No opposition between faith and culture

Chinese New Year 2019

Of all the cultural celebrations of the Chinese community, the Lunar New Year is by far the most important. That is why the church has chosen to celebrate this cultural festival on the first day of Chinese New Year as a parish community, as a community of Catholics. Culture gives meaning to our lives. Culture gives us our identity. But all of us have many layers of cultural identity. I am Chinese, but I’m also English educated. I’m also Malaysian, which makes me quite different from the Chinese from mainland China or Taiwan. But finally, I’m also Catholic. All these titles can place me into different groups of people and influence my personality and choices. Normally, these different groups often live separately and need not have any relation with each other. But being Catholic, has brought all these different cultural aspects together under one roof.

It’s hard to define what culture is. It’s like the air that we breathe. We know it’s there but usually pay little attention to it. We only begin to speak of it when having to explain to someone else what that culture is all about. Most people, of course, associate culture with dressing, language, music, dance and our festivals. But just because we dress up once a year in our traditional costumes or play certain music once year doesn’t really do justice to culture. It’s what I call “tourism” – that is for “show” only. True culture affects our values and the choices we make. It is the lenses in which we view the world.

How does the Church view culture? What is the relationship between faith and culture? The Church views culture positively as that which is “best” in man – culture is man’s best mental and physical achievements. The Church preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ by using the language and the symbols of culture. Just as the Word of God became man to reveal to us the plan of God, the gospel too must be understood and take on the language of culture to communicate itself to men.

In other words, there is no opposition between faith and culture. There is much we can learn from culture but there is much that our culture can learn from faith. Faith teaches us that culture is truly the “best” when it is directed at God. Faith purifies culture and helps man to see that what is best are not his personal achievements or even his heritage. Faith helps us to see that the “best” of what man can achieve is when he worships God. Faith also helps us work out our priorities. God first, others second, we last of all. An Indian new convert once told me that his old religion taught him three important values in life, mother, teacher and God. But ever since he became Catholic, he now understood his priorities. God first, mother second and teacher, third. We must never forget that if God is absent from our culture and customs, we end up worshipping culture instead. And when culture is worshipped, we ultimately end up worshipping man whilst God is forgotten.

That is why our festive celebration begins with mass. We must always remember that whatever is the best and the greatest must first be offered to God. At every mass, it is God who is glorified and man sanctified. Mass is not a place where we glorify man or even culture. Mass is not a showcase of man’s culture. Mass is a demonstration of God’s power, His authority and grace. Mass is a place where we transcend culture. It is the celebration of the entire Church. Not just of the Chinese people, but also the whole community, for in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave or free, man or woman, for we are all united in Christ.

Today, both culture and faith have suffered from the pressures of modern living. We now live in a society quite different from what we had when most of us grew up, regardless of the culture that nurtured us. For us Chinese, parents and family are important priorities and yet the largest number of elderly residing in old folks home comes from the Chinese community.  In order that we may continue to promote these good cultural values and save them from further deterioration, we must strengthen our faith. They are both inter-related. People of faith would learn to honour their parents because to honour them is keeping the commandment of God.

At the end of the Chinese New Year mass, the church will have the rite of veneration of ancestors. We must keep a few things in mind. Though we have learnt a great deal from our culture, our understanding is very different from non-Catholics. As Catholics we do not “worship” our ancestors neither do the souls of our ancestors reside in the ancestral tablet. As Catholics, we pray for the dead because they can no longer pray for themselves. The greatest prayer we can offer as Catholics is the mass because it is the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross that can save them as well us. Our Catholic faith teaches us that we when honour our parents, our elders and even the saints, we give glory to God. God is worshipped in the veneration of the saints and in the honour we give to our elders. That is why in today’s ritual, it is necessary that we make a clear distinction between the worship which can be given to God alone and the honour which we give to our ancestors. Even, when venerate our ancestors, we must do so without forgetting God. God comes first, others second, we come last of all.

Today, as we celebrate this thanksgiving mass, let us continue to glorify God, to praise Him in all things, even as we celebrate our cultural customs and honour our elders and ancestors. As St Irenaeus reminds us, “the glory of God is man fully alive, and man is fully alive when he worships God.”

The Sun stood still

The Solemnity of the Nativity of St John the Baptist

Throughout the history of Christianity, the liturgical year has been a way that the church has celebrated the redemption story, with each of the cardinal feasts emphasizing a different aspect of the story. What brought further depth of meaning to the celebration was the uncanny correspondence between sacred time and the ordinary seasons of the year. Easter marks the Christian Spring, a time of rejuvenation and rebirth. Christmas comes in the thick of winter, with the winter solstice announcing the Sun’s victory over the cold and dark winter nights. Such correspondence is often lost on us Malaysians who live close to the equator, as we do not have the privilege of celebrating the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter nor do we experience a radical shortening and lengthening of days and nights.

Today, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Birth of St John the Baptist. The Nativity of St John the Baptist on June 24 comes three months after the celebration on March 25 of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel told Our Lady that her cousin Elizabeth was in her sixth month of pregnancy, and six months before the Christmas celebration of the birth of Jesus. The purpose of these festivals is not to celebrate the exact dates of these events, but simply to commemorate them in an interlinking way. Therefore, for those of you who can’t get enough of Christmas and those who bedeck your homes with Christmas decorations all year round, today’s feast provides the first rumblings of the coming storm of Christmas.

The significance of today’s feast of the nativity of St John the Baptist becomes more apparent when we are able to appreciate its correspondence with the Summer Solstice. The word 'Solstice' derives from the Latin term meaning 'sun stood still', as in the winter and summer the sun appears to rise and set in practically the same place. In the northern hemisphere, the Summer Solstice date tends to be either June 21 or 22. Why then do we celebrate the Feast of St John the Baptist on the 24^th? This isn’t very clear but just as Christmas is celebrated on the 25^th of December instead of the 21^st of December which marks the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the fixing of the present dates for both celebrations could be due to the inaccurate calculations and the limitations of the astronomical devices available in ancient times. 

The birth of St John the Baptist must be truly significant in order for the Church to celebrate this date with its most solemn category of feast days, one which even supplants the liturgy of Sunday. But it is not only the Church that pays tribute to this man. It appears that the cosmos adds its eulogy to the event. The Sun stands still to illuminate this important figure in salvation history. Perhaps the greatest tribute still remains in the hands of our Lord. We remember the words of Jesus in the gospel of Luke, “Among those born of women no one is greater than John” (Luke 7:28). But this further begs the question:  What’s so great about John the Baptist?

The first answer lies in human destiny and God’s plan of salvation. When the Church celebrates the feasts of saints, it celebrates the victory of the Paschal event that is the eternal life that has been won by these men and women by virtue of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus each feast reminds us of our destiny. As a rule, the church celebrates the feast of a saint once a year, on the anniversary of the saint’s death. Death marks the entry of the saint into eternal life, into the economy of salvation. Although this is the general rule, there are two significant exceptions. Apart from Christ, there are only two others persons whom the Church accords its greatest festal honour to celebrate the event of their conception or birth. These are none other than the Blessed Virgin Mary and St John Baptist. 

We celebrate the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a Solemnity to denote the Church’s understanding of her immaculate conception, that is Mary tasted the fruits of redemption not at death but from the very moment of her conception. Although we also celebrate her birthday, it is of a less solemn feast because Mary had already experienced salvation at the moment of her conception in St. Anne’s womb. On the other hand, we celebrate the birth of St John as a Solemnity because at the time of his birth, he had already been admitted into the glorious company of the saints and a full participant in the economy of salvation. This took place during the visitation of Mary to his mother, Elizabeth. Luke’s gospel records the experience and words of Elizabeth who speaks of this event by stating that the child within her womb leapt for joy. 

The greatness of St John the Baptist can also be seen in his unique and singular role of linking the Old Covenant or Old Testament to the New. According to St. Augustine, John is the hinge that represents both the old and the new. John the Baptist is the hinge between the Old and New dispensation, the Old and New Testaments. On one side of that door is the Law and the Prophets of Jewish history and tradition. On the other side of that door is Jesus. The father of John, Zachary’s inability to speak on the Jewish side of the door represents the inability of the Old Testament to speak to us or bring us to salvation. With the birth of John and his naming, we move to the other side of the door where salvation is possible through Jesus. In one sense he was like the Biblical prophets that came before him. On the other side, he was the prophet who foresaw the Christ, who recognized the Christ and who initiated the public life of the Christ.  Jesus’ baptism by John and the subsequent message of the Father began the public life of Jesus. In mark’s Gospel this is the event that begins the Gospel.

St John is great because, like many other great personages before him in the Old Testament, he received his name directly from God. The gospel story of the birth of John focuses on the naming ceremony. In biblical times, and still today in many cultures, personal names function the way business names do, that is, they aim to convey what the bearer of the name stands for. Names reveal an essential character or destiny of the bearer. The name John means “God is gracious.” His birth signals the beginning of a new era in God-human relationship, an era to be characterised by grace and not by law. In John we see that God already has a purpose for His children before they come into this world, and so the challenge of life is for them to discover this purpose and to be faithful to its demands.

But perhaps the greatest contribution of St John is seen in his relationship to Christ. He is the one prophesied from of old to be voice crying in the desert calling people to prepare the Way of the Lord. He is the finger that distinguishes and points out the Lamb of God from the crowd. He is the one that announces the greater personage who will come after him, the one who will baptise with fire and the Holy Spirit. He is the one who delivered the message of repentance in order to prepare people to believe in the one who will inaugurate the Kingdom of God. He is the first to lay down his life prefiguring the death of his Master. He is the one whose light must dim, whose influence must decrease, in order that the light of Christ may increase. His greatness lay precisely in this – his very existence, his life was lived wholly for the other. And it was only in the other, in the person of Christ,  that he discovered greatness.

St Augustine saw great significance in this tradition that the Baptist was born at the summer solstice. From the Summer solstice to the Winter solstice, the days will grow shorter while the nights lengthen. Thus, it was not difficult for St Augustine to make the connection with the Baptist’s words in St John’s Gospel ‘He (Jesus) must increase and I must decrease’ (John 3.30). Now this may seem bizarre to us, but the movement of the sun and the seasons of the year seem to support the Baptist’s humbling confession. The cycle of shortening days and lengthening nights ends during the Winter Solstice, December 21^st. Thereafter, the reverse happens – the days grow longer and the nights grow shorter, thus literally playing out the dynamics of John’s words – “He must increase and I must decrease.” The waning of one central biblical figure marks the waxing of another. The Voice gives way to the Way. The Sun which shines at the centre of its own constellation, a giant among men, now recedes in order that the light of the Other may shine brighter.  John the Baptist, the Summer Sun stands still before the light of the other, the true ‘Sun of Righteousness’ (Malachi 4.2), the ‘Dayspring from on high’ (Luke 1.78), the ‘Light of the world’ (John 8.12, 9.5). Here the greatest among the created men acknowledges its Creator and Lord and bows before him – the eternal Word through whom all things were made. 

As we celebrate this Solemnity, our testimonies too must join that of the Baptist, who points to Christ and away from himself.  Christ ‘must increase and I must decrease’ must be a constant life commitment. In a culture that idolises the subjective self, where man has enthroned himself at the centre of his universe, the prophetic witness of John the Baptist reminds us once again that even the greatest among us must fall on our knees to acknowledge the One who is greater. Christ must increase and I must decrease. If the Sun can stand still to mark this event, so can we. 

Faith and Culture

Chinese New Year 2018

Of all the cultural celebrations of the Chinese community, the Lunar New Year is by far the most important. That is why the church has chosen to celebrate this cultural festival today as a parish community, as a community of Catholics. Culture gives meaning to our lives. Culture gives us our identity. But all of us have many layers of cultural identity. I am Chinese, but I’m also English educated. I’m also Malaysian, which makes me quite different from the Chinese from mainland China or Taiwan. But finally, I’m also Catholic. All these titles can place me into different groups of people and influence my personality and choices. Normally, these different groups often live separately and need not have any relation with each other. But being Catholic, has brought all these different cultural aspects together under one roof.

It’s hard to define what culture is. It’s like the air that we breathe. We know it’s there but usually pay little attention to it. We only begin to speak of it when having to explain to someone else what that culture is all about. Most people, of course, associate culture with dressing, language, music, dance and our festivals. But just because we dress up once a year in our traditional costumes or play certain music once year doesn’t really do justice to culture. It’s what I call “tourism” – that is for “show” only. True culture affects our values and the choices we make. It is the lenses in which we view the world.

How does the Church view culture? What is the relationship between faith and culture? The Church views culture positively as that which is “best” in man – culture is man’s best mental and physical achievements. The Church preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ by using the language and the symbols of culture. Just as the Word of God became man to reveal to us the plan of God, the gospel too must be understood and take on the language of culture to communicate itself to men.

In other words, there is no opposition between faith and culture. There is much we can learn from culture but there is much that our culture can learn from faith. Faith teaches us that culture is truly the “best” when it is directed at God. Faith purifies culture and helps man to see that what is best are not his personal achievements or even his heritage. Faith helps us to see that the “best” of what man can achieve is when he worships God. Faith also helps us work out our priorities. God first, others second, we last of all. An Indian new convert once told me that his old religion taught him three important values in life, mother, teacher and God. But ever since he became Catholic, he now understood his priorities. God first, mother second and teacher, third. We must never forget that if God is absent from our culture and customs, we end up worshipping culture instead. And when culture is worshipped, we ultimately end up worshipping man whilst God is forgotten.

That is why our festive celebration begins with mass. We must always remember that whatever is the best and the greatest must first be offered to God. At every mass, it is God who is glorified and man sanctified. Mass is not a place where we glorify man or even culture. Mass is not a showcase of man’s culture. Mass is a demonstration of God’s power, His authority and grace. Mass is a place where we transcend culture. It is the celebration of the entire Church. Not just of the Chinese people, but also the whole community, for in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave or free, man or woman, for we are all united in Christ.

Today, both culture and faith have suffered from the pressures of modern living. We now live in a society quite different from what we had when most of us grew up, regardless of the culture that nurtured us. For us Chinese, parents and family are important priorities and yet the largest number of elderly residing in old folks home comes from the Chinese community.  In order that we may continue to promote these good cultural values and save them from further deterioration, we must strengthen our faith. They are both inter-related. People of faith would learn to honour their parents because to honour them is keeping the commandment of God.

At the end of the mass, the church will have the rite of veneration of ancestors. We must keep a few things in mind. Though we have learnt a great deal from our culture, our understanding is very different from non-Catholics. As Catholics we do not “worship” our ancestors neither do the souls of our ancestors reside in the ancestral tablet. As Catholics, we pray for the dead because they can no longer pray for themselves. The greatest prayer we can offer as Catholics is the mass because it is the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross that can save them as well us. Our Catholic faith teaches us that we when honour our parents, our elders and even the saints, we give glory to God. God is worshipped in the veneration of the saints and in the honour we give to our elders. That is why in today’s ritual, it is necessary that we make a clear distinction between the worship which can be given to God alone and the honour which we give to our ancestors. Even, when venerate our ancestors, we must do so without forgetting God. God comes first, others second, we come last of all.

Today, as we celebrate the thanksgiving mass, let us continue to glorify God, to praise Him in all things, even as we celebrate our cultural customs and honour our elders and ancestors. As St Irenaeus reminds us, “the glory of God is man fully alive, and man is fully alive when he worships God.”

The Central Mystery of Faith

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

After 40 days of austerity and fasting during the penitential season of Lent, three climatic days of celebrating the central mystery of our faith during the Easter Triduum, and 50 gloriously festive days of Eastertide concluding with a commemoration of the birth of the Church at Pentecost, one would have expected a more sedated Ordinary Time allowing us to return to our daily, ordinary and sometimes mundane routine. We are in Ordinary Time, but there is hardly anything ordinary about this time. The next few weeks remained littered with celebrations, a series of three Solemnities of the Lord, beginning with the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, which we celebrate today, followed by the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) next Sunday and finally, the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus on the Friday following Corpus Christi.

Celebrating the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity after Pentecost makes perfect sense because today’s feast sums up God’s revelation which was brought about through the Paschal Mysteries: Christ’s death and Resurrection, his Ascension to the right hand of the Father and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It may be a little more difficult to see the connection between this Sunday’s Solemnity and the feast which we will celebrate next week. We can’t imagine how the Church can draw the line of trajectory that links a contemplation of the lofty intangible mystery of the Holy Trinity to that of contemplating the sensually tangible substantial and real presence of Christ in the elements of bread and wine.

Perhaps, the first clue to understanding the link between the Trinity and the Eucharist comes from this paragraph in the Catechism of the Catholic Church – “The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God.” (CCC n. 237) Similarly, the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is also “a mystery of faith in the strict sense”, one which can only be known through the revelation of Jesus, when he told his disciples whilst showing them the bread, “this is my body, which is given for you” (Luke 22:19) and when he clarified that his “flesh is real food” and his “blood real drink” (John 6:55). In other words, we can only come to know of the Truth behind these two mysteries, because God had allowed us to eavesdrop.

The second clue comes from Eastern Iconography, in particular a 15th century icon which I deeply treasure, Rublev’s Icon of the Holy Trinity. This marvelous icon beautifully illustrates the association between the greatest of Sacraments and the mystery of the One God in three persons. In this icon the Three Divine Persons are depicted as three angelic beings gathered around a table. Why are angels chosen to represent the three divine persons? At one level, the icon tells the story of the three men or angels who visited Abraham at the oak of Mamre (Gen 18:1-5). The Fathers of the Church saw these three angels as a prefiguration of God in Three persons. Another reason why angels are chosen as visual representations of the Three divine persons is because according to Eastern Tradition, only Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity can be represented in art because he alone of the Three Divine Persons, took on flesh in the Incarnation. It is a perennial challenge to visually depict all three persons of the Trinity together, especially when both the Father and the Holy Spirit are wholly spiritual beings. The only logical solution would be to choose a spiritual being whom we can visualise to represent another spiritual being that we cannot visualise.

As we place ourselves in front of the icon in prayer, we come to experience a gentle invitation, an irrepressible pull to participate in or ‘eavesdrop’ on the intimate conversation that is taking place among the three divine angels and to join them around the table. What strikes us about the three distinct figures of the angels is not only the exceptional harmony of the composition, but also their inherent unity. A circle can easily be discerned. As the figures gaze at each other, we imagine a circular movement, a kind of a dance, where each is drawn to the other, each is focused on the other, each expresses love for the other. We literally imagine their love, which is an extension of their very being, weaving in and out of each other in a blissful, dynamic circle. The Father looks forward, raising his hand in blessing to the Son. We seem to hear the words, “This is my Son, listen to him…” The hand of the Son points on, around the circle, to the Spirit. “I will send you a Advocate …” In this simple array we see the movement of life towards us, the Father sends the Son, the Son sends the Spirit. Life and love flow clockwise around the circle. But it remains incomplete until we complete the circle.

Our eyes naturally fall at a particular spot on the icon which beckons us to enter and take our place at the table. The fourth side of the table, the one closest to the viewer, has been deliberately left bare, an empty seat, a vacant space. All points to this space, this mystery: within it, everything about God is summed up and expressed, his power, his glory, and above all his love. And it is expressed in such a way that we can reach it. For the space at this table is on our side. We are invited to complete the circle, to join the dance, to complete the movements of God in the world by our own response. We are lifted and drawn into this circle of unending love, to eavesdrop on the divine conversation, and to share the communal meal of hospitality with our divine hosts. The vacant space helps us to remember that when we contemplate both the mysteries of the Holy Trinity and the Eucharist, there is no room for bystanders or spectators, only for those who are prepared to sit down and share the meal.

What sort of meal is this? It is no ordinary meal. It is placed on the table or altar which lies at the centre of the picture. It is at once the place of Abraham's hospitality to the angels, and God's place of hospitality to us. That ambiguity lies at the heart of communion, at the heart of worship. As soon as we open a sacred place for God to enter, for God to be welcomed and adored, it becomes his place. It is we who are welcomed, it is we who must 'take off our shoes' because of the holiness of the ground. Contained in the centre of the circle is a chalice with a sacrificed lamb. Firstly it is the symbol of the Incarnation. In Christ, the whole of humanity is incorporated into the divine Trinitarian life. By becoming incarnate, the second person of the Trinity takes our humanity into his own relations with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In Christ, space is made for us on the vacant side of the table.

But it is obvious to us that the chalice which sits at the centre of the table signifies the Eucharist too, the great Sacrament of communion and unity. It is here that we come to understand the magnitude of what it means to receive communion and be in communion. Every time we receive communion, we not only receive the Body of Christ, we are received into the communion of the Three Divine Persons. This leads us to the conclusion, that while the Eucharist is the greatest of sacraments, it leads to something even greater: to eternal life, by which we share in the very life and loving exchanges of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. Participation in the Eucharist is participation in the divine life itself.

We finally come to realise what the three persons are talking about. Our eavesdropping bears fruit. The subject of God’s eternal colloquy is the divine economy, the divine mission – humanity’s redemption. They have been talking about us all along. The meal had been prepared and the table set for us, we are to be God’s guest of honour. The subject of this homily too must find its ultimate conclusion here – to know the Trinity, to understand the Eucharist, is to be one with Christ and with Christ, to be one with the Father and the Spirit.

One last thing to be said about Rublev’s icon: there are three signs behind each of the divine angels – a hill, a tree and a house. We need to follow the Holy Spirit up the hill of prayer that leads us to find shade under the tree, the cross of sacrifice of the Lamb but now transformed into the tree of life. Having rested beneath its shade, it is time to continue our journey home, to the house of your Father. This is the goal of our journey. It is the beginning and end of our lives. Its roof is golden. It’s door is always open for the traveler. It has a tower providing a wide vantage to the Father who incessantly scans the roads and the horizon for a glimpse of a returning prodigal. There we shall find a meal, not just in Sacramental form, but truly a heavenly feast fit for kings and saints.

In the Holy Spirit the Church “lives and moves and has its being

Pentecost Sunday

Since Easter the first readings have been taken from the Acts of the Apostles. Those responsible for the arrangement and the content of our lectionary must have been truly inspired. We have been recalling the early days of the Church, its staggering growth, juxtaposed against a multitude of sufferings. All this was seen by St. Luke, the author of this remarkable book, as a direct result of that memorable day of Pentecost. The secret of their resilience was not found in the noble human spirit, it sprang from the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, the Acts of the Apostles makes great reading, but it is not meant to be nostalgic and sentimental. Rather the stories of conversions, preachings, missionary journeys and rapid church growth are there to inspire us — for we too have received the same Holy Spirit.

In 1968 Patriarch Ignatius, the Orthodox Metropolitan of Latakia, gave an amazing address at the Assembly of the World Council of Churches. In it he spoke of the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church in a striking and memorable way:

Without the Holy Spirit God is far away.

Christ stays in the past,

The Gospel is simply an organisation,

Authority is a matter of propaganda,

The Liturgy is no more than an evolution,

Christian loving a slave mentality.

But in the Holy Spirit

The cosmos is resurrected and grows with the birth pangs of the kingdom.

The Risen Christ is there,

The Gospel is the power of life,

The Church shows forth the life of the Trinity,

Authority is a liberating science,

Mission is a Pentecost,

The Liturgy is both renewal and anticipation,

Human action is deified.

Therefore, the Church without the Holy Spirit is not the Church. In the Holy Spirit the Church “lives and moves and has its being”. It is sad that so many individual believers live as if the Holy Spirit had never come, to treat the Church as a purely human institution that either needs to be reinvented to bring it into the twenty first century or has to be safeguarded as if it has fallen into unredeemable heresy. There is also a great temptation to be in the grips of two extremes that confuses the relationship between the Spirit and the Church. On the one hand, we have a humanism that excludes the activity of the Spirit from the Church, and on the other hand, we have a pietism that reduces the activity of the Spirit to some form of emotionalism.

In a world that has grown accustomed to defining every issue according the human categories, the members of the Church are tempted to follow suit with little discernment between being "in the Holy Spirit" and being "without the Holy Spirit". What we often do as a Church is often governed by principles of utility, expediency, efficiency, suitability, and marketability, rather than just being faithful to the voice of the Holy Spirit who continues to communicate the will of the Father through the revelation of the Son. In fact, anyone caught discussing the role of the Holy Spirit in the decision-making process risk being accused of over-simplification. On the other end of the spectrum, with the rise of Pentecostalism and its influence on Catholic Culture and ecclesial communities, the presence of Spirit is often mistaken for emotional hype. Here, reason is subjected to suspicion and those who caution prudence often find themselves accused of being faithless. We fail to remember and recognise that there is no opposition between faith and reason and that the presence of the Holy Spirit is discerned from the power of love, the strength of faith, and the experience of joy in the midst of hardship and persecution.

Many have often accused the Catholic Church of being indifferent or at least pays little attention to the Third Person of the Trinity. They would be surprised to learn that the Catechism of the Catholic Church provides a central place for the Holy Spirit in relation to the Church. The Catechism, unequivocally teaches that: “The Church, a communion living in the faith of the apostles which she transmits, is the place where we know the Holy Spirit (CCC 668):

- in the Scriptures He inspired;

- in the Tradition, to which the Church Fathers are always timely witnesses;

- in the Church's Magisterium, which He assists;

- in the sacramental liturgy, through its words and symbols, in which the Holy Spirit puts us into communion with Christ;

- in prayer, wherein He intercedes for us;

- in the charisms and ministries by which the Church is built up;

- in the signs of apostolic and missionary life;

- in the witness of saints through whom He manifests his holiness and continues the work of salvation.

Since he assumed his office, Pope Francis has preached - by word and deed - a dynamic Catholic faith and a Church that must be passionate with the mission of evangelisation. This is a Pope who believes that the Church is driven by the Holy Spirit and God's love, not by bureaucrats or militants. He calls us to remember this simple truth, a truth that is often forgotten when we place so much trust in our own cleverness and devices, that the power of the Holy Spirit is available today for all believers just as it was in the early Church. It is the same Holy Spirit who always calls the Church to authentic renewal. The Pope adds, that at times, “the Holy Spirit upsets us because it moves us, it makes us walk, it pushes the Church forward.” But the problem is, according to him, we want to “calm down the Holy Spirit, we want to tame it and this is wrong, because the Holy Spirit is the strength of God, it's what gives us the strength to go forward.”  Our first reaction is never to resist the pull of the Holy Spirit but to submit.

Like the apostles who were gathered in continuous prayer together with Mary the Mother of the Lord and with the other disciples, we confidently hope and pray that we too will experience a new Pentecost, a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and then we, like Peter and the first apostles, will be able to go out and share the gift of our faith and our hope with a world that needs to be reminded that God has not abandoned them, that he continues guide them, protect them, and strengthen them through the power of the Spirit.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.

Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created.

And You shall renew the face of the earth.

O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.

Connection between Glory and the Cross

Seventh Sunday of Easter - Year A

If you are a connoisseur of art, you would realise that the point of art and painting is not to represent things in the real world as how they should actually look. If this was the case, it would have been much easier to just a take a photograph. Representational art, when it is good, conveys to the viewer not just an idea of what the subject looked like, but some of the artists’ reflection or experience of seeing as well. At least this seems to be part of the reason why representational art has survived and is still valued, even in the age of the photograph, video cameras and of course, camera phones! Even though you may have several albums full of photos of your mother, nothing can substitute a good painting of her. This is because a good painting is not merely a representation of what someone or something looks like, but also a reaction to it. It says more about the subject than its appearance. It shares insights into the human meaning of what it represents.

These reflections on art have a certain relevance to the gospels, especially to the Gospel of John. Its purpose is not merely to give the story of Jesus, but to meditate on its meaning. Throughout the gospel, the historical Jesus is seen from the perspective of the resurrection and the giving of the Spirit. All of the gospels are more like paintings than like photographs, but especially John’s gospel. One might say that the Synoptics are more like Western Christian art form: certainly theological rather than merely biographical, but generally straightforward, realistic, narrative and historical. John’s Gospel, on the other hand, is more like Eastern or Byzantium iconography; stylised, with a complex set of symbols, consciously looking at things in the light of eternity, demanding deep personal engagement by the viewer.

Today’s gospel is a good example. The scene is once again the Last Supper, but it is portrayed poetically, not historically. Jesus, who has yet to meet his passion and experience the resurrection, speaks from eternity, from beyond the grave. In Jesus’ sacred, saving hour, a great liturgy of love emerges from the poetry of this prayer. Through his word and in the sacred bread of his body, all are drawn toward the Father to receive life and glory. A major biblical motif, “glory” (kabod) was used in the Old Testament to illustrate God’s goodness in providing for his people in the wilderness; for example God’s presence in the pillar of fire and cloud was called “glory”; God’s saving intervention was described in terms of manifesting his “glory,” and God’s presence as He alighted on the Tent of Meeting, also referred to his “glory.”

So, what did Jesus mean when he spoke of the hour of entering into his “glory”?  Such “glory” is certainly not equivalent to what man often desires - popularity, public acceptance, praises and a good name. Here lies the divine paradox of the gospel - when Jesus spoke of his own glory he was speaking about the cross. Throughout the gospel of John, Jesus and his ministry was portrayed as a progressive process of glorification, a process of preparation for the ultimate “sign” – the crucifixion, the culmination of God’s saving intervention in salvation history.

St. Peter must have finally understood the connection between glory and the cross after several failed attempts. At the time of his first letter, the early Christian communities were already experience persecution and suffering for their faith. The cross was no longer theoretical or symbolic, it was very real. And yet in today’s second reading, St Peter writes with great confidence and as a means of encouraging his fellow Christians: “If you can have some share in the sufferings of Christ, be glad, because you will enjoy a much greater gladness when his glory is revealed. It is a blessing for you when they insult you for bearing the name of Christ, because it means that you have the Spirit of glory, the Spirit of God resting on you.”

The other radical twist introduced in today’s passage is that Jesus speaks of eternal life not as some future or eschatological reality, something which you experience only after death. On the contrary, one can experience eternal life in the here and now. According to Jesus, eternal life is “to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”. To know connotes the intimacy of an immediate experience rather than cognitive knowledge. Such as, my family knows the real me! Therefore, “to know” God, means to be called into an intimate relationship with the Father, like the one that Jesus the Son already enjoyed. This provides another beautiful layer to our understanding Jesus’ hour of glory. In other words, knowledge of and intimate participation with Jesus in his hour, in his glory, or in the words of St Peter, sharing in the sufferings of Christ, one can already taste eternal life here and now.

Thus, the cross and suffering for our faith, continues to be mark of every Christian, his glory, his path to intimacy with God, to eternal life. Of course, practising our faith today, may not be as dangerous as in antiquity (unless you are a Christian living in the Middle East, Northern Nigeria, Pakistan etc), yet remains challenging, perhaps more challenging than the past. Today, we face a greater danger from modern society – the danger of being ignored or even rejected by secular culture. Its moral values, forced to compete in a free market of ideas, frequently seem unattractive, outdated or simply irrelevant to present day lifestyles.  Many, thus, have given in to the temptation of allowing its core teachings and values to be reshaped and moulded into a more politically correct and socially acceptable version that is to the liking of modern tastes. Social tolerance and relativism has led to the suspicion and rejection of the particularity of the Christian faith and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as Saviour. Ultimately, it has led to widespread moral decline, and with that the world suffers the loss of beauty, the good and the Truth.

Christian faith continues to present a different picture of glory, one which requires us to see the world, its trials and tribulations, through the lenses of eternity. It calls the world to transcendence, to appreciate once again the need for beauty, goodness, and truth. But if this message is to be heard, there must be Christians who are disciples that are willing to live out the message of today’s gospel. This means living a life in the world that already goes beyond it and resists being reduced to its conventions. And it is intrinsic to this way of life that it be lived not merely by isolated individuals, but by a community. Thus, the essential need for our BECs, our Basic Ecclesial Communities, or perhaps, our Catholic Students' Society (CSS), to bear witness to the gospel message. Where we reject community living, we in fact reject the gospel, and we become anti-witnesses of its message. Thus, community life should not only communicate a message of about communion and love, but also show its truth and beauty. In this sense, Christian life must be a work of art – it must be sacramental, it must be beautiful. For if the message of Christ’s triumph over death is to be convincing – even to ourselves – we must show in living it that it is beautiful, good and true, that the vision it shares is about what really is, and that apprehending it leads to fulfillment and joy.  

Between Faith and Doubt

Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord - Year A

We are a conflicted lot – we often vacillate between moments of grieving sorrow and bursting joy, between moments of profound love and moments of intense hostility, between moments of deep faith and moments of critical doubt. And I don’t think it’s because we are bi-polar. It merely speaks of our imperfect human condition, a contingent existence where so much depends on our present yet temporary condition and surrounding circumstances.  The apostles were certainly not immune from this predicament. They too vacillated between exaltation over the miracles they had witnessed and misunderstanding and doubt. 

Toward the end of St Matthew’s Gospel, and right before the passage called the Great Commission, you’ve heard that the eleven disciples saw the Risen One in Galilee, and the gospel makes this seemingly puzzling observation of seemingly contrasting, even contradictory actions: “when they saw Him they fell down before Him: but some hesitated.”  The sequence seems disjointed. Most other translations use the word “doubted,” a shocking alternative to the more ambivalent “hesitated”.  The very event that was intended to both proclaim Jesus’ resurrection and set forth Jesus’ Great Commission seems compromised by this intrusive statement about doubt among the eleven closest disciples.

Some commentators would explain this seeming contradiction by reminding us that in St Matthew’s account of the post-resurrection story, we do not have the reports of the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus as in the case of St Luke or the first hand encounter with the Risen Lord in the Gospel of John. For all purposes, in St Matthew’s Gospel, apart from the women who returned from an empty tomb, this was the first time the Risen Lord had appeared to them in person – thus the explanation for their doubts. We can’t be too sure that this was the reason for their doubting and hesitation. The laconic words of the Gospel say nothing about the nature of their doubts.  But the Apostles’ doubt makes their state closer to that feeling familiar to anyone striving to find a conscious faith grounded in understanding, and yet continue to be beset by doubts.

To add further puzzlement to the mystery, it’s interesting to note that the word “some” which appears before “hesitated” or “doubted” doesn’t appear in the Greek. It’s just not there; it’s been added in the translations. A more direct translation is “seeing him, they worshipped and doubted” or perhaps, “worshipped but doubted.”  With the addition of the word “some,” it makes the verse sounds as though there were two groups of disciples: the good ones, those who worshiped without doubt, and the not so good, those who doubted. But in the original Greek, what the text really states is that they all worshiped and they all doubted.

Which leaves us with this question, is it possible to believe and doubt at the same time? NO!!! I mean, YES!!! Absolutely not! It is, too! If two people were having this conversation, it would be tense...If this were a conversation between me, myself and I...well, that’s just scary! Yet, how often do we find ourselves in this actual predicament. My Myer-Briggs Personality test reveals that I’m a typical INTP type, and one of the most distinctive characteristics of this type of personality is self-doubt – I’m constantly busy debating with myself, doubting the correctness and the veracity of my thoughts, actions, decisions and conclusion. Examining my own experience, which I do not believe that I am peculiarly alone in this, I’ve come to realise although I can honestly say I believe in God, I have to admit that there are certainly times when I doubt; doubt that I am really speaking to God, doubt that God is actually in control of the whole situation or doubt that, given some situation I’m facing, God really loves me or knows what He’s doing.

These conflicting forces of doubt and believe best summarises the “little faith”, which is the hallmark of St Matthew’s theological understanding of the meaning of discipleship. The disciples are often confronted by Jesus himself for their “little faith,” which does not imply the absence of faith at all, but a reminder that faith by its very nature cannot be reduce to mere certainty or cocksureness. Remember, the opposite of faith is not doubt – the opposite of faith is certainty. Faith contains doubt, faith implies doubt or at least the possibility of doubt – certainty neither allows doubt nor requires faith. It’s important to note that the Greek word for “doubt” as Matthew uses it in the passage is not disbelief, but rather wavering belief – being of “two minds” – in other words, the absence of certainty. And we know this to be true from our own experience.

For most of us, faith and doubt often seem to go hand-in-hand. In a way, this puts the emphasis back on God to do the work in us. We can muster up all the belief in our heart, soul and mind, but without God’s help to do so, it will never be enough. For if faith is equal to certainty, there will never be an element of trusting God and allowing God to do what seems impossible to us or even at odds with our designs and plans. Once persons accept that they are both strong and weak, hardy and frail, capable of moments of shimmering faith and times where all seems lost, then they can relax, breathe, and trust in God’s faithfulness and providential care.

Thus the same elements of worship, doubt and a little faith inhere in the Church even after Easter as before. It is not to angels or perfect believers but the worshipping and wavering community of disciples, both saints and sinners alike, that the world mission is entrusted. It is heartening therefore that such a mission to share in the authority of Christ, to evangelise and proclaim the gospel, to enlist and make new disciples into a witnessing community, to sanctify through the sharing of sacramental life and finally to hand on faithfully the teaching of Christ, is entrusted not a rock solid faith-filled Church made up of perfectly impeccable members, but to one which is filled with those who often waver in their faith and who struggle with what little faith they possess. It is consoling and encouraging for us to know that we don’t have to be perfect, to possess rock-solid faith without a shadow of doubt, to be absolutely certain of our convictions and vocation to carry out the mission that Christ has imparted to us. Indeed, He has done this despite our many foibles!

At the end of the gospel of St Matthew, Jesus does not ascend. That seems utterly ironic especially when this is the gospel chosen for Year A of our Lectionary Cycle for this Solemnity of the Ascension. The significance of his Ascension is seen in the parting words of Jesus, “And know that I am with you always, yes, to the end of time.” His last words are a promise of his continuing presence during the Church’s mission. After the Ascension, our motley crew of worshipping and doubting disciples returned to the sanctuary of the Upper Room, led back to the place where the Church is born, to the place where these disciples will receive the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit. And it is here, in the Church that we too must pursue our mission and find our peace. The Church, despite all appearances, remains the gateway. We need a community who heals, yet we are deeply fractured by our sinfulness. We need a community to strengthen our faith, although we continue to vacillate between belief and doubt. We need a community that continues to make present through the Sacraments and the Word the promise of Christ, “I am with you always, yes, to the end of time.” And because Christ is present in and with and through this community of broken people, a community of the spiritually bi-polar, that we are healed.