclaim that He rose from the dead, then our lives must exude this Resurrection faith.

This faith proclaims that nothing, not even our sins, can ever separate us from God’s love. In fact, the price of that love was paid with the life of Christ, His Son. He died so that we may have the chance to rise to eternity. A Resurrection people returns His love by breaking forth from the prison of sins.

Secondly, daring to live and love despite the unfairness of this world is to trust that God will have the final word, and not death. No matter how we dress this earth up as heaven, it is not and it is never going to be. We trust and will not be cowed by death because the Resurrection is hope and encouragement in the valley of tears, sorrows and pains. God will always be victorious no matter what.

Finally, faith in the Risen Lord guarantees our own Resurrection. We will rise with Him. Those who believe will not be lost because He will not allow it. The caveat is that we must continue to eat the Bread of Life in preparation for the Resurrection. Jesus, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, continues to nourish us with His Sacraments, most especially in the Eucharist which makes Holy Communion not just a Viaticum. It is unquestionably the food of and strength for the Resurrection. In conclusion, ever since that Sunday, the Risen Christ has been present to us and through a vigorous sacramental life, He invites us to join Him in the Resurrection. Alleluia.

Good Friday Year A 2023

We have a crowd bigger than usual. Good Friday seems to draw in the crowd. How to explains this larger-than-usual gathering? Is it because that time of the year has arrived for people to tick off their annual quota of “churchy” activities? Or is it because Jesus died on Good Friday and there is something about this Man nailed to the Cross?

Firstly, you might be at the wrong event, that is, if you were sinless. But if you accept that your state is wretched, that you are coloured by sin through and through, then you are at home here. This larger-than-usual gathering may just express your deep-seated and intuitive need for the Saviour who alone can restore you to God’s justice by taking your sins upon Himself.

Everyone, and not the generic we, needs to be saved. In other words, every soul hungers for the Saviour. In that way, some of us might be here even if we do not really know why, of all days, we are attracted to Good Friday. We are present because the Lord alone answers our longing to be redeemed. By submitting Himself to death for us, He has reconciled us with and justified us before God.

Did Jesus really have to die in order to achieve redemption? This question is important.

Firstly, the focus of Christ’s salvific mission is to heal our brokenness and to mend the relationship with God that was destroyed by sin. Man on his own can never accomplish the restoration. We cannot heal ourselves despite the present assumption that through self-help we can liberate ourselves. For example, think of how medically, man has been searching for the panacea of extending life or cell-life through ridding himself of free radicals. The general experience is that even those who succeed in staving off death will discover that their attempts can only go so far. We will die. Since we cannot save ourselves from death, then the only possibility for true eternity, that is, for the restoration of our friendship with God, is through our Saviour.

In the reparation of our relationship with God, was the death of Christ necessary and was it required that He died excruciatingly? Over the centuries, we have had different theories that tried to explain the gruesomeness of Jesus’ death. Did He need to be battered and bruised, beaten and brutalised in order to save us? Could He not have easily say the word so that we could be healed?

As you may realise, this age of convenience struggles with the notion of the Cross. We pop pills to get rid of pain. Suffering is to be avoided at all costs. An algophobic generation fears pain and this fear of suffering makes Good Friday’s bloody drama feel utterly senseless. The reaction to Mel Gibson’s supposed gratuitous gory in The Passion of the Christ is indicative of our aversion towards pain and suffering. Without a doubt, if pain is to be avoided, then the Cross cannot be anything but a barbaric and brutal symbol of death.

The insistence that suffering should be avoided exposes a hole in our belief. The bloody death of Jesus is incomprehensible for a culture where God is absent. We find suffering incompatible with God and we have come to view death as meaningless. Worse still, when there is no God, the suffering of Christ would be irrelevant.

But death and suffering are not punishments from God as they are the consequences of our sins. A contemporary illustration can help us understand. Think of the present rush toward the re-gendering of children. Children as young as 3 or 4 are being reassigned the gender opposite to their birth either surgically or medically. There are children on whom decisions had been made even before they have had the chance to outgrow their temporary dysphoria. In short, some will have to suffer later in life from decision made in haste. We are creatures of time or perhaps more accurately, we are trapped by time but the incessant need for instant gratification or solution can have devastating consequences. The future suffering of a transitioned individual is not God’s punishment as it is a consequence of our hasty and possibly sinful decision. That is just one example. Some calamities like floods in our country are not natural occurrences but the results of man’s own selfishness. In other words, much of the suffering we endure comes from the many sins of mankind.

From the perspective of self-inflicted suffering, the Cross is where the Saviour took upon Himself the punishment we have incurred due to our sins. The Cross is not God’s punishment. Instead it is Christ’s chosen instrument of salvation. Today Salvation hangs on the Cross bearing the blows of our sins and sorrows so that we might be restored to life eternal. On the Cross, the Saviour bids us to contemplate and be confounded by how our sins, my sins, so many of them, nailed Him to the Cross. If we are sinless, then the Cross would be meaningless. But take note that without the Cross, there would be no Christian. Far from it being the symbol of death, the Cross is the most powerful display of God’s immense love for man, for us, for you and for me.

Later as you walk up to venerate the Cross, gaze at Him bloodied and bruised, and know that it is impossible to love Him without the Cross. Under the standard of the Cross, a sinner is always at home because there, from the wounded side of the dying Saviour, flows the waters of forgiveness and the blood of everlasting life. Only the Cross can secure each sinner’s safe passage through the valley of death. The Cross is not the climb to Calvary but the ascent to the crown of the Resurrection.

Come, let us love Him. Let us worship Him. Let follow Him.

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord Year A 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



________________

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

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

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