Easter Vigil 2020

The holiest of all nights. We have the full array of readings to carry us through the history of salvation beginning with creation and the fall up to the pivotal kerygma of Holy Mother Church which is the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. Every bit of scripture is read in the light of this central proclamation. He died in accordance with the Scriptures and likewise did He rise. That He is the answer to the questions posed by the Old Testament is confirmed by the miracles He performed and the greatest of His miracles is the Resurrection.

So, what are we to make of this night? It appears to be anti-climactic as we break with tradition—a kind of let down as we are struck by a disorienting emptiness that is eerily devoid of a human congregation.

Or is it?

On the one hand, could church attendance be going the way of the entertainment industry, notably of movies and music? One will be hard-pressed to find the local temple of audio-visual enjoyment crammed with people jostling to purchase their music CD or movie video. Those who know Speedy Videos know how pathetically they have been reduced to hawking toys, etc. to make up sales numbers. Who needs a physical location these days when music and videos can be streamed directly into one’s device. Digital natives have come to expect their content—now with the closure of churches, possibly faith content also—to be delivered online to them, usually, at no cost and no sacrifice. But this is a rather cynical view of progress.

On the other hand, the emptiness could invite us to focus on an easy to miss meaning of Easter. An old philosophical or scientific musing may be helpful here. “If a tree were to fall on an island where there are no human beings there, would there be a sound”? The answer is usually derived subjectively in the sense that sound requires a listener to perceive and without anyone, there is no sound. However, what of the objectivity of whatever is produced when the tree fell, independent of a hearer? The answer can be framed by another question that Einstein reputedly asked a contemporary physicist: “Does the moon exist if nobody is looking at it?”. 

If one were to be cynical, the empty churches can be interpreted as testaments of failure. What is this celebration for since there is nobody here? Does it not expose the futility of what we do?

Or better, we can assume a more focused and hopeful perspective. The empty churches give us enough space and distance to concentrate, not on ourselves but on what Christ the Lord has accomplished for us. 

Some of these adjectives might describe us: indulgent, entitled and self-focused. These descriptions are to be expected since many of us inhabit a world in which just about everything we “consume” (not just food or drink) can be personalised and customised. Just one’s typical “Grab food” order is a good example. There are options which allow for a highly personalised customisation. In fact, even for our spiritual consumption, one can watch a live-streamed Mass 15,000 km away because the “content” suits my tastes or preferences. Hence, it is not surprising that our horizon is rather limitedly self-defined making us a generation that asks this pivotal question: “What is in it for me?”. Such a self-absorbed attitude can seep into our worship of God with a result that faith and its practices become less essential of who we are except that they are expressions of our preferences and can be reduced to a matter of convenience. 

The empty space or rather the absence of a congregation may give us pause to pay closer attention to the single act of Christ’s self-sacrifice in the astounding task of saving mankind. As the Exultet sings: He paid the price of Adam’s sin. No one can do it except Him. Therefore, the Vigil Mass is celebrated because it is the foundation of our faith in Christ who alone bears the burden of salvation and also it is the articulation of our gratitude to Him who by His obedience has ransomed back eternal life for all of us. The emptiness does not indicate a meaningless celebration. Present or absent of a congregation, this vigil is a celebration of the victory of THIS one Man over Satan. Without or without people, victory belongs to Christ and eternal life returned to us.

The MCO is set to continue and our churches will remain empty for the immediate future. Will this absence be as an “out of sight, out of mind” experience? Or hopefully, knowing the faith of our people, the longer the separation, we pray that it be an “absence that will only make the heart grow fonder”. Yes, nobody is here. But it is not a defeat because by the Saviour’s death and resurrection, salvation has been won for everyone. Rejoice. Alleluia.

Good Friday 2020

Today we celebrate the Liturgy or the Mass of the Presanctified. The word “Mass” is rather misleading because it is not a Mass. But, it is “Presanctified” because Holy Communion that was consecrated yesterday is today given out under the species of bread alone. As we honour the Passion and Death of Jesus, the Church abstains from offering the Mass. We are here to celebrate the Lord’s Passion through the long re-enactment of the Gospel, the Veneration of the Cross and ending with the reception of Holy Communion.

The phones would usually be ringing off the hooks during the Triduum enquiring about the times of the Masses. Today is no different. What time is Mass? But there is no Mass. Why? In sacramental theology, St Thomas Aquinas explains, “the ‘figure or sign’ disappears at the showing of the reality”. The Mass is the figure or sign or representation of the Passion. The familiar definition we are accustomed to hearing which states that a sacrament (in this case, the Mass) is an outward sign of inward reality (Sacrifice on Calvary) is excellent in helping us understand why on this day alone, no Mass is celebrated. According to Pope St Leo the Great, “What was made manifest in our Redeemer has passed over into His mysteries”. (Quod Redemptoris nostri conspicuum fuit in sacramenta transivit). Thus, on this day when we remember the very event of Christ’s Passion and Death on the Cross, the sign, the figure, the representation or the mystery is not needed. He died once and so we commemorate it once a year.

However, today we worship in an empty Church. It is definitely a weird feeling because Good Friday draws so many people especially when the service is held at 3 pm. And usually rain falls at that hour. The crowd can be denser than Easter Sunday sometimes. This extra-large crowd is a good indication that we have an affinity with death which the service is nothing but a memento mori.

The topic of death is never more appropriate than on Good Friday. In these pandemic days, our focus is on the preservation of life. However, hard as it may be to hear, saving lives is nothing more than delaying death. Good Friday reminds us that death is inevitable. We are born to die and Covid 19 has just uncovered and in a way magnified our fears of dying.

The Church has a role to play in preparing people for death. Saving lives and saving souls are two sides of a coin and both are not mutually exclusive as far the Church is concerned.

If we came to church so that we can feel good about ourselves, then we have missed the point of “churching”, that is, coming to church. People come so that they can hear and also to know WHY they are miserable. We are miserable because we are far from God. Distance from God can be everlasting death meaning that if we canonise the distance or we make the distance permanent, then, death seals that space or that abyss between us and God. However, we are all created for everlasting life. Like a homing pigeon that knows how to fly home, no one chooses everlasting death wittingly. Nobody wants to die forever. Even the most horrific of tyrants do not want that. Watch how people topple the statues of their previous dictators—Saddam Hussein is of recent memory. After his death people started destroying his statues. What are those statues but totemic poles that we all desire to live forever even after our death? Unless we have a death wish, in wanting NOTHING to do we God, we will have to face the death of a temporary kind. This separation between God and us is a temporary and not a permanent one. Catholics call it purgatory. Even so, this temporary separation creates anxiety and fear. Hence, we need the language of death or rather the tool to face death. Not the distractions of feeling good about ourselves. Coming to church is to help us face death with dignity and courage.

Just like tombstones. They do not mark the death as to remind the living that dying or death is the doorway that we must pass through. One of the more famous memento mori states this: “Where you are, I was once. Where I am, you will be”. This is not fatalistic in the sense that we focus on death. We must focus on living but that life we have must somehow be lived in the shadow of death. The shadow of death is not entirely negative as it is an invitation to look beyond the darkness of the shadow into eternity—the eternal glory that will be ours.

I know that we are not allowed to blame people and here I am not. In fact, we have come a long way from blaming the Jews. However, consider that the churches are shuttered, who stands to benefit most for this? The silence of the churches is the sound of Satan braying “Crucify Him, crucify Him” and that silence is loud and aided by people who are ignorant of Satan’s lies and machinations in leading people away from God. Good Friday highlights the cosmic battle between good and evil, between the Lord and the evil forces against Him. Whilst on earth, the ministry of healing and exorcisms clearly showed Jesus delivering people from the actual dominion of demonic forces. Right now, for Christians everywhere, Good Friday is not simply today. Ever since the closure of the churches, the faithful have been denied the Eucharist, it has been Good Friday for the longest time ever. It feels as if Satan has won. The longer the churches are shut, the happier Satan is.

So, we pray today to the Lord of life and death to quickly bring an end to this pandemic so that those who hunger for eternal life may soon have the possibility to consume again the Bread of Life, the Bread of Eternal Life. We need Him because we still have Satan and his evil spirits to overcome and also our Calvary to ascend before we can claim eternity. Christ in walking to Calvary lends us the courage and He tells us not to fear. He has conquered death and Satan’s eternal hold over us. We will have our Resurrection but only if we hold onto Him.

Maundy Thursday 2020

Today is a sort of feast day for Leonardo da Vinci’s famous depiction of the Last Supper. The context for this masterpiece is hinged on the mandate that Christ gave His apostles as they celebrated the ancient Jewish feast of the Passover.
 

During the Passover, a sacrificial lamb is offered and when Israel was to be delivered from the bondage in Egypt, the people were told to smear the blood of the sacrificed lamb on the lintel and doorposts. That way, the scourge of the angel of death will pass over them. Tonight, the blood of Jesus will replace the blood of the sacrificial lamb—His blood is poured out not just for a few but for the many. Jesus is the new Moses. Instead of sending manna from heaven, Jesus is the true Manna—He is the bread that will satisfy our deepest hunger.

The 5^th Luminous Mystery reminds us that Maundy Thursday is dedicated to the Institution of the Eucharist. Interestingly, whilst the Gospel chosen this evening is set within the Last Supper, we hear nothing of the Institution Narrative. In its place, Jesus washes the feet of His disciples and He gives them the commandment to love as He has loved them.

One of the points of convergence between the Passover and the Last Supper is the cloak of darkness. Both the house of the Jewish people on the night of the Passover and the Cenacle during the Last Supper provided shelter—albeit temporary shelters. They were not meant to remain there. The Jews escaped from Egypt whereas right after the Supper, Jesus left the security of the Cenacle and ventured into the darkness of the night. There He faced the forces of evil. This darkness is instructive for us today. Jesus was surely conscious of the betrayal that was set in place by Judas and yet He was not daunted. In the Garden and in the face of His destruction, Jesus was armed with no weapon except love. The love for His Father and the love for His disciples.

This love put on the apron, stooped low and washed the feet of every one of His disciples, including Judas. Since there is no Institution Narrative in the Gospel today, this is the Eucharist at work. The same love of Jesus that washes the disciples’ feet then goes out to enlighten the darkness.

Where there is darkness, light is all the more needed. I am reminded of the type of fire that gives light and heat. One is the candle. It burns and it gives out light, but it is vulnerable to the winds. A candle’s flame needs to be shielded from the buffeting wind. The other is the charcoal. We need an external fire to light a charcoal but once it is lit, the wind does not put it out. In fact, it glows when the wind blows. Love can be like the flame of a candle; it wavers and is easily put off. Or, love can be the flame glowing from within the charcoal. The stronger the resistance, the redder it glows.

The fiery charcoal is a reminder of what Holy Thursday is about. Christ gave us a mandate through the Eucharist. We love and our love is made stronger when we are fed with His Body. This love is so strong that it must go out from the Church into the darkness of the world to shed the Light of Christ. It is meant to meet with resistance for with trials and tribulations, it grows even hotter. Sadly, many of us flicker like the flame of a candle.

Today is also called the birthday of the Priesthood. The is no Eucharist without the Priesthood and there is no Priesthood without the Eucharist. Yet, this relationship between the Eucharist and the Priesthood must be set within the context of the love and the light that is shed by Christ. We are reminded often that there is a sickness in the Church. It is called clericalism. It is often associated with a particular bent of some priests, meaning that it is linked to those who like bells and whistles. Those who wear the cassock or clerical garb. Those who are liturgically correct and those who are conscious that they are hierarchy etc.

Well, the emptiness of the Church just proved one thing about the priesthood. It is useless when it does not serve. These days of the pandemic, this fact is definitely staring so many priests in the face. We can play pretend with livestream Masses but still what is a priest if he is only celebrating Mass for himself and one helper?

The Eucharist makes the Church means that the Priesthood confects the Eucharist for the Church, that is, for the people—for the many. The Body of Christ which the Holy Eucharist is, is needed as strength for the Body of Christ, which is the Church. Service is the raison d’être of the Priesthood. It is essential that there be priests, but this requirement is in view of Christ’s service of His Body. Thus, it only makes sense for the priest to put on the apron, bend low and to wash the feet of those whom he has been tasked to serve. Without the people, the Priesthood is purely clericalism with or without bells and whistles, clerical cassock or garb etc. Focussing on the anything other than service is to miss the point of what the Priesthood is about.

Tonight, as we enter into the Holy Triduum, perhaps, it is an invitation for priests to truly embrace more fully and humbly the meaning of service. If the analogy of candle and the charcoal have more to teach us, apart from light and glowing fire, it is this: both candle and charcoal are useless unless they are burnt. It is only by burning away that one is useful. Thus, service is the only reason for a priest’s ordination. No greater love a man has than to lay down his life for his friends. Here, it is to lay down one’s life, à la Christ, for the Church.

The word “unprecedented” has been bandied around a lot these days in relation to the pandemic afflicting us. A little contextualisation might be useful here as it reveals how trivialising the word “unprecedented” can be. Covid-19 is contagious and can be deadly. But it is not Ebola. It is not the plague. It is not polio. It is not the Spanish flu. Let me state categorically that this is not a suicidal wish that it should be like the mentioned pandemics. But, in the context of the mandate that we have received from Christ on Holy Thursday, we must reflect on the current situation which the Church finds herself in.

In her history, the Church has experienced many a tyrannical government’s attempt to deny her mission in the work of Christ’s salvation. Perhaps what is “unprecedented” is the Church almost everywhere caving in to civil authority’s diktat that the churches be closed and as a corollary, the sacraments be denied. Instead of fulfilling her mandate from God Himself, the Church now defers to an authority which should itself also be subjected to God but is often not. What makes our decision so much more meaningless is that the MCO in place does not make proper sense. The precautions taken by so many of the essential service are a mockery to what it means to be “contactless”. Our collusion appears to send the message that the Church is incapable of taking precautions whereas some “essential services” are allowed to pay lip service to precautions. You will not get Covid-19 from the supermarkets or banks or post offices but definitely when you enter a church.[1]

Covid-19 has uncovered our priority. Physical well-being has become the only essential measure for life. Whereas the empty churches are testimonies of the uselessness of the priesthood because its objective rests on a service while essential to spiritual health is deemed superfluous to physical health. While it is true that the birthday of the Priesthood is the birthday of the Church, it is also true that the Church exists only because she is the instrument of God’s salvation. Without the Church, how can Christ save the world? If there is anything to learn on Maundy Thursday it is the necessity of the Priesthood and the Eucharist for the salvation of the world. The emptiness of the churches is for us to reflect what the Church is for. For now, the Church is useless and so is God.

Sounds depressing, I know but let me quote extensively from an unexpected source. Hulk Hogan who tweeted recently, ‘In three short months, just like He did with the plagues of Egypt, God has taken away everything we worship. God said, “You want to worship athletes, I will shut down the stadia. You want to worship musicians, I will shut down civic centres. You want to worship actors, I will shut down theatres. You want to worship money, I will shut down the economy and collapse the stock market. You do not want to go to church and worship Me, I will make it where you cannot go to church. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land”. Maybe we do not need a vaccine. Maybe we need to take this time of isolation from the distractions of the world and have a personal revival where we focus on the ONLY thing in the world that really matters: Jesus’.

As empty and depressing as the Triduum can be, we can enter into it with a spirit of penitence. We acknowledge that the Priesthood is useless without God’s people to serve. Our sin is great but greater is God’s love. We ask Him to take our sins away and to deliver us from the wrath of judgement so that we may be restored to His grace and mercy. We beg Him to heal us that we may once again partake of the Eucharist in a church full of His people.

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[1] The missionary gathering of another religion could have taken the necessary precautionary measures to mitigate contagion. But they did not. The point here is, if supermarkets et al, which is deemed an essential service could take precautionary measures, so too can the Church or any other religious bodies.

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord 2020

As we enter into Holy Week, the underlying emotion is one of disappointment. It is almost surreal that we will be celebrating such an important liturgy without popular participation. That being so, perhaps the denial or the lack of people may just highlight for us the true nature of the Eucharist, that absent of people, it is still a public celebration for its purpose is for the salvation of the world. Hence, “private” or “public”, the Mass does what it is supposed to do—to save mankind. The liturgy, properly speaking, is not just our worship of God but it is also God’s service to His people because every Eucharist has for its main celebrant, Christ Himself, who serves through the agency of His instruments, the priests.

We have two Gospel Readings and what is interesting is that first Gospel read after the Blessing of the Palms, is a kind of prelude to the Triumph of next Sunday—Easter. It marks the triumphant entry of God into His own city. Over the last one week or more, our daily Gospel passages were taken from John. There we hear of a Jesus who is in total control—His time has not arrived yet. Therefore, He was able to elude capture by His opponents. But in the second Gospel, taken from Matthew, we witness the full weight of the religious and political machinery brought to bear upon Jesus. We watch how quickly the tide of popular acclamation turned against their Lord and God.

Here is a God who for the love of His people has decided to give Himself into their hands so that He can work His salvation. To accomplish our salvation, this King who entered Jerusalem rode not on a beast of war but a beast of burden. The humble manger He was laid in will soon become the humiliating wood of the Cross. In short, we have a King who came as human as we are. The veiling of the Cross that symbolises the hiding of His divinity shows His humanity now on trial. The whole idea of a God who saves is put on trial by the humiliation of Christ’s humanity. Our salvation is staked on the Cross. What can we learn from this turn of event, that is, the exaltation of Christ that so quickly descended to His humiliation?

His humanity on trial also means that our humanity is on trial which poses these questions. 1. Does our humanity need to be saved? 2. Can our humanity be saved?

In the past, when people sneezed, the automatic exclamation is “Bless you”. Of course, this came about from an era long forgotten. When bubonic plague struck Europe, people dropped dead like flies. And symptomatic of the plague was sneezing. When a person sneezed, people would say, “Bless you” for good reasons. Firstly, one is falling sick and what better way to get well than to ask for God’s blessing. Secondly, one is falling sick and is in danger of death. “Bless you” acknowledges that life is truly in God’s hands.

Today, when a person sneezes, immediately our Covid-19 senses tingle and our radar goes into overdrive... “Bless you” will be the last thing on our mind whereas the first should be, “Hold your breath and run”.

Again, does our humanity need to be saved? Can our humanity be saved?

In this climate of Covid-19, there is a stigmatisation of humanness—that is, there is a denouncement or indictment of what makes us human. We eat, drink, sleep and even defaecate, if you like, pass motion—all human activities or rather normal bodily functions of what it means to be alive. We cough, sneeze and fall sick. Again, these are routine human capabilities. At best, we are just weak when we are taken ill or at worst, it is the natural reality of ageing and the process of dying.

Even Christ Himself submitted to this human process: Christ died. In our Mysterium fidei, we say this “Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again”, suggesting a fact that while human progression of dying is typical, it also indicates that death is not the end of it and that there is life after.

Today we are urged to wear masks, sanitise and to socially distance ourselves. While these enter into the array of precautions taken to minimise contact and contagion, the underlying message is that Covid-19 is not the virus, man is. We are the virus and as such, everything “human” about us has become deadly. Clearing one’s dry throat is already suspect for those who are obsessively compulsive. There is a denunciation of what it is to be human. The new normal is that our humanity is not the road to “salvation”. Rather, death should be avoided because our humanity does not need salvation. We only need to survive. This stigmatisation of our humanness is only made possible because of the virtualisation of life—paved by the information superhighway.

The Church exists only because the work of Christ’s salvation carries on. She is the sacrament of His salvation for the world. But there seems to be a divorce between the Church and salvation (not to mention the Church and evangelisation) because the deprivation of Mass and therefore of the sacraments does not really constitute a problem at all. So easily we turn to live streaming as if it were the new normal now. The virtualisation of Mass through live streaming might seem to be a bonum, a good, an advantage brought about by the advancement of technology but ultimately the central message is that firstly, the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, is no longer necessary for salvation. Spiritual Communion is a good, but it has to be an exception rather than the rule. If it becomes the rule, then the Church is no longer necessary in the economy of salvation and therefore, the priesthood is totally useless.

But starker than a useless priesthood is that we have conceivably arrived at a point where there is no humanity to salvage. God is unnecessary and the Church is no more than a spa, a luxury we afford on the way to a more pleasurable long life. This escape from the stark reality of our humanity (eat, drink, sleep, contact, and etc) is to shrug off the necessity of salvation. The fear which grips the Church is symptomatic of the triumph of the spirit of the age. GK Chesterton said this: “We do not want a Church that will move with the world. We want a Church that will move the world”.

Perhaps, in this time of social distancing, rather than run and hide, we must stand up (not foolishly) for humanity through our Sacramental presence. Otherwise, the prolonged absence of the sacrament will create an incongruence between “faith” and “action”, between what we truly believe in and how we ought to behave. We hold the truth that the Eucharist is truly a food for the journey our viaticum, but our survival instinct articulated through enforced social distancing fundamentally renders that belief empty or useless. That some priests try to be present through creative ways of making the sacraments present is indicative of an attempt to bridge the gap between belief and action—lex credendi, lex vivendi.

As the 2^nd Reading reminds us, “His state was divine, yet Christ Jesus did not cling to His equality with God but emptied Himself”. He became human because humanity was worth His condescension. He came to be with us so that we may have the possibility to be like Him. We are worth saving because we have been created for eternity, not merely to survive. Humanity’s honour has been restored by the journey that Christ makes during Holy Week—a path that necessarily takes us through His passion, death and resurrection. We accompany Him, our Lord and our Saviour.