The Cross is Our Salvation

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross 

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, celebrated every year on September 14, recalls three historical events: the finding of the True Cross by St. Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine; the dedication of churches built by Constantine on the site of the Holy Sepulchre and Mount Calvary; and the restoration of the True Cross to Jerusalem by the emperor Heraclius II. But in a deeper sense, the feast also celebrates the Holy Cross as the instrument of our salvation. This instrument of torture, designed to degrade the worst of criminals, became the life-giving tree that reversed Adam's Original Sin when he ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden.

The Cross of Christ, the centre and pinnacle of God’s saving work, is also the centerpiece of our faith. The cross reveals the most profound depths of God’s love: “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI tells us that “the cross … is the definitive sign par excellence given to us so that we might understand the truth about man and the truth about God; we have all been created and redeemed by a God who sacrificed his only Son out of love. This is why the Crucifixion … is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he give himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form.” (Deus Caritas Est, 12)

Nevertheless, the cross remains a sign of contradiction – it is both an unthinkable disgrace and yet a potent source of grace. It has inspired confidence in armies to march into battle and others to sue for peace; it has been used as a palpable symbol of power as well as powerlessness. And so it is both despised as well as coveted by one human power or another – Constantine used it as a talisman of power in the civil war with his brother and the Persians claimed it as their greatest battle trophy over the Byzantines.

So, how is the cross a symbol of power and powerlessness? The symbolism of power hidden in the cross is often lost on us, and is only revealed as a mystery of revelation. The Cross represents the Sovereign authority of God and his providence. This is certainly difficult to comprehend. Yet, what seems to us to be failure is, in God’s eyes, the victory of sacrificial love. It is on the cross, that Christ receives the highest exaltation from God, ironically, at the moment he suffered the greatest humiliation at the hands of men. As Christ was lifted up on the Cross, now by means of the Cross, he lifts up humanity, and indeed all creation. As today’s gospel reminds us, “for God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved”. The Cross possesses the power to forgive sins which are hidden, the power to heal consciences and human hearts. It is there that we have been set free of the debt of sin and liberated from the clutches of death.

But paradoxically, the cross is also a symbol and an instrument of powerlessness. There are few things that can match the depravity of this instrument of torture and death. For a brief moment, where hours seem like eternity, the Son of God gave up His access to the powers of the universe so that He could die at our hands. On the wood of the cross, the most powerful being in the universe chose to be powerless. The Lutheran theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, describes the profound significance of this moment, “God allows himself to be edged out of the world and onto the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us.” So what God has done is that He took an instrument of evil, an instrument that brings death and transformed it so that it gives life, brings goodness and healing, and that’s what we hear Jesus saying about himself, “When I am lifted up, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, then I will give life.” The instrument of death becomes an instrument of healing, life and salvation.

The power and the powerlessness of the cross provide us with the necessary lens to view our own suffering, our daily crosses. St John Paul II, who prophetically wrote his first encyclical on Suffering, and would later suffer that fate in the last years of his pontificate, uses the cross to formulate his answer to man’s perennial dilemma – Why do we have to suffer. The saintly Pope stated, with piercing simplicity, that the answer has "been given by God to man in the cross of Jesus Christ." Each of us is called to "share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished." Through his only-begotten Son, God "has confirmed His desire to act especially through suffering, which is man's weakness and emptying of self, and He wishes to make His power known precisely in this weakness and emptying of self."

And this is the way we experience God’s power here on earth, sometimes to our great frustration, and this is the way that Jesus was deemed powerful during his lifetime. The Gospels make this clear. Jesus was born powerless, and he died helpless on a cross. Yet both his birth and his death show the kind of power on which we can ultimately build our lives. The cross of Christ, therefore, teaches us that we can find power in weakness, in that which makes us vulnerable and even seemingly powerless.

Perhaps, what makes it so difficult to accept the good news of the cross, is that we are stubbornly hold on to power; we want to have a “sense of control.” Henri Nouwen writes, “What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible?  Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love.  It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.” Most of us fear our powerlessness in the face of illness and death. We would like to retain an element of control, even though we realise that dying often involves the very opposite: a total loss of control, over our muscles, our emotions, our minds, our bowels and our very lives, as our human framework succumbs to powerful disintegrative forces.

Even when those disintegrative forces become extreme and our suffering may seem overwhelming, however, an important spiritual journey always remains open for us. This path is a "road less traveled," a path that, unexpectedly, enables us to achieve genuine control in the face of suffering and even death. The hallmark of this path is the personal decision to accept our sufferings, actively laying down our life on behalf of others by embracing the particular kind of death God has ordained for us, patterning our choice on the choice consciously made by Jesus Christ. As no one had ever done before, Jesus charted the path of love-driven sacrifice, choosing to lay down his life for his friends. He was no mere victim in the sense of being a passive and unwilling participant in his own suffering and death. He was in control. No one could possibly take his life from him, unless he chose to lay it down.

Jesus foresaw that his greatest work lay ahead as he ascended Calvary to embrace his own powerlessness and self-emptying. Paradoxically, it was when he most seemed powerless, that he was most powerful. The cross would prove victorious when meeting our ancient enemies on the battlefield – sin, death and evil would be defeated by the very sacrifice of Christ himself. Jesus' radical embracing of his Passion — and our radical embracing of our own — marks the supreme moment of a person, whose life seems otherwise spinning out of control or into chaos, as God assumed control of one’s life and destiny through our willing immersion into His hope-filled and redemptive designs.

Our True Worth

Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C

 

When you really love someone, you are prepared to do crazy things. A mother is prepared to sacrifice everything to care for a son who has rejected her, and who lives a life as a drunkard and drug addict. A priest is prepared to work among the people living in a leper colony, exposing himself to the same illness of those who he was caring for. A father is prepared to jump into a pool to save one son although he knows that he may also lose his life. All these people may appear to be crazy but love makes you do crazy things.

This is the craziness of the stories in today’s gospel. A shepherd leaves ninety nine sheep to go after the one that is lost. A woman forgets about the other nine drachmas and goes in search for the 10th drachma that is love. The world may say: Accept your losses and carry on with whatever that is left. But God’s ways are different from our ways. When God loves, He loves without limit. God is prepared to go all out, humble himself, endure suffering, in order to seek for the sinner – the one who has rejected him, the one who says that he does not need God, the one who doesn’t care for anything in life except himself. We may think in our human way that the best thing to do would be to let these kind of people carry on with whatever they’re doing, and we too carry on with our own lives.

But God never gives up even when we chose to give up. God never stops working even though we have longed ceased all efforts. God never stops loving even when we may feel that it is impossible to love in such a situation. This is our God – the most compassionate and merciful.

What does this tell us? Each of us is very important. Each of us has a special dignity. Each of us is unique. Each of us is priceless and worth saving. We are not just nameless objects created in some big assembly plant in heaven. That is the meaning of the parables in today’s gospel. The shepherd is not too worried that he may have made a bad business decision in abandoning the ninety-nine to go after the one lost sheep. This is because every single sheep is dear and important to him.

Sometimes, we fail to recognize our own dignity. Sometimes, we forget that we are precious. That is the reason why people get angry with others when they are made to feel small. That is the reason why people become jealous and selfish because they feel that they are not good enough.

The good news for each one of you today is this: “You are beautiful! You are special!” God loves you so much that he is prepared to send his Son Jesus to die for you! Even if you may feel that you are a big sinner, that you are a disappointment to your family and friends, that you have made so many mistakes in your life and no one will ever accept you - never doubt that God will never stop loving you.

When you go home today, take a good look at yourself in the mirror. Tell yourself: “God loves you… God loves me.”

Pray for us, O Most Holy Mother of God

Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Today we celebrate the birthday of our Blessed Mother. The feast of the Nativity of Mary is closely connected with the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Mary who is prepared by divine providence to be the Mother of Jesus the son of God, is conceived in the womb of her mother Anna, her father being Joachim, without the stain of sin and her birth is considered by the Church as a Solemn event.

Our Lady’s birthday has been described as “the hope of the entire world and the dawn of salvation”.  That is why the Liturgy of the day says: “Let us celebrate with joy the birth of the Virgin Mary, of who was born the Sun of Justice…. Her birth constitutes the hope and the light of salvation for the whole world…. Her image is light for the whole Christian people”. St. Augustine connects Mary’s birth with Jesus’ saving work. He tells the earth to rejoice and shine forth in the light of her birth. “She is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley. Through her birth the nature inherited from our first parents is changed.” The opening prayer at Mass also speaks of the birth of Mary’s Son as the dawn of our salvation and asks for an increase of peace.

In celebrating the nativity of Mary, Christians anticipate the Incarnation and the birth of her Divine Son, and give honour to the mother of Our Lord and Saviour. The Church’s calendar observes the birthdays of only three persons: St. John the Baptist and Mary, Mother of Jesus, and the of Jesus, Son of God.  John the Baptist was sanctified even before his birth. Luke tells us that Elizabeth felt the infant John “leap in her womb” when Mary approached her soon after the Annunciation. Mary was preserved sinless in anticipation with the privilege of being the Mother of God from the moment of her conception.

A birthday is an occasion when a person celebrates the anniversary of their birth, and is often celebrated with a gift in commemoration of that particular event. Today the church celebrates the birth of Mary. What would be the best gift for Our Lady on this special occasion? Faith - Faith in Jesus Christ. Her apparitions (eg: Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima) constantly urged the faithful to turn back to Jesus, the saviour of the world.

As we celebrate the birth of Mary, it is a great reminder for us to turn to Mary in time of great need, for she is "a sign of sure hope and solace" (Lumen Gentium, 68, Vatican II). There has been but one true revolution in the history of the world and that is precisely the Incarnation in the flesh of the eternal Logos in the person of the God-man Jesus Christ, whereby the power of sin, corruption, death and the authority of Satan are shattered and the chasm between the uncreated God and His creation is bridged. If the Incarnation is a foundational mystery of the faith then the person of Mary from whom Christ received His flesh and was born also stands at the centre of the faith. A faith in Christ which does not include the veneration of his mother is another faith, another Christianity from that held by the Church. A Christmas without the mother would be a meaningless Christmas, for the Word would not have taken flesh and become the source and summit of our salvation.

Today, let us join our voices with all Christians over the world as we lovingly invoke her intercession, “Pray for us O Holy Mother of God … that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ”. Mary continues to labor, through her intercession, so that Christ will be formed in us and so that we will be formed in Christ. For her birthday this year, let's allow her be our mother in the order of grace.

Job Vacancy: Disciple

Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C

As an Ex-President of Catholic Students' Society, I have to admit, during my tenure, one of the biggest challenges of pastoring a society is identifying, training and managing a substantial number of volunteers. Now, this sounds exactly like a voluntary organisation, and I guess the culture of volunteerism does seem to have become the foundation of Church ministry and mission. The frequent cry you often hear in most societies/churches is this, ‘We need more volunteers!’ Volunteering has become the primary way in which Christians are invited to participate in the work and mission of the Church. Over the years, I find that sustaining morale among Church volunteers has become a real challenge, sometimes it seems even impossible. We see our volunteers suffering from disillusionment and a constant need for tender-loving-care. The usual complaints we hear is that many feel unappreciated, ill-equipped for the job, a lack of support from others, and have become tired of the numerous criticisms heaped against them.

But perhaps the greatest problem lies in area of quality control. This is particularly true in the case of the Catholic Church. Well, you know what they say, ‘when you are only willing to pay peanuts, expect nothing less than monkeys!’ The most troubling issue when dealing with volunteers is that of commitment. There is no doubt that volunteer work is often a thankless and demanding endeavour, requiring great generosity, time and effort. We’ve eventually come to accept that if we demand too much of these volunteers, they would break and quit. We treat volunteers like royalty – tip toe around their mistakes and find it hard to hold them accountable. Too often we settle for less rather than for more.  In order to keep and please our volunteers, we end up lowering standards, compromising values and ultimately crippling the radical demands of discipleship in the name of survival.

It’s important and liberating to remember that volunteerism is not discipleship. While volunteerism has great value, even in the Church, it is not the central model for Christian life and service. We don’t need to recruit church volunteers—Jesus’ command to us was to go and make disciples. When it comes right down to it, there is a huge difference between volunteering from time to time, being a fair weather follower, and belonging totally to Jesus Christ. The individualism and consumerism that shapes how we participate in volunteering are incompatible with the selfless, all-demanding devotion that Christ calls for in participating in His mission. One of the benefits of being a volunteer is that there is always the option to take a break, to ‘sit this project out’, or even to quit. Volunteers set the agenda-when, how much, where, and what it is they will volunteer for. They are not tied down to anything or anyone. Discipleship, on the other hand, is not periodic volunteer work, on one’s own terms or at one’s convenience. As it is clear in the strong statements we find in today’s gospel, discipleship is total, unconditional, limitless commitment to Christ, requiring the greatest sacrifice, even that enduring suffering and death.

Structurally, today’s gospel selection is comprised of a catena of sayings on discipleship, followed by two parables. The sayings demonstrate a literary device in Semitic literature, the hyperbole; a figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in ‘I could sleep for a year’ or ‘This book weighs a ton.’ We all know that these expressions do not really mean that we are going to sleep for year or suggest Herculean strength is needed to lift the book. The hyperboles or exaggerations help us to appreciate and imagine the gravity of what is being expressed. Thus, the forcefulness of the first saying in today’s gospel to turn one’s back on, or literally to ‘hate’, father, mother, etc, is shocking. The call to hate one’s family is certainly a polarising idea. The word ‘hate’ is the opposite of ‘love.’ Naturally, this is not an actual call to hate your family – hate is incongruent with the Christian life. To hate one’s family does not imply animosity or hostility but rather absolute detachment in the strongest possible terms. Part of the cost of discipleship is the willingness to forgo the joys of security of family ties so as to be bound completely to Christ.  Allegiance to Christ is total! ‘Hating’ parents simply meant loving Jesus first and foremost, above family and even above self. From that love would flow the willingness to follow Jesus by taking up the cross.

Therefore, the gospel sets out the difference between mere volunteerism and hard edged discipleship. It boils down to the answer you give to these set of questions – What are you prepared to loose? What are you prepared to give up? What is the cost you are willing to pay?  Disciples are willing to pay the price of giving up everything for the sake of the kingdom. Volunteers just settle for cheap grace. Dietrich Bonheoffer, the Lutheran theologian executed by the Nazis at the end of World War II, describes cheap grace as the ‘enemy of the Church.’ I guess one could say that volunteerism is the product of cheap grace. According to him, “cheap grace is grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

What true disciples are fighting for is not cheap grace but costly grace. Bonheoffer tells us that “costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man’ will gladly go and sell all that he has... it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.”

Today, we are called to do an accounting of the sacrifices we need to make and the cost we are required to pay for the price of authentic discipleship. In the two short parables you just heard, Jesus communicates the necessity of entering into the process of discipleship with a clear head and the intention of persevering, holding fast till the end. The man who wants to build a tower must count the cost to make sure he has enough to finish the job. The king who is going to war must first count his troops and resources to make sure he can win the battle. In both parables the message is clear: Those who begin a major endeavor need to be prepared to see it through to the finish. Throughout our lives we will be tempted to quit when suffering threatens us, when we face criticism, when the cost seems too heavy, when we receive little reward or encouragement. The importance of counting the cost of discipleship is apparent when we see the point of our endeavour is to finish the race, not just merely to start it. Some say the hardest part is getting started. If this is true though, why do we hear stories of people who give up on their diet, stop writing a novel or quit a difficult task at work. Maybe it’s not the start but the finish that’s so difficult. The goal should always be to finish, not start. And in order to finish, we must be prepared to pay the cost and make sacrifices.

Today, what the Church needs is not more volunteers. We have enough of that and we could do with less of that! What the Church needs, what Christ wants, what salvation demands is this –men and women who have counted the cost and who are committed to Jesus regardless of the cost, and who will not stop in the middle of the stream and go back. Discipleship is not for the faint of heart. Discipleship is not for the lukewarm. Discipleship is not for the fence-straddlers. Discipleship is for the committed, for the consecrated and dedicated. Discipleship is for those willing to put their hand to the plow and not look back. Discipleship is not for a day, or for a week, or a year. Discipleship is for the rest of our lives. Discipleship is for those who are willing to follow Him regardless of what they have to let go of and leave behind. These are the clear job descriptions that disciples must know and be prepared for: No reserves – sacrifice everything, no retreats – press on, no regrets – finish the race.