Monday in the 4th Week of Easter
The yeses in the YES

Readings: Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 42:2-3; 43:3, 4; John 10:1-10

What might it mean for us today when Jesus says he is the gate of the sheepfold, and that anyone who does not enter… through the gate… is a thief and a brigand? Quite obviously, we are being asked to say YES to following Jesus, to becoming his disciple. We may be reminded, for example, of that moving moment at the Easter Vigil, when the candidates for baptism renounced sin and professed their faith. This year, their numbers allowed them to do it one at a time. Do you reject Satan… Do you believe in God the Father almighty…? I do, I do, I do… They were each saying a big YES to entering the sheepfold of life in all its fullness through the gate who is Christ. But, admirable and inspiring as that moment was, isn’t it true that their big YESes imply a commitment to making many more little yeses in the days that follow? And isn’t it also true that those little yeses are not always easy to make?

This past weekend, I was at a retreat organized by a group which included some married couples and their children. We were in a large hall and I was happily watching several of the children amusing themselves, running around and playing in that big space. One of the parents came up to me and asked: They look very cute don’t they? I agreed enthusiastically. At which she went on to say: Yes, but don’t be fooled! I guess what she was telling me was that, cute as the kids might seem to an innocent bystander, they were actually quite a handful to care for. I’m reminded of a former classmate of mine who, I’m told, has a pet name for her son. She calls him monster. Isn’t it true that saying a big YES to having cute children also implies many little yeses to the monster as well? Just like saying a big YES to the spouse who may look so dashing or beautiful or who may make us laugh, might also mean having to say yes to the same one who snores or who has bad breath? Or like saying a big YES to religious life may also imply many little yeses to living and working with fellow religious who might have views and temperaments different from our own?

And isn’t it precisely at times when we are faced with the challenge of living out these little yeses, that we are likely to feel tempted to enter the sheepfold by some other way? What to do? The experience of the early church in the first reading is instructive. We notice how everyone in the reading has already accepted Christ. But today they are beginning to see that their big YES to Christ implies a smaller, but no less important, yes to the uncircumcised as well. This is a daunting challenge for them, who have been raised to believe that the Jews are the chosen people of God. What helps them to meet this challenge, to say this yes? They are helped by Peter’s experience. Led by the Spirit, Peter actually visits and gets to know some of the very people whom the Jews might have at first considered unclean. And in the experience, Peter sees with his own eyes the Spirit moving powerfully among them. In his experience, he sees the connection between saying YES to Christ and yes to the uncircumcised. And he is able to convince the others to do the unthinkable, to continue entering into the sheepfold of life in its fullness through Christ the only true gate, by accepting pagan believers into their midst. Isn’t this what we are called to do as well? When the yes seems especially difficult to force out through our lips, aren’t we also being invited to pray for the grace to see Christ in the uncircumcised -- to see the connection between our earlier YES to Christ and the particular yes to the people or the situation at hand?

How are we being invited to do this today?

Saturday in the 3rd Week of Easter
Hang in There!

Readings: Acts 9:31-42; Psalm 116:12-13, 14-15, 16-17; John 6:60-69

Do you ever have someone with a problem come to you for help or advice? Perhaps it’s a close friend or a relative, a colleague or an acquaintance. But after listening to the person, you realize that the problem is really beyond you, that there is really nothing you can do except to lend a listening ear and a supporting shoulder. And much as you wish you could do something to make the difficulty go away, you find yourself simply saying, Hang in there! I’ll pray for you. Or some other words like that. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find myself feeling a little embarrassed that that’s all that one has to offer. Yet, inadequate as these words may seem, isn’t it true that they are often exactly the message that one needs to hear when in trouble?

Consider the disciples in the gospel today. Jesus has been offering them a truly shocking and incomprehensible doctrine. You must eat my flesh and drink my blood. Is it any surprise that many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him? But what’s even more surprising is that Peter and the other disciples actually decide to stay. They stay not because they understand and agree with what Jesus teaches. They hang in there, even when things seems dark and confusing, only because they continue to cling to the belief that Jesus is the Holy One of God. They trust that things will somehow become clear in the future, if only they remain with Jesus in the present.

In Peter’s words and actions we see a concrete illustration of something which St. Ignatius of Loyola teaches in his Spiritual Exercises. When one is in desolation, he should strive to persevere in patience… Let him consider… that consolation will soon return… And indeed, we see the truth in such considerations in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. As we may recall from our readings earlier in the week, the early church was facing a very difficult and desolate time of persecution beginning with the martyrdom of St. Stephen. But today, we see how its fortunes are changing after the conversion of Saul. We are told that the churches… were now left in peace, building themselves up, living in the fear of the Lord, and filled with the consolation of the Holy Spirit. In a way, just as Tabitha is raised from death to life, so too is the Christian community raised from a time of darkness and desolation into a period of consolation and light. The church’s perseverance under persecution, its steadfastness in a time of trial, has borne fruit in a renewed sense of the Spirit’s presence. Consolation has returned. Difficult as it was hanging in there has finally paid off.

Isn’t this why we are praying at this Mass for the grace to do what Peter does in the gospel? In the opening prayer, we asked God our Father to help us to remain true to your gift of life. And in the prayer over the gifts we will be asking for the grace to hold fast to the life you have given us. We do this because we realize the importance of perseverance, of hanging in there.

Do you know anyone who needs encouragement to hang in there today?

Friday in the 3rd Week of Easter
Called through Blindness and Death

Readings: Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 117:1bc, 2; John 6:52-59

We are all quite naturally attracted to the Christ who brings light and life, the One who raises the dead to life and who makes the blind to see. And that is as it should be. After all, that is what we are celebrating especially in this season of Easter. Indeed, in the gospel today, Jesus speaks of himself as the bread of life. While in the first reading, we hear of how Saul is given new sight. Still, it is important to notice also how this new life and new sight is given.

It’s quite startling, isn’t it, that when the light from heaven strikes Saul to the ground, Saul is blinded for a time? His new sight comes only later, after he first loses his initial ability to see. And although, in the gospel, Jesus does refer to himself as the bread of life, he does so in a way that throws his listeners into confusion. How can this man give us his flesh to eat? In a way, not unlike Saul, the eyes of their understanding are also blinded. In order for Saul and Jesus’ listeners to gain new sight, they must first die to their earlier way of seeing things. The same can also be said about the disciple Ananias. He too is called to die to his initial opinion and judgment of Saul – Lord, several people have told me about this man and all the harm he has been doing to your saints in Jerusalem – so that God might use him to be the instrument of Saul’s healing and conversion. It seems clear that the Lord brings people into the fullness of life and light by first calling them into darkness and death.

Strange as this might seem, we actually have similar experiences, do we not? When some of us have to undergo surgery, for example, we often have to be put under general anesthesia, so that we can be made well again. We are put to sleep so that we can awake to a more wholesome life. Something similar happens in human relationships too. Sometimes, we may think we know someone even before we have had a chance to talk to the person. But our knowledge might be based solely on what others may have told us, or worse, on the color of the person’s skin, or the faith that the person professes. Whatever the case may be, as it was with Ananias, we often only get to know the other better when we are willing first die to our prejudices. In the same way, the relationships between parent and children must also keep changing to remain truly alive. We all know what can happen when a parent insists on relating to adult children in the same way as when they were toddlers. In a real way, the earlier relationship must die, so that a new and more life-giving one can be born.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian who was killed by the Nazis in the Second World War, once wrote: when Christ calls a man (woman) he bids him (her) come and die… But, as we are reminded by our readings today, this is a dying that leads to a fuller life, and a blinding that leads to keener sight.

How is the Crucified and Risen Christ calling us today?

Thursday in the 3rd Week of Easter

Readiness for the Drawn

Readings: Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 66:8-9, 16-17, 20; John 6:44-51

Coincidentally, our readings today help us to continue our reflection on evangelization that we began yesterday. Apart from it being a long word, and difficult to pronounce, we sometimes find ourselves shying away from evangelization because it poses a considerable challenge to us. As a senior priest told some of us the other day, when commenting on the difficulties of preaching a homily, not only must you have something to say, but you must also know how to say it. And we might add that when sharing our faith, we need also to know when to do it. Aren’t we sometimes afraid that if we were to say the wrong thing, or in the wrong way, or at the wrong time, instead of converting people to the faith, we might turn them off forever?

All this is true, of course. When we consider the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in the first reading, for example, it’s quite clear that the eunuch’s conversion is aided in no small measure by Philip’s ability to say the right thing at the right time and in the right way. Not only does Philip appear just when the eunuch has a question concerning a passage of scripture, but Philip is also able to respond in such a way that the eunuch is led to ask for baptism. It does seem like a tough act for us to follow, doesn’t it?

And yet, the thing that stands out most in the story is not really the considerable ability of Philip. Neither is it the obvious openness of the Ethiopian eunuch to receive the Good News. What stands out most is the truth of Jesus’ words in the gospel: no one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me. More than any human capability and talent, what stands out most in the readings is the desire and power of God to draw people to God’s self. It is God’s Spirit who draws the Ethiopian eunuch to ponder over the scriptures and to seek instruction. Just as it is God’s Spirit who leads Philip to offer guidance to the eunuch. It is God who, through the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, continually draws people to God’s self, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

To evangelize, then, is really to participate in this ongoing work of God. Ultimately we are not really the ones who convert others. That would be a burden too much for us to bear. Instead, we are called to do what the angel tells Philip to do in the first reading: be ready to set out… Be ready to share your faith when the opportunity presents itself. Be ready to be led by the Spirit to those being drawn by the Father to the Son. Be ready…

Are we?

Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelist
No White Elephants

Readings: 1 Peter 5:5b-14; Psalm 89:2-3, 6-7, 16-17; Mark 16:15-20

It’s just two Sundays ago when we all renewed our baptismal promises. And our readings on this feast of St. Mark the evangelist invite us to reflect a little more deeply upon the significance of baptism, on what it means to be a believer.

Perhaps the first and most striking aspect is what the gospel refers to as the signs that will be associated with believers: in my name they will… pick up snakes in their hands, and be unharmed should they drink deadly poison… When was the last time any of us believers picked up a snake or drank deadly poison in the name of Jesus? How to understand these words? There are some, of course, who interpret them literally. We know, for example, that there are groups of Christians, in the southern part of the US, who actually continue to handle poisonous snakes. And then there are those who think that even if these signs existed in the past, they are no longer relevant now.

I’m not sure if they were meant to be interpreted literally. But when we hear about snakes might we not be reminded of the serpent in the book of Genesis, the one that seduces the first man and woman to stray from the path marked out for them by God? And isn’t our world still filled with such voices today? And when we hear about deadly poison, might we not think of all the things that the world values, things that poison the Christian life, things like the desire to get ahead at all cost, things like materialism and consumerism? Aren’t believers called to enter and engage this world in the name of Christ without being bitten or poisoned?

But in order to do this, we need also to attend to two other things. The first is the purpose of these signs. As the gospel tells us, they are meant not so much to draw attention to ourselves but so that the good news might be proclaimed to all creation. They are meant for evangelization. And Christians evangelize not by a power that is not our own. As Peter tells us in the first reading, more important than any wisdom of our own, more crucial than any skills or knowledge that we may acquire, what is most important is for us believers continually to bow down before the power of God, whose power lasts for ever and ever. Amen.

We may remember how, not so long ago, some wise guy put up several cardboard cut-outs of white elephants around a new unopened MRT station. The point he was making was that the unopened MRT station was not fulfilling the purpose for its existence. We may also remember the following words of the late Pope Paul VI: the church exists to evangelize. And we, all the baptized, are the church. Just as an MRT station exists for people to board and alight from the train, so too do we, as church, exist to evangelize.

Are we true evangelizers or white elephants?