True! God's ways are not our ways

Reflecting on the Emmaus episode, i found the following very intriguing:

1. HE knew what would happen to the disciples after his death, the direction they would take. The two disciples, one of them named as Cleopas and the other the unnamed 'you' get away from JERUSALEM (the centre of worship) and get back to Emmaus (perhaps to their former way of life...Just like the disciples who left after hearing the Hard Eucharistic Discourse). God in his Providence allows all these to happen.
2. JESUS seems very unfair when he calls the disciples 'foolish men'. Imagine after four years of theological formation, i have not learned or personally understood the person pointed to by the Sacred Scripture. What else can I be called other than 'foolish'? Perhaps Jesus today tells me to read the Scripture with HIM and listen with wrapt attention to every word He speaks rather than complaining about the poor and inefficient theology professors.
3. JESUS is very courteous that unless you invite him to stay, he will not stay even it is late night.....Stay with me Lord....It's the feeling of your absence that hurts me.....It's the unclarified convictions, faulty perceptions that make me go foolishly away from your Presence. Stay with me.
4. You cannot cling to God because HE is beyond your grasp. When Jesus reveals himself, lead you to clarity, you can't just stay on but need to return the same hour -"And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem;" (Luke 24:33).

God's ways are not your ways, but God allows you to recognize HIM at your pace. Be prompt to act....

Jesus is Alive! Do you Feel Him?

P

eter Kreeft in his book Jesus Shock makes a statement, “only a live wire can shock you. A dead wire can’t.” I agree with this statement because I had an experience of catching a dead electric wire. My memory goes back to my childhood. We were playing ‘hide and seek’, I climbed on a tree top and just above the tree were electric wires passing. I accidently caught one of the three wires. I was surprised that nothing happened to me. I reasoned, ‘maybe there was a power failure at that time.’ I was not thrown out or burnt or received a shock. My resurrection faith tells me that ‘Jesus is Alive!’ If he is alive, the believing me should have a qualitative impact on my being a Catholic. If not, there are possibilities that you consider Jesus as a distant historical figure. You are born a catholic but never seriously thought over the Jesus impact. I tried to think it over. The following is the result. 

Jesus Christ is the Answer to Which Every Human Life is the Question

Its true that Jesus died for my sins. He loved me to the extent he laid down his life for me. But I am not able to just digest that fact ‘for love of me, he died for me’. Was he not mad? Crucifixion was a onetime event in the historical past and now I am chronologically distant from the original event. What is it to do with me now?

‘Jesus Christ is the answer to which every human life is the question,’ said St. John Paul II. Scripture says that “There is salvation in on one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). That name is ‘JESUS’. This is a bold and unique claim that Christianity makes. My faith tells me that it has everything to do with you. The crucifixion and death of Jesus has eternal influence on me. However, I find myself a human being prone to error, doubts, weaknesses, sickness, death and other human proclivities. Why do I not experience the fullness of existence? Is it because I am free to choose when there is an offer of salvation/fullness? Why do I still see evil in the world even when I profess that God is good? Why do people still suffer and die? Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, human beings everywhere are under constant fear, there is a scarcity of enough healthcare facilities, angst, pain, sorrow, hunger, etc. Why can’t God put a stop to the pandemic Covid-19? All these questions are connected to our human condition.

 

Human Condition

The characteristics and key events that compose essentials of human existence, including birth, growth, emotions, aspiration, conflict and mortality can be understood as our human lot/condition.

Sometime back, a person asked me to pray for her father because he is addicted to drinks. He had been to several retreats and treatments, but he can’t just come out of his addiction to drinks. She specifically asked me to pray for him because she believed he would be eternally damned. I told her to love him as he is loved by God. He is sick and is stuck in his addiction. Now how can a human being lift himself up? He is created free but landed up in a situation in which he cannot lift him up. Will God save him, grant him the grace to overcome his weakness? If the man addicted to drinks takes his addiction till his death, is he really responsible? The force of habit has weakened his will. That is his condition. Will he be eternally damned? A human being endowed with reason is responsible for his actions. And so a psychologist applying the principle, ‘every man makes the best use of the resources available to him at a given point of time,’ would say that the opportunities that the addict got to transform himself like retreats and treatments would have been properly used. The principle of the psychologist does not work if the patient is untreatable.

Innocent suffering and unjust treatment are part of our human condition. Look at the lot of Lazarus as portrayed in the gospel of Luke (Luke 16:19ff). Lazarus is a poor man, covered with sores, at the gate of the rich man. He was very poor and was unable to provide for himself. He longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table. Both the rich man and the poor Lazarus received their rewards in the afterlife – Heaven for Lazarus and Hell for the Rich man. The rich man in his freedom would have used his abundance to ease the situation of Lazarus. But when someone gets too cozy with what is given, it is difficult to fundamentally opt for good. I tend to think that the freedom given to man is tricky and difficult. It became so due to the fallen nature of human beings. 

Dilemma: Man has Mastery over Nature but not Himself

A human person is endowed with freedom. If man is free why can’t he master himself? The predicament of man’s condition to master himself is best expressed by Fulton Sheen in his book, The moral Universe,

“It is one of the curious anomalies of present day civilization that when man achieves greatest control over nature, he has the least control over himself. The great boast of our age is our domination of the universe: we have harnessed the waterfalls, made the wind slave to carry us on wings of steel, and squeezed from the earth the secret of its age. Yet, despite this mastery of nature, there perhaps never was a time when man was less a master of himself. He is equipped like a veritable giant to control the forces of nature, but is as weak as a pigmy to control the forces of his passions and inclinations.”

Fulton Sheen, The Moral Universe

Man is trying to get at something as he is driven. Different psychologists in the past answered the question – what drives man? Sigmund Freud suggested that it is his will to pleasure; his ardent disciple Adler disagreed him and said, ‘it is will to power’; and Viktor Frankl through his experience at the concentration camps proved that it is ‘the will to meaning’ that drives man. If you read the confessions of St. Augustine, you can find all the above mentioned drives – pleasure, power and meaning. But what stands out is his being found by God or his innate drive characterized by ‘God search’ as expressed in his own words, ‘my heart is restless until it rests in God.’  Can a God search drive man to be found by God? This brings us to the point of fundamental option.

Fundamental Option: Either Or

The fundamental option is a gradual development of a basic orientation of one’s life either for or against God. This fundamental option is said to be for God if one’s life is fundamentally devoted to the love and service of others, and against God if one’s life is essentially devoted to self-love and self-service. In the context of St. Augustine’s life, the question is, how can you opt for God when you are a sinful man of concupiscence? This is a human predicament. Let’s understand this predicament through the phenomenological analysis of lust as given by St. John Paul II,

“The flaring up in man invades his senses, arouses his body, draws the feelings along with itself, and in some way takes possession of the heart. It causes the “outer man” to reduce the “inner man” to silence. Because passion aims at satisfaction, “it blunts reflective activity and disregards the voice of conscience.” Once the outer man has suffocated the voice of conscience and given his passions license, he remains restless until he satisfies the insistent need of the body and the senses for gratification. One might think that this gratification should put out the fire, but on the contrary, as experience attests, it does not reach the source of inner peace. He is only consumed.” [Christopher West, Theology of the Body Explained: A Commentary on John Paul II’s Man and Woman He created Them (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2007), 216.]

Every sinner desires that God may dramatically intervene to change his life. God intervened in the life of Francis of Assissi in the Church of St. Damiano. Or rather God prepared his heart for such an encounter. Saul became Paul through that intervention of God at Damascus, which in turn changed the course of his life. Does this mean that they had no problems with their daily choices and life situations? Don’t think so. They too had to struggle. Let go and leave it to God. Their heart was prepared gradually to opt for God. The saints allowed their passions to undergo a radical transformation and that’s how they could desire to love as God loves. Saints consciously searched God, found him and proclaimed him. With the treasure of the Christian revelation, what do I make of the uniqueness of Jesus?

Uniqueness of the Christian Claim and the Necessity to Correct the Existing Relativistic Patterns of Thinking

You hear in normal conversations today – why do you want to have an absolute claim that ‘Jesus is the ultimate Saviour of Human Kind? Why don’t you preach what Christ stood for like compassion, love, peace, healing, reconciliation and Joy? Or be like Christ and preach only when necessary as Francis of Assissi would say? After all, all religions are finally propounding ideals that are good for humanity. Finding yourself in a pluriverse of religions, can you digest the absolute claim of Christianity and understand its uniqueness? For peace and tolerance, are you still holding on to the view that ‘all ways of belief are equally valid and that the sages believe that ‘Truth is one, the wise perceive it differently’ (‘Ekam sat viprah bahudha vadanti?).  Or are you under the influence of a relativistic mentality? Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI identified that the biggest threat to Christianity today is ‘dictatorship of relativism’. The Christian claim is that God has absolutely revealed himself in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is our savior. Are you burdened by this conviction?[1]

 

You might think that claim to absolute truth is intolerance.[2] Not at all. Perhaps, the view of tolerance that we may have is ‘negative tolerance’ as often seen in not saying or doing anything that might offend the religious sentiments of other people (for the sake of not offending anyone setting a standard of behavior for all). When you use statements like, ‘in my personal opinion’, ‘I feel that’, ‘I sense that’, etc., you might be in the group of relativists or in the mindset of taking caution that what you say might not offend anyone who hears you. As against a relativistic mentality, man is capable of truth and that the truth requires criteria for verification and falsification. It must always be accompanied by tolerance. You might ask, how? I find the answer in what Pope Benedict XVI writes,

“The truth comes to rule, not through violence, but rather through its own power; this is the central theme of John’s Gospel: When brought before Pilate, Jesus professes that he himself is The Truth and the witness to the truth. He does not defend the truth with legions but rather makes it visible through his Passion and thereby also implements it” [Benedict XVI, Light of the World The Pope, the Church, and the signs of the Times: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 2010), 51].

The answer is that the Truth is a person – Jesus Christ. Jesus makes himself visible or as he says, “All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mat 11:27). Perhaps, the question of tolerance arises when religion is understood as ‘man’s search for God’ (personal effort at understanding who God is) rather than ‘God’s search for man’ (God reveals as man can be fully understood only in the light of God who shares in human condition).

In the multi-religious context of India, we can easily know how each religion takes on the human condition and speak of salvation. Buddhism would say that life is a cycle of suffering, death and rebirth and liberation from this cycle is through the practice of the eightfold noble truths. Hinduism with its deterministic view suggest that as you sow, you reap.[3] Moksha/salvation is your way up to God. 

Christianity believes that Human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, endowed with reason and freewill. He has the capacity to either accept God and fulfill the purpose of creation or entirely reject God. With the doctrine of Original Sin, it is believed that everyone is prone to sin. What God does through Jesus Christ is a rescue operation – redemption. St. Paul’s letter to the Romans tells us, “…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith” (Romans 3:23-25). God became human to raise us up. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).

All those who seek truth, seek God, whether this is clear to them or not.” - Edith Stein

Christianity is revelation of God’s way down to man. Now what necessitated God to become man, suffer, die and rise again is God’s answer to the puzzle of human condition as expressed in the cry of St. Paul, “wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24, 25). St. Augustine discovered the newness of finding God and with great conviction, he said, “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new.” How did St. Augustine, who lived in the 4^th century discover the Truth of Christ? Was he not chronologically distant in history?  Christ is The Timeless Truth and “all those who seek truth, seek God, whether this is clear to them or not” (Edith Stein). Jesus made that exclusive claim, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn 14:6). Jesus is unique because he did not say that he found a way as Buddha or Confucius might say. He claimed that he is God, “I AM WHO AM”. He is a crucified Risen God. The first century Christians had the courage to die for him. My salvation is Jesus.

 

Jesus is risen! The Straightforward Answer of the First Century Christians to the Question Why they were Christians

Though Christianity was a banned religion in the Roman Empire, it grew exponentially. The cause of this exponential growth was the ‘Easter Effect’ as George Weigel calls in his article, “The Easter Effect and how it changed the World.” He speaks of the Easter effect:

“There is no accounting for Christianity without weighing the revolutionary effect on those nobodies of what they called “the Resurrection”: their encounter with the one whom they embraced as the Risen Lord, whom they first knew as the itinerant Jewish Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, and who died an agonizing and shameful death on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem.”[4]

The Resurrection of Jesus Changed everything as Jesus himself said, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelations 21:5). N.T Wright, a biblical Scholar would say that ‘the answer of the first Christians to the question why they were Christians was Jesus the Risen Lord.’ In fact, the Easter effect changed the early Christian’s understanding of the resurrection itself. The Jewish Christians believed in the general resurrection of the dead but what happened to Jesus was something new. St. Paul grasped that what happened to Jesus would happen to Christians too – “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5). This insight of St. Paul that what happened to Jesus also will happen to us grew. And this insight is an “evolutionary leap’ in the human condition, as the Pope emeritus Benedict XVI described in the second volume of his Book Jesus of Nazareth. 

The early Christians were not afraid to proclaim the absolute truth of the Risen Christ. Look at the transformation brought about in the lives of individuals soon after the resurrection. Having met the resurrected Jesus, the persecutor Saul was transformed as Paul, an ardent disciple of Christ. He proclaimed Christ fearlessly. He regarded “everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:8). ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel’, such was the stand of St. Paul. The discouraged disciples going to Emmaus were met by the resurrected Christ, were cleared off their false notions of the Messiah, and were left with their hearts burning though the disciples were very offensive in their speech. 

What should shake you and me out of our feeble faith is an ever fresh awareness of the eternal presence of Christ. Jesus is eternally new. He is eternally present. I peculiarly found a newness in Christ. He is alive. HE is a live wire and there is power. He is true to what he says, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Perhaps, in my life nothing was making any headway because I considered Jesus as someone distant in history. Jesus though physically absent, he is ever present. The newness of Jesus is his shock treatment to you and me. You may be like the blind man at Bethesda, lying down sick for 38 long years, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. But you can retrace your steps if you are willing to just blindly believe in the words of Christ, ‘get up and walk’ and sin no more. ‘I can get back’ realization of the prodigal through a thorough self-assessment of his condition of starvation, loneliness and death may enable us to understand that it is our wrong choices and decisions that led us to starve for the grace of God. When we choose what is godly, we can retrace our steps back in humility. Jesus is Alive!

“Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him, everything else thrown in” - C.S Lewis, Mere Christianity

                                                                                                         

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[1] Shashi Tharoor in his book, The Hindu Way seems to suggest that there is a burden in being convinced of being in the group of those who claim to be in the true path. He writes, “…as a Hindu, I belong to the only major religion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion. I find it immensely congenial to be able to face my fellow human beings of other faiths without being burdened by the conviction that I am embarked upon a ‘true path’ that they have missed. This dogma lies at the core of the ‘Semitic faiths’, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. ‘I am the way, the Truth and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me’(John 14:6), says the Bible; There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet’, declares the Quran, denying unbelievers all possibility of redemption, let alone of salvation or paradise…….i am proud that I can honour the sanctity of other faiths without feeling I am betraying my own” [Shashi Tharoor, The Hindu Way: An Introduction to Hinduism (New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2019), 12.] The way I read his statement is that he seems to suggest that absolute claim to truth is intolerance and a spirit of tolerance that motivates relativism is your desire to respect all views and all claims.

[2] In fact the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on the relation of the Church to non-christian religions states: “The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. She has a high regard for the manner of life and conduct, the precepts and teachings, which, although differing in many ways from her own teaching, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men” (Second Vatican Council, Declaration Nostra Aetate, 2).

[3] This is not the only view in Hinduism because as Shashi Tharoor writes that it is a faith without dogma, it has no supreme authority. “IT is a timeless faith, populated by ideas at once ancient and modern, hosting texts, philosophies, belief systems and schools of thought that do not necessarily all agree with each other. But none has ever been rejected by some supreme authority as beyond pale; there is no such authority in Hinduism” (Shashi Tharoor, 14).

[4] George Wiegel, “The Easter Effect and how it changed the World,” originally published in Wall Street Journal, 30 March, 2018; retrieved from https://eppc.org/publications/the-easter-effect-and-how-it-changed-the-world/ , accessed on 14/04/2020.

Quo Vadis?

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

                                                                                          - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Quo Vadis?

Photo Taken at Quo Vadis Domine Church, Rome in 2017

Waking up with the question - quo vadis? (Where are you going?) seemed a significant divine whisper to me today. Faced with a situation of not knowing how to proceed, being clueless, or forcing my will over God’s will, with the probing questions whether to remain or to quit, to face or turn away, God does not easily let you have your way. A legend has it about St. Peter. Peter was facing persecution from the regime of his day and he was about to be crucified. While he was running away from being crucified for Christ’s sake, it seems that Peter Saw the Risen Lord along the road outside the city of Rome. So he asks the Lord, “Quo Vadis? (Where are you going?)” The Lord answered him saying, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” We know from Scripture that the gaze of the Lord (Lk 22:61) melted his heart and he wept bitterly (Lk 22:62). When the Lord told him that he is again going to face crucifixion, St. Peter picks up courage to return to his ministry.

Do You also Want to Leave?

Jesus after his Eucharistic Discourse in the Gospel of John, Chapter 6, asks the twelve, “Do you also want to leave? (Jn 6:67). In fact many disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him at the difficult teaching. At this time, it is Peter who answers Jesus, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (Jn 6:68).

I have heard stories of many priests leaving their priesthood either to marry or to a properly discerned state of life. What intrigued me is that I did not find any canonized saints who left priesthood though there are saints who were once married. I have also heard of priests who had difference of opinion over celibacy. And the discussion is ever on. Before the Amazonian synod there were discussions about the lifting off the rule of celibacy and allowing married priests. It’s true that celibacy is an ecclesiastical discipline. I liked the frank discussion of Pope Francis with a Jewish Rabbi Abraham Skorka as found in the Book titled, “On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family and the Church in the 21^st Century”,

Bergoglio: I would like to make a clarification: a Catholic priest does not get married in the Western Tradition, but he can in the Eastern Tradition. There priests can marry before being ordained, but if they have already been ordained, then they cannot get married……..Now what happens with us who are consecrated? We are so weak that there is always the temptation to be contradictory. One wants to have his cake and eat it too, he wants the good things from the consecrated life and from the lay life. Before entering the seminary, I was on that path. But later, when one cultivates the choice for the religious life, when one cultivates the choice for the religious life, he finds strength in that direction. At least I live it that way, which does not take away the possibility that at one point one could meet a woman. When I was a seminarian, I was enchanted by a young woman at my uncle’s wedding. I was surprised by her beauty, the clarity of her intellect… and, well I kicked the idea around for a while. When I returned to the seminary after the wedding, I could not pray during the entire week because when I prepared to pray, the woman appeared in my mind. I had to go back to thinking about what I was doing. I was still free because I was only a seminarian, I could have gone back home and said see you later, I had to think about my choice again. I chose once again – or allowed myself to be chosen for- the religious path. It would be abnormal for these types of things not to happen. When they do happen, one has to rediscover his place. He has to see if he reaffirms his choice or if he says, “No, what I am feeling is really beautiful, I am afraid that later I will not be faithful to my commitment, I must leave the seminary.” When a seminarian thinks like that, I help him to go in peace, so that he can be a good Christian and not a bad priest. In the Western rite, to which I belong, priests cannot marry like the Catholic Byzantine, Ukranian, or Greek rites. In these Churches, the priests can get married; the bishops cannot, they have to remain celibate. They are very good priests. Sometimes I tease them, I tell them that they have a woman in their house, but that they do not realize that they also got themselves a mother-in-law. In Western Catholicism, the issue has been discussed by some organizations. For now, the Church remains firm on the discipline of celibacy. There are those who say, with a certain pragmatism, that we are missing out on more manpower. If hypothetically, Western Catholicism would change on the issue of celibacy, I believe that it would be for cultural reasons (like in the Eastern Church), not as much as a universal option. For the time being, I am in favour of maintaining celibacy, with the pros and the cons that it has, because it has been ten centuries of good experiences more often than failure. What happens is that the scandals are immediately seen. But tradition has weight and validity. Catholic priests chose celibacy little by little. Until 1100, there were those who opted for it and those who did not…….Celibacy is an issue of discipline, not of faith. It can be changed [Jorge Mario Bergoglio-Abraham Skorka, On Heaven and Earth Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the Twenty-First Century, Trans. Alejandro Bermudez and Howard Goodman (Bloomsbury: London, 2013), 47-49.

I had sometimes expressed my passing desire to work as a missionary in the Amazon region. My brother priests sometimes fooled me perceiving that I chose the amazon because of the popular thinking that the Pope would eventually allow married clergy. With the sex abuse scandals and other obvious and scandalous lives of priests or leaders in the hierarchy, many give into the temptation of saying, ‘Why can’t they get married?” On the one hand, it is true that the laity in certain rites have high regard for priests and on the other, when the naked scandals stare at the face of the faithful, an awareness of weakness and vulnerability facing priests is shown up. They either realise this and look at priests with compassion or make a judgement with an outright condemnation. 

In the context of Corona Virus, a peculiar situation has arisen that the faithful cannot easily partake in the Eucharistic celebration physically. No priests, No Eucharist. No Priests, no sacrament of Reconciliation. No priests, no anointing of the Sick. Pope Francis in the Post Synodal Apostolic Exhoration, Querida Amazonia writes,

“…the exclusive character received in Holy Orders qualifies the priest alone to preside at the Eucharist.”

“The Priest is a sign of that head and wellspring of grace above all when he celebrates the Eucharist, the source and summit of the entire Christian life. That is his great power, a power that can only be received in the sacrament of Holy Orders. For this reason, only the priest can say: “This is my body.” There are other words too, that he alone can speak: “I absolve you from your sins”. Because Sacramental forgiveness is at the service of a worthy celebration of the Eucharist. These two sacraments lie at the heart of the priest’s exclusive identity.”

So dear priests, why there is no conviction about your identity as priests? Why ruminate on leaving the path that is consciously chosen. My dear priests, loving the Lord is not a feeling, it is a decision to remain in the relationship with Christ that you have consciously chosen. Faith is trusting God even when you don’t understand His plans. But do you think that it is hard to wait and impatiently leave the path that you already trod. Know this – its God’s nature not to reveal everything all of a sudden. He is gradual in his revelations. A priest friend of mine wrote to me the other day, “Let us humble ourselves…bearing fruits of repentance…reparation for our own sins of commission and omission…and wait ‘under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time’ (1 Pet 5:6).

Cracks in Priesthood

A question that can be addressed to Priests is, do you notice a crack in your priesthood? A question that can be addressed to the lay faithful is, do you notice some cracks in your priests? Bishop Fulton Sheen in his book The Priest is not His own traces the first crack in the priesthood of Judas. He writes, “was avarice the cause of the fall of Judas? No! His fall began with lack of faith and trust in the Lord…..It was Judas’ lack of faith that hardened his heart and confirmed him in his greed.” In the face of the necessary evil of institutionalization, we have somewhere forgotten to cultivate and nourish that faith and trust in the Lord. We might have given attention to everything else except Christ. That’s the reason why Christ becomes centre stage on Holy Thursday as he washes the feet of his disciples. If you truly love, you can really come down and set an example. 

A lack of clarity about the ideal of celibacy and the practice of it might find you in trouble. Those reading this might have heard stories of priests leaving their priesthood to marry the woman they love. You have also heard by hearsay that such marriages do not remain successful. Even some cultures consider departure from priesthood as taboo and curses attached to it. It is important to understand that a priest is a sexual being twenty four seven. Coming to terms with sexuality has a say in the celibate priestly development. Friendship with women that lacks purity and integrity, the many celibate adjustments that celibates make are remote expressions on the way to departure from priesthood.

 I have found the detailed summing up of the celibacy very meaningful as experienced by a Capuchin Friar Keith Klark in his book titled An Experience of Celibacy: A Creative Reflection on Intimacy, loneliness, Sexuality and Commitment:

“On the physical and emotional level, celibacy is the ability to know oneself as sexual and to experience some considerable comfort with that knowledge. It is the ability to regard oneself as sexual without experiencing the internal and external demand to do something about it – neither the need or demand to make it go away, nor the need or demand to act it out. It is the choice not to act out one’s sexuality in a genital or romantic way.

On the level of relationships, celibacy is the ability to cherish and nurture other people’s being and becoming without establishing bonds of mutual emotional dependence with them. It means not to be married, and not to be pursuing the path which naturally leads to marriage. It is the ability to establish warm and deep relationships with others by loving them and being loved by them in a non-exclusive and non-possessive way. It is a way of loving which allows the celibate person to say, “They and I are better off for our having been together, but no worse off for our parting.”

On the practical level, celibacy is a way of remaining significantly more available to cherish and nurture others’ being and becoming because of the choice not to take on the responsibilities of establishing and maintaining one’s own family unit.

On the level of social impact, the prophetic level, it is a way of living which seriously challenges the hedonistic tendencies in all of us. It says that an auto is not something to believe in, that you don’t necessarily deserve a break today, and that self-fulfilment is not the ultimate meaning of life.

On the personal, spiritual level, celibacy is a commitment to stand ready to enter fully and vulnerably into life’s moments of loneliness because God can be found concrete in such moments. It is a commitment to face the reality of our separateness and incompleteness and to allow ourselves to experience, however momentarily, that our own being and becoming is blessed by God, and to discover the radical all-sufficiency of God.

On the level of Christian Faith, celibacy is this lifestyle taken up and lived in response to a call or invitation one has received from God to live as Jesus did. The call to a celibate life is a gift from God.”

I have found the definition of celibacy very satisfying as given by Richard Sipe, an eminent psychologist who himself was a priest for several years

“Celibacy is (1) a freely chosen, (2) dynamic state, (3) usually vowed, (4) that involves an honest and sustained attempt, (5) to live without direct sexual gratification, (6) in order to productively serve others, (7) for a spiritual motive.” [A. W. Richard Sipe, Living the Celibate Life: A Search for Models and Meaning (Missouri: Ligouri/Triumph, 2004)].

Are you still fooling yourselves and not convinced? Do you still want to debate celibacy? On 27^th January 2019, on his return flight from Panama to Rome, Pope Francis had this to say quoting the phrase of Saint Pope Paul VI, “I would rather give my life than change the law on celibacy…….celibacy is a gift for the Church.”

Do you also want to leave finding that it is hard to fulfil the obligation to celibacy? “Celibacy as a lifestyle has never been upheld as a value by the church. It is celibacy “for the sake of the kingdom” which has always been promoted” (Keith Klark). It goes without saying that it is a voluntary choice. It presumes that the individual who takes up the celibate way of life has had an overwhelming experience of God. In response to this experience, one sets out to love and serve the Lord.

You are a priest – a diocesan or a religious priest vowed to celibacy for the Kingdom. What matters in life is how we have learned to love. St. Paul tells us that the greatest of all virtues that eternally remain is LOVE. St. John of the Cross attests to the same truth when he says, “In the twilight of our lives, we will be judged on how we have loved.”

In the conclusion of the book The God who Loves You “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”, Peter Kreeft exhorts the readers, “Tell God right now that this is the one thing you want above all: the gift of loving Him completely. Tell Him you will never let Him go until He blesses you thus. Tell Him that even in eternity you will not let Him go until you are 100 percent love. And then you will never want to let Him go.” This is exactly the blessing that Jesus granted to St. Peter after his resurrection by asking him the same question three times: Do You Love Me? He found reinstated to continue his loving relationship with the Lord. That gave Peter the courage to proclaim Christ and believe in the Power of God’s Promise.

“May your hand be with the man on your right (the chosen/ Priests), with the son of man whom you made strong for yourself. Then we will not withdraw from you; revive us, and we will call on your name. Lord God of hosts, restore us; light up your face and we shall be saved.”

-      Psalm 80: 18-20

Fr. Vayalamannil Aneesh Chacko SDB

(09/04/2020, Maundy Thursday)