On August 9th we celebrated national day. A time to be proud of the achievements of Singapore. In only 44 years, the young, tiny city-state has become one of the most developed countries in Asia. No one would contest that. But, how do we measure development?

We routinely divide the world between developed and developing nations; a more “politically correct” terminology than the outdated first and third world countries.

But who decides when one country stops being “developing” and becomes “developed”? Which criteria do we use to determine what development means? Do we look at the per capita GDP? At the political regime? At the competitiveness of the nation? Do we judge it by economic standards? Citizen’s contentment? The quality of its infrastructures? Government service? All of the above?

Little more than a month before Singapore celebrated its 44th birthday the church issue the latest papal encyclical “Love in Truth”. The topic? Development. It may come as a surprise to many that the Church worries not only about spiritual matters but about secular issues such as development.

In fact, in 1967, Paul VI wrote Populorum Progressio (the development of nations), precisely on the same issue. Benedict XVI wants that document to be a landmark for successive documents to constantly promote the true development of nations. A political agenda or undeniable duty of the church?

So what does the church say about development? And even more importantly, is Singapore considered developed by the church’s standard?

The church tirelessly teaches that persons, not systems, are the point of reference in all social issues, development included. In the words of Fr. Lebret O.P., quoted by Paul VI in Populorum Progressio n. 14: “what counts for us is man—each individual man, each human group, and humanity as a whole.”

One sentence summarizes the whole understanding of the church’s teaching on authentic development: Development “cannot be restricted to economic growth alone….; it must foster the development of each person and of the whole person.” (PP 14). In the latest encyclical, the Pope defines development as the progress “from less human conditions to those which are more human” (Caritas in veritate, 8 )

So, is Singapore developing properly? The first thought that comes to my mind is that in Singapore, some persons are more developed than others. If we need to look at the development of “each person”, each person counts, and that means, even the worst off.

I cannot help but thinking about the conditions of “foreign workers” in Singapore, which are even named differently from “expatriates”, who are, I thought, also foreigners, and also working. Many people seem to be concerned about the “in-humane” way in which they are transported to their working sites, and there have been some measures to fix this embarrassing problem.

However fixing the transport problem only avoids the serious issue. Do this workers live in humane conditions? Do they have proper housing, like a Singapore citizen is entitled to have? Do they earn enough to support themselves and their dependants? I am sure that if the last question was answered satisfactorily, there would not be transportation issues.

In other countries –developed, that is—foreign workers are entitled to a minimum wage that serves them to have normal housing, transportation, schooling and health care like any other citizen.

According to the understanding of the church, all workers deserve a “remuneration… to cultivate worthily his own material, social, cultural, and spiritual life and that of his dependants.” “The simple agreement between employee and employer with regard to the amount of pay to be received is not sufficient for the agreed-upon salary to qualify as a “just wage.” (Compendium… 302). Regarding migrants, the social doctrine of the church believes that “host countries must keep careful watch to prevent the spread of the temptation to exploit foreign labourers, denying them the same rights enjoyed by nationals… and the right of reuniting families should be respected and promoted.” (Compendium… 298)

The latest encyclical expresses the dignified work in the following terms: “work that is freely chosen, effectively associating workers, both men and women, with the development of their community; work that enables the worker to be respected and free from any form of discrimination; work that makes it possible for families to meet their needs and provide schooling for their children, without the children themselves being forced into labour; work that permits the workers to organize themselves freely, and to make their voices heard; work that leaves enough room for rediscovering one’s roots at a personal, familial and spiritual level; work that guarantees those who have retired a decent standard of living. (CV  63)

So back to our question, is Singapore truly developed? Or in other terms, is Singapore developing each person and the whole person? In team racing, what decides which team is the winner, they clock the time of the last member of the team. So what matters is not that they have good runners, but that the worst runner of their team is better than the worst runner of other teams. In sports, that is considered a fair “measurement.” It marks the difference between individual and team competition.

Applying this to development means that a country is only so much develop as the least developed of its inhabitants. In a country with no basic salary, the remuneration for work is at the mercy of the labour market. Other developed countries respect those rights of the worker. To go “ahead” in the development race with different standards of dignity is simply cheating. And if the developing of Singapore needs to achieve the right standards, there is still some room for improvement.

Certainly, Singapore has gone beyond the economical achievement. Racial and religious harmony should be counted as one of the most impressive social development and due credit should be given.

In the end, the question should not be, Is Singapore already developed? As if Singapore, or any other nation for that matter, could afford to sit down and dwell in their successes. The proper question should be, Is Singapore developing properly in the right direction towards true development? Statements or labels do not answer that question. Rather, actions to improve the dignity of all in Singapore are the only appropriate response.

“What is sex?” the five year old asked her Father. Her father was hoping he heard wrongly. “What did you ask?” “Daddy, what is sex?” He sighed, sat beside her, pondered for a while, and measuring his words, tried to explain the birds and the bees to his puzzled daughter. When he considered his first lesson on the topic finished, he sighed again in relief and asked her, “did you understand?… but, why did you ask me that question?” The daughter was still trying to digest the confusing situation but explained to her father, “Mommy said dinner will be served in a couple of secs.”

A father may find it difficult to explain the mysteries of human sexuality to a 5 year old. It is not about terms or reasoning. Children simply lack the maturity and experiences that enables them to understand that. Now, imagine you are not someone trying to explain something so personal to someone who is 30 years younger, imagine you are God and you want to explain yourself to human beings. That is a challenge.

Honestly, if you were God, would you attempt to explain yourself to humans? It is difficult for them to understand each other. The curse of Bable has long lasting effects. God, however, tried. He became man, spoke a human language, and did not choose the intellectual elite of Jerusalem to communicate but the fishermen and peasants of the countryside.

However, understanding is not only a matter of speaking the same language. Children simply don’t have what it takes to understand adults’ matters. In the same way, it is impossible for humans to understand God. Jesus explains ”I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.” (Jn 16:12). The Spirit of God is what we need to understand God’s matters.

God’s incarnation (Christmas) and even Christ’s resurrection will remain inaccessible mysteries for us without the Pentecost. We would only be mere spectators of God’s power and wonders unless that power works within us. Our God is not only the God above of the Old Testament, not only the God with us of Christmas, but foremost the God within us of Pentecost.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is expressed in our hearts with a new kind of life that comes from God. Understanding from the Spirit is different from human understanding. One is about human matters, the other about understanding God.  Filial piety helps to build a relationship with parents; the gift of piety helps us to live as children of God. Life is not just a human life, but maturing into a divine dimension of  the human life. It is about growing up to partake in the business of God.

The power of the God of the Old Testament is not anymore something to witness from a distance, but something to experience within. It is not an overpowering strength, but certainly, it enables those who experience it to “achieve whatever they presume to do.” (Gn 11:6). Speaking and understanding God’s matters means we have truly grown up.

This Sunday’s theme is “New technologies, new relationships and Promoting a culture of respect, dialogue and friendship.” Our religious authorities have requested that we do not use the pulpit “to engage in socio-political activities to canvass for or against the matter.” Do new technologies account as virtual pulpits? Technically no, I hope, and then that restriction would not apply to this post. But even if it does, I will not engage in a socio-political activity that canvass for or against the matter of AWARE. Still, can we promote a “culture of dialogue and friendship” by avoiding issues or by talking about them? Is this fear of debating well-founded or typical panic of control-freak institutions?

However, there are well-founded reasons for fear. The AWARE saga has escalated beyond prognostics. Emotions are high on both sides of the conflict and authorities fear that this may affect national cohesion. The danger is real. In fact, everyone seems to have a strong opinion about it.

However, what causes division is not the debate but the way it is debated. The scientific community does not seem to be threatened by an irreversible schism for or against the possibility of finding water in Mars. And it is not impossible to imagine two scientists of opposite opinions mutually explaining their reasons while sipping coffee amicably. What matters is not what we debate but how we debate about it.

Perhaps the first reason we should learn from this turmoil is that rules are not enough. The rules of engagement between the secular sphere and religion were respected. People have their right to express their reasonable opinions and act on them. Some suspect a religious conspiracy behind the “turn over”, others saw a “crusade for righteousness”. But the facts remain that this was just a group of people with two irreconcilable opinions about sexual education and both sides are equally entitled to defend and act according to what they believe is best. In other words, the rules were not broken. The question is, do rules alone suffice?

If you want to learn to play tennis, you can learn the rules in few minutes, but it will take you years to master the skills of playing tennis well. Rules do not make tennis players better players. Skills do. Integrating dialogue between faiths and secular societies needs more than just rules of engagement, it needs skills. So what are the skills of engagement? Many: sympathy, dialogue, truth seeking, etc. Today, we are specially challenged about one of them: dialogue.

Dialogue is a nice word. It sounds as enticing as the friendship that dialogue fosters. But we might have the wrong idea of dialogue or worse, we take for granted that everyone knows how to engage in it.

One issue the  AWARE saga has put on our laps is whether we can continue to ignore the issue of truth. If there is no truth that we are all suppose to pursue, dialogue simply means, “I want to know your stand, so that I do not step on it.” Dialogue without truth is merely information about other’s opinions to live and let live. In other words, indifference. Of course, indifference is not a nice word, so we call it tolerance and peace. And we esteem it a necessary condition for civilized life in a democratic society.

Dialogue with truth, on the other hand, tries to understand the other side. True dialogue is a skill because it needs to listen carefully to what the other has to say. If there is truth, I, the other party, or both can be wrong. I need to pay close attention to what I hold true, to what others hold true and to any other possibility of being true. If I cannot rephrase what the other side has to say, I am not listening, and if I am not listening, true dialogue, that is, dialogue about truth is futile.

This kind of dialogue is a skill because it entails hard training, continuous effort, lots of practice, acceptance of failures and short comings and indeed a special talent.

True dialogue requires that I consider that I could be wrong and how the other might be right. After all, if others hold a different view, there must be something that makes them believe what they believe. We do not only need to know the difference of opinions, we need to understand why the other thinks differently.

The truth about the shape of the earth is not simply about “flat is wrong” and “round is true”. There are serious reasons why people have believed for thousands of years that the earth was flat. The truth is not only that the earth is round. The truth is that the roundness of earth is so vast that it looks flat. Flat-earth believers were able to embrace the truth not because they were slapped with the facts, but because they were able to reconcile “their belief” with the “truth”. This truth did not satisfy one side of the debate only; it satisfied both.

Dialogue with truth moves people in the same direction; without truth makes people draw “untouchable boundaries” between each other. Tolerance without truth promotes a kind of indifference where the opponent is just an obstacle to avoid, rather than a companion to move along with. They also do speak about “moving on” but it does not refer to any particular direction, it simply means to stop the confrontation.

But truth alone is not enough. Truth without hope creates desperate fighters who figure that without their “truth”, the world will surely collapse. Dialogue, in this case, is fact a confrontation. It seeks to overpower the opponent. It often has recourse to caricaturing the adversary, distorting the weakness and then attacking the distortion they themselves have created in the enemy. It denies the dignity that true dialogue respects. It draws the same difference between street fights and noble sports where opponents salute each other before and after the fight. It is easy to understand why. Truth without hope despairs, and when we despair we explore any means to prevail.

This is where our skills for dialogue are most lacking. I would say that we suffer more from a crisis of hope than from a crisis of truth. Even if Jesus is not acknowledged as a religious authority, He mastered the skill of dialogue based on hope. The God of Jesus Christ is not here to fight against man. And Jesus fought not. He could have tried to avoid evil by running after sinners and screaming to them his infinite truth. Instead, He respected. In him, God respects the freedom of the victimizer, even at the expenses of the victim. And this is for us hard to swallow.

This is what was lacking in the AWARE case. When the new guard realized that they could take over leadership of the group, they saw their chance to stop people from teaching the wrong sexual values. They believed they had the truth and they took advantage of the opportunity to spare children from being exposed  to ”wrong sexual teachings.” The question is, was it done appropriately? It was legal, licit and certainly respected the “rules of engagement” between the secular and the religious. But, was it done with skills of engagement in consistency with the gospel they believed in? Did they exercise the evangelical cunning of serpents for the sake of the kingdom or did they fail to present the values of the gospel with the evangelical simplicity of doves?

Jesus did not impose His way. He proposed it. God does not force His way into man’s lives. He invites Himself to be invited. Only a fool or a hopeful person can afford to to that. Only a fool can do nothing in the face of evil. Only a hopeful person will know that forcing people to do well is not a durable solution. But the truth is that only a genuine change of heart in freedom and truth can solve the evil of the world. It is not about shouting louder than abortionist, or even about forcing paedophiles into chastity. We certainly must do what we can to prevent crime and evil. But, the ultimate goal is to move people into being willing to do good.

When the first Christians wanted to make sense of the death of Jesus on the cross, indeed about preferring to be a victim rather than a victimizer, they found the verses of Isaiah meaningful: “he does not break the crushed nor quench the wavering flame.” (Is 42:3; Mt 12:19). The gentleness of God’s ways is plain consistency with His love. God does not impose Himself nor imposes his ways. He introduces Himself as the one who yearns to be introduced into man’s lives by their own free choice.

Often we are tempted to stop evil no matter what it takes. Jesus’ approach is surprisingly different. In the parable of the Kernel and the wheat (Mt 13:18ff), Jesus suggests that in a world where good and evil are intertwined what matter most is not to be involved in uprooting the good, even at the cost of letting evil grow. The truth that sets ahead trying to eradicate evil at any cost for the sake of efficiency does not fulfill God’s gentle ways. Imposed truth is not the way of truth, because truth cannot possibly be imposed. It needs to be proposed. This is why the church as well, “proposes, she imposes nothing. She respects individual and cultures, and she honors the sanctuary of conscience.” (Redemptoris missio, 39).

Jesus could have avoided all the crimes of His time, He could have stopped the adulterous woman before she committed adultery and could have forbidden the prostitutes that ate with Him to commit any sin. The father of the Prodigal Son could have run after his son and nagged him to conversion, but he chose to wait for his son’s conversion in freedom. God’s truth must be proposed in God’s gentle, respectful ways.

Good and evil will continue to coexist. However, evil fights; good, instead, prefers to be crucified before forcing His way. This  can only be done in folly or in hope. The folly of the cross can only be reasonable in the hope of the resurrection. It is not our fight but God’s. God has the last word and we must hope in it. Truth without hope fights because it seeks to win no matter how. Truth with hope would rather wait, even if ignored or despised. The goal of the fight is to overpower. The goal of the dialogue is to draw people.

Training in the simplicity of doves is a key skill of engagement. As Blessed Mother Teresa put it, “God does not ask us to be effective, He asks us to be faithful.” What counts most is not how much evil we have stopped or how much amount of goodness we have poured out; but how faithful we have been to God’s ways, how consistently we show love lovingly. “The media is the message” even for God.

Truth is associated with totalitarian and intolerant attitudes and that is why it has practically disappeared from the social sphere. In fact, it might well be the very reason why religions are under suspicion in the first place. However totalitarian regimes were not dangerous because they believed in truth. Some were indeed right. They became dangerous when they started to believe that truth could be imposed.

If we should move on from the conflicts between the religious and secular realm, we need to remember this crucial lessons: dialogue is here to stay. It is up to us to engage each other in a dialogue with truth and hope or to just move away from any risk of tensions pretending that absence of confrontation is real peace. As we celebrate the day of communication, we should promote a culture of respect. Let’s do it by learning to dialogue, rather than assuming that everyone has already mastered the skill.

The AWARE saga has taught us a few lessons but also left some unanswered questions. Do religions have a role to play in the public realm? Is faith an exclusively private issue? Jesus himself said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”. Does it not mean that religious and social matters should be kept separate?

Once a religion is adopted by the majority of the population, the temptation is to simplify matters by mixing or even equating legal policies with religious issues. That well intentioned merging comes at a price. The history of the western world is plagued with conflicts brought about by the confusion of the religious and the secular realm. Emperors claimed religious authority and religious authorities invoked God to rule over secular matters. In fact, it took Europe a few centuries to realize that church and state are better kept separate.

However, we are still wondering whether religious beliefs and customs should be allowed to creep into the secular arena. Crucifixes and scarfs in public places are just two examples.

After a long history of the erroneous mixing of secular and religious matters, we have reached a point of no return and other states that still use religious laws are more likely to move on to secular states. The reason for this is not simply practical but one of fairness. The secular realm has its own goals and methods and this gives it an autonomy that religion should respect. By the same token, the secular law should guarantee freedom of religion and freedom in religion.

Christianity has understood the theological reasons for this mutual respect. God himself respects human autonomy. He does not force His way into human history.  The God of Israel is the God who “left man free to make his own decisions” (Ecc 15:14) and the church echoes this divine respect in her last ecumenical council: “God left man in the hands of his own counsel” (Gaudium et spes, 17). If God respects human autonomy, so must the church or any other religion for that matter.

However, in the typical pendular movement of history, we are now starting to swing in the opposite direction: from uncritical mixing to complete divorce. In fact, there is a suspicion that religions muddy the naturally peaceful waters of society, that religions bring about more  conflict than solutions, and that the world would be much better without any religion at all. So, until that day arrives, we’d better confine the burden of religion to a minimum. Now is the time of secularism. Indeed, some have call it the new religion. The slogan seems to be “Confine religions to the sacristies of their own private spheres where they should learn to live and let live.”

That attitude is a false solution. That divorce will end up crippling religions, depriving societies of a transcendental purpose and creating a kind of bipolar citizens: private believers but social practical atheists. But do we seriously believe that religion, even if it is not my religion, is better than no religion? Don’t we have enough of discrimination, riots and dissension of religious origin?

Religions have something to offer. Aquinas said that if God did not reveal Himself, only a few people would reach the truth, after great efforts and with a mixture of errors. Religions offer answers that are easily accessible to more people, in an easier way and with greater guarantees. It is not for nothing most great religions agree on most important matters.

Of course there are also differences among them. And there has been manipulation of religion to push private agendas. But we should not blame religions for the sins of religious people. It is better to believe that there is a God than not to believe at all. It is better to believe that God is a merciful God than believing that God is an avenging God. The whole truth about life is impossible to achieve in this life, but the more we have of it, the better. Religions do certainly bring a true aspect of life than the secular may find it difficult to achieve on its own.

By understanding the transcendental destiny of the person, religions advocate a kind of human dignity practically inaccessible to a materialistic secular mentality.  An awareness of a superior Being, necessarily fosters an understanding of equality among people that cannot be matched by the secular version. In fact, today,we are witnessing a kind of equality in which “some are more equal than others”, where the absolute right to life is being compromised by the quality of life one is judged to have.

It is not by chance that this version of “unequal equality” happens in our secularized world. Where there is a lord, the rest are all servants; if the lord disappears, all will fight for Lordship. As Vatican II put it, “when the idea of God vanishes, so does the dignity of man.”

On the other hand, secular ideas and criticisms help religions to be more reasonable. The Catholic church even finds herself thanking atheist critiques for helping her purify some misunderstandings in the practice of faith. Let us recall how a misunderstood sense of the next life withdraws some believers from social commitment. The criticism that religion was the “opium of the masses” was the wake up call for a right understanding of social progress and development in this world perfectly compatible with the hope of the after-world.

In other words, religions have something to offer to the secular arena; but the secular arena needs to be respected in its autonomy. Both are bound to live together. Now, religions and secular institutions have similar ends: the betterment of human life. They do this with different understandings and through different means. So religions and secular organizations are bound not only to encounter each other, but to often disagree and contradict each other. So, if religions and secular institutions must learn to live together, what are the rules of engagement? 

The goal of these rules can be reduced to one word: integration. Integration is opposed to confusion where both parties interact without respecting their boundaries and autonomies. Integration is also opposed to divorce or disintegration. Integration implies that the parts remain distinct but they make up a whole. Integrating religion and secular affairs entails that both respect their boundaries and autonomies through a mutual understanding of their own proper goals and at the same time, they both play a role in the whole of the society, making society more cohesive.

It is not enough not to cross each other’s boundaries. Religions do not become integrated when their believers become lukewarm. Compromising their believes and practices, religious people simply send out the message that religion is subordinated to practical goals. They become means to be utilized and compromised. What is supposed to be a witness of the absolute, fails to fulfill its role by compromising. Muslims who don’t take their fast seriously, send a message that faith is something superficial. When Catholics cooperate with activities that contradict their beliefs in the name of an “inclusive” mentality, not only do they betray their own faith, but fail to exercise the role of religion in the secular world.

There is often the illusion that because this believer in a different faith does not care much about his beliefs, he becomes closer to our  faith. In fact the opposite is true. Lukewarm Muslims, if converted to Christianity, tend to be lukewarm Christians. Committed Buddhist, if converted to other religion, would become a committed believers. Dilution is confusion, not integration.

There are some minimal rules of engagement that should be preserved. The right to conscientious objection for reasonable matters is one of them. Not to impose particular beliefs on others would be another. But the fruitfulness of the engagement lies not so much on respecting the rules of integration as it does on learning the skills of engagement. What are those skills? Many, I suppose, but one stands out: dialogue.

And that deserves more detailed consideration.

 A few years back…  I was attending a birthday party for an 8-year old. We had music, presents, family, friends and even a piñata which the birthday boy eventually struck after threatening to strike everyone else before that. And then came the final act. One of the family friends was a good magician and started to show off some of his tricks.

By far, the most popular of his tricks was extracting coins seemingly out of the children’s ears. We were all thrilled and entertained. But not equally. The way we were thrilled was very different.

As the magician started to withdraw money from the children’s heads as if it were a  mini-bank,  the crowd was instantly divided. On one side, there were those like me, on the other, those like the children.

I, as with the rest of the adult crowd, was intrigued. How did he do it? I know there was a trick somewhere, but where? We were paying close attention and waiting for a false move that would give the trick away. We were thinking, reflecting, analysing, wondering, and also keeping our distance.

The children, however, could not keep their distance. The magician became a living child’s magnet. In seconds, all of them were jumping around him and screaming “Do it to me. Do  it to me!” For them, that was not a mystery to be scrutinized, they just wanted to be part of it.

Magic disturbs the scientifically trained mind. It attempts to show that the immutable laws of physics do not apply. If money can grow out of children’s heads, I am sure there will be something we can do about it. Adults need to discover the trick to pacify their minds, to dismiss the event and go back to their daily routine.

Children, on the other hand, do not know yet that there are immutable laws, they are just drawn by curiosity to unusual things. For them, a TV is as magic as a disappearing act. We have learned to dismiss the TV magic because, even if we don’t understand the trick of how things that are happening in Iraq can also be shown in our living rooms,  we know that some technician knows how it happens and can give us a reasonable explanation. We know it is not magic, simply complicated technology.

The day the children used their thinking to dismiss the mystery, they would have become adults. Perhaps, that is what Jesus meant when He said, that unless we become like children, we will not inherit the kingdom.

When Jesus appears to His disciples after death, they are looking for the trick. Is He a spirit? Thomas would even ask for proof, “It is all a trick of your imagination, unless I see and touch by myself.” Jesus was very patient with them. He knew they were looking for the trick and tried to invite them to become like children again. This time, there was no trick. It is true, “It is indeed I”, He then invited them to be part of the mystery: “Stay in the city, until you are clothed from power from on high.” 

“He then, open their minds to understand the Scriptures…”, the gospel tells us. In the first reading Peter declares he is a witness to that understanding, that what the Scriptures (and Prophets) have been foretold is that God’s Christ would suffer. Lastly the second reading also speaks about knowing God: “Anyone who says, ‘I know Him’, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar.”

We constantly suffer the adult temptation of understanding God to pacify our minds so that we can move on with the “real” issues of our busy existence. There is understanding to dissect and dismiss, and there is understanding  to embrace and change. The children’s desire was to be part of the magic; the adult’s desire was to dismiss the magic. We need to learn to combine the maturity of the adult and the genuineness of the child. We need to learn to scream to God: “Do it to me.”

It is useless to try to understand God from a distance. The Jews had been reading the Scriptures for ages. We can go over the whole Old Testament word by word and we will never guess that the Messiah “had to suffer” and whoever it was all there, in front of their eyes. To understand the prophecies, the church will have to re-read the Old Testament, but only after God has made them experience the mystery… only when the church was part of God’s mystery… only then could God play the magic on them.

When we are part of the mystery, our understanding opens a new world in front of us. When our understanding is suspicious, we will be closed to any world that is not in our daily routine. To say that we know God but we are not part of Him makes us liars because we are only “trick-seekers”. The mystery of the resurrection, the mystery of why the “chosen one” had to suffer, the mystery of how God can love us so much as to become a victim of his creature can only be understood from inside -  when God performed the “mystery on us”.

May we learn to ask to God to keep doing His mystery on us.

As I was looking at this image in the ”porta lignea” of the basilica of St. Sabina in Rome, it stirred me to ask an interesting question. Why is the cross important for our faith?

 This picture shows the first representation of the crucifixion that has been preserved to our days. What is interesting is that it dates back as late as the 5th century. Other Christian symbols have been preserved from the beginning of the church: the fish, the bread, etc… but no crosses or crucifixes. Why? Did it take the first Christians five centuries to discover the centrality of the cross? Did the 5th century Christians suddenly discover the importance of the crucifixion?

This representation does not pretend to innovate a symbol, it is simply a representation of a scene shown among many other scenes. In fact, the crosses are barely visible, what is shown is the crucified. Does the cross deserve to be our most outstanding symbol?

Perhaps symbols evolve and change with cultures, but the core of our faith is expressed in the gospels, which some scholars have described as accounts of the passion and resurrection, with a long introduction. Accepting that Jesus “must suffer according to the Scriptures” is an essential condition to true faith in Jesus.

The cross is not just an unfortunate episode in the life of Jesus. Jesus did not even save us “in spite” of the cross, but through His cross. Jesus was not a simple hero or martyr whose torments were an expression of their fidelity and consistency. His passion revealed a Redeemer. If the incarnation of Jesus reveals God with us; the crucifixion reveals God for us.

Jesus had been in control of His life and destiny clearly throughout His whole ministry. He decided whom to cure, where to go, what to preach, when to leave, whom to approach. He is the master. There is, however, a turning point in the life of Jesus when He was assailed by an extreme distress. In the synoptics, it happened at the Garden of Olives. The gospel of John presents this extreme distress at the beginning of the Last Supper. From then on, Jesus was passive. He would let things happen to Him. He would not run away or hide Himself. He would not defend Himself or even pray to be delivered. He allowed men to do with Him as they pleased. This was a unique moment in the history of the universe. God had become vulnerable, tragically vulnerable.

The passivity of Christ is the passion of God who decided to be touched and hurt by the sin of the world. Christmas makes full sense only in the light of Good Friday. God’s incarnation was not to holiday with humans. God became man to allow Himself to be touched by man’s rejection. Capital punishment is simply that, the expulsion of a man from the community. The cross is man’s way to tell God, “we don’t want you with us”. The Son of God attracted upon Himself the ultimate expression of man’s sinful condition.

An omnipotent God could be totally dispassionate about man’s disobedience; a compassionate God cannot but implicate Himself in man’s self-destruction to the point of taking the effects of this destruction upon Himself. Christmas is God accompanying man; Good Friday is God substituting man as a true victim of human sins. And all this is not a symbolic ritual sacrifice;  it is pure crude history, a naked fact. God came to His creation and was tragically rejected in the nastiest possible way.

From now on, sin cannot say anything else. The human power to hurt cannot become more powerful. It has been exhausted. Of course, we are still free to hurt ourselves and others, and these hurts will be real and consistently have tragic effects in our lives. But from now on, these sins are only mere echoes of the main cry “Crucify him!” Sin had spoken its loudest.

However, is this the last word?

The word “maunday” comes from a verse version of the Latin “mandatum” command. It refers to Jesus’ command “you ought to wash one another’s feet” (Jn 13:14).

Interestingly, the church has never received this “command” in the ritualistic sense. Although there were a few Christian sects that practice the rite literally, the church has received this commandment only as an imitation of the spirit of this rite. In fact, the ritual of the washing of the feet  is not mandatory, not even on Maundy Thursday. All the more for us to strive to understand the spirit of this gesture. The poignant question of Jesus to his disciples is still a good question today: “Do you understand what I have done for you?” (Jn 13:12)  Do we?

 In Jesus’ time, the washing of feet was a custom that was not required from anyone, not even slaves, although “occasionally, disciples would render this service to their teacher or rabbi” (Raymond E. Brown).

It is not surprising that Peter refuses this apparent reversal of preposition. Peter, or other disciples, should wash Jesus’ feet. However, Jesus was very clear. He does not mean that the disciples have become suddenly masters: “You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am.” (Jn 13:13).

Jesus had intended something very different: “If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do. Amen, amen, I say to you. No slave is greater than his master nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him.” (Jn 13:14-16)

In other words, although the distinction between master and disciples is real, the relationship becomes one of equality. If the master dares to treat the disciples like masters, all the more, the disciples should treat each other like masters. Although we are all different, when it comes to service, we become all equal. Servants have, in a way, received the dignity of masters without being masters. Dignity refers to something’s goodness on account of itself (Aquinas). The disciples have received something good, a master’s treatment from the master. They now become equal in dignity.

Love, unlike washing feet, cannot be commanded (Deus caritas 18). God does not force us to produce an emotion towards our neighbors. It does not work like that. Often, we forget this, and change the commandment of love into a pretense of love: “I do not really love him, but I will act as if I did.” We pretend to love only because we are told. Like Peter, we accept the commandment without understanding: “not only my feet, but also my hands and my head as well.”

Love cannot be understood unless it is experienced. It cannot be produced unless it is received. Only the disciples that received the master’s treatment by the master can give the master’s treatment to others. Washing each other’s feet entails removing our clothing of pretenses of superiority, acknowledging the equal dignity of the other person, and treating them consistently.

In this way, love does not become a product of our strength but a natural reaction to the goodness we just discovered in the other person. At times, we may not like them. We may even have good reasons to hate them, but still Jesus washed their feet with our feet. Jesus saw in them something we must discover, and when we do… we realized what Jesus had done, we understand and we are empowered to love as Jesus loves.

Just once, Jesus allowed the people to take over. For a time He had been preaching and healing. He had to face misunderstanding and lack of faith while trying to assert His identity as the Son of God. Then, He allowed them to do what they wanted. Before He was active, then He was passive. No more corrections, no more plans, just submitting Himself to the errors of their decisions.

Their first error was to acclaim Him as a political liberator; the second, to condemn Him as a dangerous criminal. The liturgy today sandwiches us between these two mistaken decisions; between the gospel of the entry in Jerusalem and the death on the cross; between the mistaken “Hosanna to the king!” and the “Crucify him!”

Today, we look at those facts with the privileged eye of an omniscient outsider who knows the outcome of those events. But for the people there at that time, understanding who Jesus really was,  must have been difficult. However, practically all our mistakes can be reduced to acclaiming the wrong thing as our salvation and rejecting what saves us as dangerous. Proclaiming riches, success, manipulation, control and dominion as our tools for liberation is making the same mistake the crowds acclaiming Jesus made. Rejecting our brothers and sisters as an inconvenient obstacle would be rejecting our true means of knowing and loving the real God. We are no better than the inconsistent and changeable crowds of Jerusalem.

The ascent to Jerusalem was the moment of truth. The moment when Jesus let people be people and accepted the Father as Father. Because people wanted to be people, He let them condemn Him. Because the Father wanted His will to be done, Jesus struggled and yielded to His Father’s will. Palm Sunday is a meditation on the nothingness of the human spirit and the entity of God’s Spirit. Still, we wave our palms today, not like the ignorant crowd who didn’t know what kind of king they chose, but as believers who know that our king is the only one who can really and deeply liberate us.

It is easy to praise God, when we are blessed, but how about when we are in the middle of misfortune?
One of the most degrading misfortunes is loneliness. Jean Vanier tells the story of Claudia. In 1975, he welcomed Claudia into their l’Arche community New Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

“She was 7 and had spent practically her whole life in a dismal, overcrowded asylum. Claudia was blind, fearful or relationships, filled wit inner pain and anguish. Technically speaking she was autistic. Her anguish seemed to increase terribly when she arrived in the community, probably because in leaving the asylum, she lost her reference points. Everything and everyone frightened her. She screamed day and night and smeared excrement on the walls.

Claudia lived a horrible form of madness which should not be idealized or seen as a gateway to another world. Madness has a meaning. It is an escape from anguish. But there is an order in the disorder that can permit healing, if only it can be found.  20 years later Claudia was quite well. She still liked being alone but she was clearly not a lonely person. She would often sing to herself and there was a constant smile on her face. Jean Vanier asked her a question one day: “Claudia, why are you so happy?” Her answer was a smile and direct: ‘Dios’ (God).”

Loneliness can indeed become hell on earth. In fact, solitary confinement is the punishment most dreaded by prisoners. Loneliness has other side-effects like depression, self-destructing desires, lack of will to live, etc.

Today’s gospel tells us of the loneliness of Jesus. The gospel of Mark does not mention the details other gospels offered. But the few details are poignant. Jesus was in the company of angels and wild beasts. Wild beasts are not dangerous as we may suppose. Wild animals are understood as non-domestic animals– animals that don’t belong to the world of men. Jesus was accompanied by the whole creation except human beings. Jesus was having a taste of Adam’s solitude: “it is not good for man to be alone.” In a way, Jesus was fasting, not only from food, but from human company altogether.

Only after passing this test of solitude with God did Jesus come back to the human world to preach the Good News. His tested human experience that God alone suffices, gave him the authority and the content of the “GoodNews.”

We should ask ourselves if our joy comes from the assurance of being with God, or from being with people who like us? Does our happiness come from the little comforts of our life or from God alone? There is only one way to know. Testing it. Give up company, give up the little pleasures and see where your happiness goes?

Peter associated conveniently these waters of destruction with the waters of the baptism of new life: a new creation. Both the first and second readings are about new beginnings, just like the gospel is about the beginning of the public life of Jesus. In the Ark, Noah and his family begin a new creation. In the loneliness of the flood, what appears to be the end becomes the beginning, thanks to the seeds of life they spared (a pair of each species of animals). When loneliness carries the seeds of new life, it overcomes destruction with fertility.

The church invites us to fast and abstain for 40 days to remember the forty days of Jesus, and the 40 years of Israel in the desert. To accompany Jesus in this trial of being alone with the Father, we need to accept the invitation of the Church to give up our little dependencies to reach our inner loneliness with God. We need to search the seeds of life from which a new revival of faith will unveil the ever new aspect of Easter.

In his book, “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals” Darwin tries to explain how the expressions of humans came about. In his studies, he realizes that many artists fail to depict faithfully these expressions:

“It is, however more probably, that these wonderfully accurate observers intentionally sacrificed truth for the sake a beauty,than they made a mistake; … but a lady who is perfectly familiar with this expression, informs me that in Fra Angelico’s ‘Descent from the Cross,’ in Florence, it [this particular expression] is clearly exhibited in one of the figures on the right-hand; and I could add a few other instances.” (The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, p. 193)

It is interesting that the one artist that did not sacrifice truth for the sake of beauty is a Dominican painter and saint whose feast we celebrate today.

In the Dominican traditional theology, God attracts man in many ways. God is the supreme Truth  because man’s intellect is wired to search for the ultimate answer to the ultimate question. God is also the supreme Good for man because man is wired to search for self-fulfilment, and this will never happen away from God. But God is also the supreme Beauty because we are made to contemplate Him “face to face” as He really is, for all eternity.

In our western traditions, we are not too used to thinking that God is beautiful. Perhaps because we are not used to that image of God, which is more familiar with the Eastern churches. However, it is still a great preaching tool to be able to show God’s beauty. Unlike truth, beauty does not convince. It simply attracts with delight. In a world suspicious of any imposition of truth, the appeal of God’s beauty needs to be seriously reconsidered.

Fra Angelico certainly knew how to put this into practice. In him, we have a lesson for our age.