Happy New Year.

May this new year come as a blessing to all of you.  Birth of the new year is also birth of hope.   Let us celebrate hope as one nation.  We leave behind 2020 with all its challenges. That was an unforgettable year.   It caused pain, it wounded us deeply.   Globally it emerged as an arrogant enemy against human survival.  Life and livelihoods are threatened. Starvation is a reality to nearly 122 million people in the world.  It was an existential disruption.

But 2020 is not the story of human submission, it is the story of human resilience.  As the doors of 2020 were closing, the scientists have won a strategic battle against our enemy.  The vaccine came with an astonishing speed. Hope is in the horizon.  Covid also will end.

The year 2020 also proved to be the year of compassion.  Our generous Myanmar people rose against the prospect of chronic starvation through sharing their food when lockdown came in.  For a country that was facing pre-Covid socio-economic morbidities, our people’s response was poignant.   When nature attacks us, we stand together.    Once again, we have proved that we are a golden land, not because we have jade and diamonds.  We are a golden land because our people’s hearts are made of gold.   They can melt at the sight of the tears of fellow human beings.  For a country with a fragile health infrastructure, the surge and rate of death was controlled by the inspiring example of our front-line health workers. The government responded with commendable clarity.  Guns in war areas have fallen silent.  Compassion has become the common religion.  This is a golden opportunity to build a new Myanmar of justice and peace.

Covid like any other disaster globally uncovered the underlying visceral injustice.  Pope Francis was eloquent in articulating that the virus did not attack all people equally.  Economically and socially marginalized communities are disproportionally infected and die.  Virus kills.  Discrimination also kills.  Disempowerment kills. Poverty kills.

Covid is a pandemic that needs not only a vaccine but a surgery.  Social surgery.  Surgery in our priorities, in the way treat the poor and the vulnerable.    It is becoming clear, that extensive destruction of forests resulted in this virus jumping from exotic animals into the human population.  We face an existential crisis: the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.

Any disorder, or disruption of social order, is a challenge. But it is also an opportunity.  To build back better, set our moral compass towards the vulnerable, let the arc of history bend towards economic and environmental justice.  Pope in his latest booklet “Let us dream together”, says Covid offers a great opportunity to reset priorities.  Even superpowers which spend billions on war machine realized their folly when they understood they have more soldiers than doctors, more guns than ventilators.

For all of us in Myanmar, this is a lifetime opportunity. Covid is not the only pandemic that diluted the dignity of our people.  The senseless chronic war and displacement of seven decades is the worst pandemic.  In a country of enormous resources, enforced poverty is a cruel pandemic.  Millions of our youth forced into unsafe migration and modern forms of slavery are the heart-wrenching pandemic.   Time has come to make all these pandemics to disappear from our wounded history.

I call upon all to ‘dream together’ for a new Myanmar.  We can do it together.  2020 saw our people voting overwhelmingly for democracy and peace.  Even in ethnic areas, people voted for the national party, hoping it would bring peace.  Signs are clear: times to heal our fragmented identities based on race, religion, and language.  Too much blood and tears have been shed. Heal this wounded nation through reconciliation.  There is no peace without justice. Let those who rule respect the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights of all. There is dignity in diversity.

This country has been open for loot for too long.  The illicit economy robs billions from the people of Myanmar.  Drugs, Gems, Jades, Teak, and other resources, above and below the ground, are looted by international mafias, mercenaries, and their local enablers.  Democracy is waging an asymmetric war.  As a nation, we need to rise up against these evil forces that eat out of the bowels of the poor.

Let us dream together for a day when peace based on economic and environmental justice prevails in Myanmar, the day when all the refugees, internally displaced people will return home as full citizens.  Let us dream for the day, democracy marches without any impediment, let us dream for the day when religions will be instruments of peace and reconciliation, let us dream for the day we will really become the ‘Golden Land’ when all the resources are shared in a transparent way, let us dream of the day when we will move away from the shameful tag as the ‘least development country’ into the most developed nation in South East Asia.

Let the nightmares of 2020 fade away.  Let a new Myanmar of dreams rise again. Let a new Myanmar of peace, health, and wealth become a reality to all of us.

Wishing my countrymen and women, a blessed New Year,

Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, Archbishop of Yangon, Myanmar.

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Merry Christmas.  

Happy Feast to all of you families.  Special prayers to parents who are skillfully holding on to the integrity of the family during these challenging times.  Let there be more blessings to each one of you.  Let the families be healed. Let the families be released from the grip of all challenges.  Let the new year come with a dawn of hope.  Christ is in charge.

The feast of the Holy family comes soon after Christmas.  Why?  So much significance to the family?  The Bible started with a family, the first parents, Adam and Eve.  Today is the feast of the second family, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus:  the coming of the second Adam. ( 1 Corinthians 15:45-49:).

The first man was the destroyer of the relationship with God. The second Adam is the restorer.  The first family seek to run away from God. The second family ran to God. The second family is called Holy because it said “Let it be done according to your will.”  The first father, Adam blamed the woman and made family life a history of conflict. The second holy family, Joseph, did not blame anyone, not even Mary when he found her pregnant before marriage.  His patience made that family holy where the redeemer was born.

Holy Family feast is the central theme of our Faith Journey.   It started with the Trinity.  Our God lives in a family. Three persons sharing equally, not competing.  Trinity is a symbol of family.  Love is the glue.  Christian God is not a heartless God, segregating himself from ‘polluting humanity’ but he is a God lives with only one quality love, not power. He is not macho monster, spewing fire and brimstone of vengeance.  He is a God intoxicated with love, indulging in extravagant sacrifice of his Son.   John  captures those mad moments of God with the beautiful pivotal Biblical  verse :

God so loved the world that he sent his only Son

Not to condemn but to redeem ( John 3:16).

That redemption happens in the family.  The call to priesthood and religious life is a noble calling.  But this should not devalue the holy calling to Family life.  All of us need to understand creation did not start with reverend fathers and reverend sisters. When God took the risk of creation, he wanted to create a family.  Not monks.   God did not create  Fr Adam and Sr Eve.  He created them, man and woman.  God’s first celebration was marriage since he found ‘Man must not be alone, and he created woman as his mate’.

That sacred concept of family faced great difficulties.  Today, amidst the Covid the integrity is challenged by poverty, anxieties, conflicts, and uncertainties.   Christ knows your tears;  Christ knows your brokenness.

Because he did not incarnate in a rich family. Jesus could have been born in the royal family, rich family, Pharisees’ family.  But when God loved, he did not love the rich and powerful. He loved the ‘lowly, raised them up’  he called them Anawim, the poor of Yahweh.    He sheds tears when His children suffer.  His way of responding is to send ‘his only son’  not to be a charity worker, not as an NGO distributing food, but as one among those powerless and vulnerable people.  God suffered with us, like a mother nursing her suffering child, sharing in her pain,  God shares our pain. Knowing our pain, he walks with us.

The problems faced by the Holy  Family are the same problems many families face today.   When  Jesus was born there were Angels singing,  kings visited him, stars appeared on the sky.   All of us were born with hope.  Every one of us came with the promise that God was not yet tired of us.   But all through life with Joseph and Mary, there were no Angels singing, no Kings came with gifts.  He was just a carpenter’s son.

He knew every problem our families facing today :

Jesus was poor from birth. The gospel today graphically gives the condition of the family. Luke confirms that Mary and Joseph were poor because instead of a lamb they offered “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,” the lesser sacrifice allowed for poor couples (Leviticus 12:6-8).  Sufferings were foretold: Simeon predicted that ‘a sword will pierce’ Mary’s heart.  The Holy Family started with many of our challenges.

Jesus knows what it means to be in a one-room family.   Nearly 7 lakh people are living in one room in the slums around Yangon.  Jesus’ family knew what it means to starve like thousands of our families forced to starvation during this pandemic.  Jesus family was a daily wage earner provoking the middle class and rich Jews to sneer at him “Is he not the carpenter’s son!”  He belonged to the lowest rung of society, like 60 percent of our people.  He has incarnated in the company of powerless and poor.

Jesus knows what it means to be a refugee, to be an IDP.  Jesus was a refugee in Egypt.  He was an iterant  preacher, always displaced proclaiming “Foxes have holes, the birds have their nests, Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” To the thousands of our people in refugee camps and IDP camps, Jesus’ message: “I know your sorrow.”

Jesus knows the ordeal of citizenship.  It was during one of those exercises to prove the citizenship the Carpenter Joseph took his wife with advanced pregnancy to Bethlehem and ended up in a cowshed for delivery.    Jesus experienced persecution from womb to tomb.  He knows the silent tears of unjustly condemned prisoners like Fr Stan Lourdusamy.   He sheds tears for thousands of youth incarcerated in our jails while mafia bosses who exploited them live in five-star hotels.

Jesus’ response came through his incarnate compassion.  He was rooted not only in Jewish culture but was rooted in human brokenness.  He did this by total obedience to his parents.  The Bible says: And he was obedient to them, And Jesus advanced in age and wisdom and favor before God and man (Luke 2:51–52). For thirty years, the savior of the world, identified totally with the suffering of the family led by a single mother, since Joseph died early.    So Jesus carries the sufferings of the families in his heart.  We need to offer all our challenges when our families we pray to a God who heals because he was the wounded healer.

During His life in Nazareth, Jesus honored the Virgin Mary and righteous Joseph, being subject to their authority during the whole time of His infancy and adolescence (Luke 2:51-52). In this way, He made evident the primary value of the family in the education of a person. Jesus was introduced to the religious community by Mary and Joseph, frequenting the synagogue of Nazareth.  Our families become holy when children are formed in faith and values.  Family is the first church. In pandemic time, when the church is inaccessible, it is the family that becomes ‘home churches.’

We are inspired by two great qualities of the Holy Family:  Love amidst all challenges, shown by patience and understanding.   The holy family faced many difficulties, Jesus’ public ministry must have taken its toll on Mary. Simeon had predicted in the Temple that a sword of sorrow would pierce Mary’s soul. We can imagine one such occasion as we read in Mark 3:21 that when Jesus returned to Nazareth one day his relatives came to take him by force convinced that he was out of his mind. Not a very pleasant experience for any family, no matter how holy.

But Mary, like all mothers, was faithful till the Cross.  Mothers, in the words of Mother Teresa, are created not to be successful, but to be faithful.  Today we remember mothers and their great sacrifice: every mother breaks her body and shares her blood to give each one of us the gift of life.   By being grateful to our mothers, we are grateful to God.  The book of Sirach proclaims that: God sets a father in honor over his children; a mother’s authority he confirms over her sons (Sirach 3:2).

Fathers’ are challenged these days.  Loss of livelihood has brought a great burden.  The first reading talks about the suffering of fathers. These are the times, the family needs to follow the great advice  of St Paul :

Husbands, love your wives and avoid any bitterness toward them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, so that they may not become discouraged (Colossians 3:20–21).

We continue to pray for your dear Families;  Your vocation is most holy.  But the family faces great challenges amidst this pandemic. We pray for livelihood. We pray for patience among one another.  We pray that love becomes the glue that holds us.  Let our faith help us to tide over the tsunami of anxieties.

Those of us who are blessed with resources, be generous with our less fortunate families.  Yangon diocese has asked each parish to support at least 50 families.  I am sure your generosity is spreading to these families during these times.

God bless each one of you.  Christ is in charge. We shall overcome.

+Cardinal Charles Maung Bo., Archbishop of Yangon.

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My dearest Brothers and Sisters of the Taungngu diocese and all the well-wishers gathered here today.  Peace be with you.   May the mighty name of Jesus bless you all with good health, joy, and fellowship of the Christian Community.

This day is a great event like the celebration of 150 years PIME Jubilee you had two years ago in Leiktho.   It was like the Pentecostal day thousands gathered as various tribes:   Gheba Kayins, Ghekho Kayins, Sgaw Kayins, Bwe Kayins, Sokhu Kayins, Burmese, Indians, Chinese, Kayahs, Kayaws, and Shans.   Real Pentecostal day.

Today we start new life, advent season.    The readings today talk of the expectation:  the birth of the Messiah.  With the prophet in the first reading, we pray “Come down lord from Heaven and bless this event”. With Paul in the second reading of Corinthians, we pray: Come and show your face Lord today and bless us.  The Gospel asks us to be ready to receive the Lord.    Christ is coming.  A new bishop is coming to you.  What a joy!

This is a double Christmas.  Happy Christmas!

Let me start with gratitude to our mighty Lord, who blesses this diocese with countless blessings    Let us remember three great blessings of this diocese.

1. The first blessing that comes to my mind is: Our Great PIME missionaries.

Like St Paul, St Francis Xavier, the sons, and daughters of Italy came here as PIME and Reparation Missionaries.   Hundreds of them came here and died here. Surely their spirit is hovering over this function today.    They lived a great sacrificial life, lived during the war, they were in prison, some even died as martyrs.  Fr Alfredo Cremonesi is our own martyr and saint. It is their sweat and blood watered this historic diocese which gave birth to six other dioceses. They shared knowledge about farming and built buildings.   They will be proud of each one of you to see this church flourishing.

2. The second blessing is the protection of the church through its pastoral bishops.

This Diocese was erected in 1955.  We are grateful:  Your diocese has survived great wars, oppression, displacement, death, and destruction.  Your survival is a miracle.    The Good Shepherd sent two great pastors to care for you.    First came   Bishop Sebastian U She Yauk bishop for 27 years, a simple and humble man. Later bishop Isaac Danu came in 1989 Sept.     For more than a half-century, these two men steered the diocese through great struggles.  An era ends today and a new era starts today.

I thank the Lord for the Blessing of Bishop Danu today.  This is a great day for my special friend Bishop Isaac Danu. I had the great honor and privilege to be present for his Priestly Ordination of Isaac Danu in Yado (06- April 1975) when I was still a cleric.  I was also present for his   Episcopal Ordination in LEIKTHO 17 – Jan 1985 (as a priest).   After his marathon run of 35 years as a bishop, he hands over the baton to the new and energetic shepherd   Monsignor John Saw Gawdy.

He was at home in every poor house in his mission visit, he can sleep on the floor on a mat and a pillow.    He was not very choosy about food, as long as the “the betel nut box” was near him.    Bishop Danu spent more time in the mission stations than in the Centre.  His health suffered.  Twice he had operations but he never gave up touring.  Truly a great missionary.   Big thank you, dearest Bishop Danu.  You deserve a joyful rest.

 That brings us to the next blessing: The Gift of the new shepherd.  Monsignor John Saw Gawdy – the John the Baptist to the Diocese of Taungngu. He is the Good Shepherd who will lead the diocese to the green pastures.  Glory to God for this gift.

His motto is the motto given by John the Baptist to Jesus:  Behold the lamb of God.

Today he is a much-respected scholar and holy priest. But as a young student, he was like other boys, involved in all pranks.  But as he grew old, he became very serious with his studies.  As a seminarian, he excelled in telling stories, stories that uplift any downhearted soul.  He attracted many seminarians in his company with his great storytelling talent.  I am sure he will retell the story of this great diocese.   He is a strict disciplinarian with a heart that accommodates everyone.   He is a pastor in every way: in dealing with the people, he loves the poor.

God has sent another John the Baptist to a prophetic role of bringing a new awakening to the diocese. He is called upon to follow the great saint with:

            A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation’

Like his patron, he is called to proclaim an integral Evangelization: saving souls, liberating people from all kinds of suffering.  He is qualified.  He is a scholar.  We warmly welcome him.  Our prayer is:  Let there be hundredfold yield in his administration.

The power of the bishop lies in his pastoral care of his flock.   He does that through his three-fold task.

• Diakonia:  The service of the community – care for the weak.
• Liturgia: presiding in place of God over the flock, building the communion of communities.
• Kerygma:  The ministry of teaching and deepening the faith of the people, with the help of the priests, religious and catechists.

In modern days, Bishops are also called upon to plan for greater socio pastoral effectiveness, good in governance.  Our new Bishop is an expert in governance.

Allow me to identify the mission of the Bishop before we consecrate the new bishop:

1. Bishop as the Sign of Unity, as head of the local church:  Bishop is the head of the local church.  All the priests take a vow to obey the bishop in mission.   Without unity, there is no church.  Ignatius of Antioch called upon priests and people to obey the Bishop.   Help him to implement the mission of Christ.
2. Bishop as a Prophet– The Bishop continues the work of Jesus: Proclamation of God’s Kingdom.  Jesus was the messiah. Jesus was the Word. Jesus broke the Word. He proclaimed:   He came to announce God’s Good news to the whole of humanity, his redemption.
3. Bishop as a Pastor – a shepherd:  The enduring symbol of the bishop his crozier. The crozier is a pastoral staff that is conferred on bishops at their installation. In the West, the top of the staff is curved to remind the bishop of the shepherd’s crook and of his pastoral care of the people entrusted to him.
4. Planner– In Chapter 14 of Luke verses 28-33, Jesus speaks of discipleship.  One of the qualities of the disciple is the ability to plan.  He gives the example of a man planning to build a house.   Another is about a king about to plan a war against another king.  Both needed to plan

Some practical guidelines to the new bishop and the Taungngu Diocese:

In this as your shepherd and brother, I would like to take some concrete issues the new Bishop must face.   I based it not on my own opinion.    I base it on two teachings of  Pope Francis and Pope Benedict’s understanding of mission.:

• Bishop as the missionary of integral Evangelization:  In Vatican II and through the terms of three Popes: St John Paul II, Benedict, and Francis, they have introduced the concept of Integral evangelization:  We are not only worried about the soul.  We are worried about people as persons with body and soul. We work for the development of the human person and the salvation of the soul.  Salvation of the soul (Jn 3:16) and the liberation of the suffering people from all social evils like poverty, oppression and lack of rights (Luke 4: 16-19) are two eyes of Church mission.   I urge the new bishop to undertake this integral Evangelization as the motto of the diocese.
• Bishop as the promoter of Integral Human development:  Pope Francis has brought greater sensitivity to human development.  He has mainstreamed economic Justice (Evangelium Gaudium) and Environmental Justice (Laudato Si). Christian vocation is to create opportunity for the fullest growth.  He has created a Dicastery of Integral Human Development.  The holistic development of our poor people towards ‘life, life in full’ (Jn 10:10) is an integral part of the church mission.

Kindly allow me to help the new Bishop with some of my observations for these two-fold missions :

Blessings of your people:

• Your people are very simple, very faithful, very prayerful
• The priests live with the people, in a simple way, not many problems and they do not give many problems to the Bishop
• Good number of vocations both men and women.

These are the blessings: Let there be more blessings with the new bishop.

What are the challenges to the new bishop.?

1. Poverty and isolation:  Our people are very poor, they suffer a lot, they are isolated from outside world.  The diocese urgently needs to be open to the world.   The next generation needs to be developed.   Sometimes the Taungngu diocese gives the impression, because of historical reasons and suffering, it was isolated and did not reach out to the national level or even international level.   Human resource development is an area of great concern.   I urge the priests to kindly end the geographical and intellectual isolation. Get involved in upgrading the skills.    Update everything.  Preach to a modern generation
2. Need for a Missionary mentality:  Pope Francis talks about missionary mentality, a mentality that is not satisfied with the minimum doing.  It is a mentality that looks for new ideas, new activity, new dreams.   Socially and spiritually we need to develop the diocese.  That is the expectation of the people.
3. I appreciate the great contribution of the Congregation of St Joseph of Reparation. You are great people.  Wonderful missionaries.    But I urge you, your number are big, that gives a great opportunity to train sisters in more skills.   You can bring greater development to your people if your sisters are well trained.
4. Great catechists, our people of God, you are the church.  You need to participate in the proclamation of the Gospel to the modern generation.  So, build your capacities.  Make poverty history through education and empowerment.

Catholic Church in Myanmar has worked out a major Nation-building plan:  Education, Integral Human development, women development, Indigenous rights, and justice and Peace through inter religious dialogue.  These are like five loaves.  We can multiply and share with five thousand loaves.   I urge the diocese to undertake a robust pastoral plan that integrates the major five themes.

Let there be showers of blessings, let there be peace, prosperity, and good health to all of you.  In the mighty name of Jesus, I wish blessings of advent and Christmas.   Let us continue to pray for the new bishop, his mission, and guidance from the holy spirit.  Rejoice and be glad the Lord has blessed you abundantly on this day!

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Today we have gathered in a moment of grief and grace.   Grief because we have come to say farewell to a great son of Kachin, a great son of Myanmar, a great and beloved son of mother church.  This is also a moment of grace because God the Lord in his infinite grace granted to us a great shepherd in Archbishop Paul.   Archbishop Paul is the great gift of God to Kachins, Catholics, and Myanmar.

There will be never another one like him.  We have come here not to bury him, but to praise him.  He will not be happy that we shed only tears:  he will like all of us to remember him as a man who loved the Kachins, the Catholics, and every Burmese with a heart that had space for everyone.   We bid farewell to his mortal body, but we will live with his legacy of love and large-heartedness.

This is the moment of gratitude.

Gratitude to his parents:  a good tree gives good fruit.  Bishop Paul is not only good fruit.  The best fruit.  God chose him ‘ calling him by name’ – with the great name of the apostle Paul.   Archbishop is the apostle of Paul of Kachins.

Gratitude to God: God was his mentor. He guided the Archbishop. When the Columban missionaries left at the age of 38 he took over as the Bishop of a young and challenged Kachin church.  For five decades, his wisdom, his intelligence, and his inspiring example steadied the church.   His quiet but firm qualities helped in building the church.  Today Myitkyina is a very vibrant Catholic community, giving birth to two other dioceses.   All due to his pioneering spirit.

Gratitude to Our Archbishop:  For his great inspiring spiritual personality.  He was born poor; lived through ferocious war; periods of tears and brokenness of the Kachin people – Yet steadied the people through his calmness, fortified by a vibrant faith. He wore humility as his identity. Yet his quietness hid a strong character that helped him to pursue priesthood despite many challenges as one of the first priests.  His firmness was combined with an all-embracing love for everyone.   In his presence, even a child felt at ease.  He related to everyone as a human person,  making every encounter with him a deep experience of love and acceptance.  His was a forgiving and reconciling love.   Hundreds have been touched by his simplicity, his personal interest in each person, his fatherly love for the priests in his care, his pastoral passion for his people.

His first love was for everything that is Kachin.  He loved his Kachin people with deep love.  He was a proud Kachin, he loved the Kachin language, culture, Kachin food.   But that had not prevented him from loving other tribes.  He was a soothing presence in any church function anywhere, in any tribe.     He had a huge heart that accommodated every one: Christian and non-Christian. Partiality is an unknown word to him.  Nondiscrimination was his way of life.

One of the great things about Archbishop Paul was his thirst for knowledge; he nourished a great curiosity; he was a humble student in major church seminars, attending even when he retired. He would sit down to learn from teachers who were not even half his age.   Knowledge for him was a sacramental activity. Sacred.

We grateful today that he served not only Kachins: He served the Myanmar Church and the Asian Church.   He was twice President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Burma (CMCB), and served in various commissions in the Federation of Bishops Conference of Asia (FABC).

Hailing from a poor and challenged family Archbishop attained greatness which is very difficult to emulate.  He is part of the history of Kachin, Catholics, and Myanmar.  Today is an end of an era.   He could say with a full heart: Nunc Dimittis.

He can sing with Mary his own Magnificat :

For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed;

Because He who is mighty has done great things for me,

He has put down the mighty from their thrones,

and has exalted the lowly

Today I stand here also how grateful to My mentor, my spiritual Father, and an enduring friend.   My heart is choked with sorrow, but it also sings the praise of the fatherly care with which he nourished me when I was suddenly to take up apostolic administrator and Prefect Apostolic in Lashio  – he was my Guru.   In my moments of challenges,  I reached out to his sage advice, calmed by his assuring words and presence.  I feel his loss so much.   I am indebted to him for my life’s challenges and those of my mission.   He nurtured an empowering relationship with empathy with me.    He showed his love in action always:  every one of my invitations for dinner was honored with grace and gratefulness.  He would stay with me for private talks – with full of appreciation and guidance.   He was my good shepherd – leading to green pastures. I will miss him immensely.   I would always cherish every gracious moment of mutual accompaniment.

I am sure he would continue to be our pastor beyond this world, interceding for all Kachins and Catholics for peace and prosperity.  His heart would continue to beat for every one of us gathered here to bid farewell to him.  He would join the great company of saints, where the Lord will  welcome with the words: “

Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with small things; I will put you in charge of big things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’  (Mathew 25:23)

Farwell  our dearest Shepherd!

My last encounter was on Friday night.  He was already unconscious.  I spoke through the phone for twenty minutes.  I knew he was unconscious.  I was not sure his ears were listening.  But since archbishop Paul always listened with his heart and responded with love in life,  he would have listened to my last words with his heart. I am sure he wished me and all of us well.

Death is a transition to eternal life; those who believe in Jesus, do not die, they rise to Christ.  Archbishop Paul has reached his destiny. We will meet him as we live with his grace-filled memory and legacy.

Till that heavenly encounter happens in the presence of the almighty,  it is our tear-filled farewell.

In the name of the living God the Father, grace of the redeeming love of Jesus and the empowering presence of Holy Spirit – Amen

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In the powerful name of the living, loving and liberating God I wish you all graces – the gift of good health, the gift of peace of mind, the gift of meeting all your basic necessities.   During these challenging times,  let our hearts be strengthened with the boldness of faith.  Let us joyfully proclaim with Apostle Paul: “If God is with us who can be against us!”

As the darkness of the Covid cloud continues to hover over us,  people of Myanmar and the church are trying to dispel that darkness of despair with the light of compassion.  Like Jesus who was moved by the hunger of the people and fed five thousand people, the Myanmar church is reaching out to those in great need.   Every parish is requested to look after at least 50 families for the coming months.  Church will reach out to thousands of families in the coming months.

We have offered our buildings to be used as quarantine centers.  We deeply appreciate the volunteers, sisters, and seminarians who will be working in the quarantine centers.   Church will not suffer in silence, it will listen to the cry of Pope Francis raised in the latest encyclical:  Be the good Samaritan to the wounded humanity.  Let Love be shown in action.

Today’s readings are the heart of Christianity.  Three readings bring the essence of our faith.  The message is simple: God is love, If you have faith in God, Love one another.  Before God revealed himself, human beings thought of God as a terror, a tyrant who seeks human sacrifice.  Fear and anxiety gripped everyone in the presence of God.   Old Testament is presented even today with a God who is angry, vengeful, and bloodthirsty –  God  – collaborating with one tribe to kill other tribes.

The Jews presented God as a merciless lawgiver. There were more than 600 laws in the Torah – the five books of the Old Testament.   Everything meticulously controlled by law, “stitching a torn cloth to killing the enemy” was governed by ‘sacred laws.’ Even killing had a sacred guidance:  An Eye for an Eye, a tooth for a tooth.  Avenge all killings.  Never forgive your enemy.

Laws without love are idol worship. These were false gods, the idols human imagination made.  Paul points out this in the second reading. Sadly, today many of the Pentecostal pastors continue to preach that bloodthirsty God who is waiting to throw millions into everlasting fire. As the Pandemic dances along the streets of the world, Christian Gospel is manipulated as a narrative of hatred and anxiety.  Preachers speak of end times, rapture when God would come to take the chosen and abandon all other people.  But the Pope preaches a merciful God.   A God of Love.  A God who is closer to all of us more than ever.  A God of Justice who wants a new Post Covid world.   The God Moses experienced on the Sinai Mountain reveals himself as

You, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.  — Psalm 86:15

As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion:  — Psalm 103:13

                   The Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion.  Psalm 116:5

Yes brothers and sisters,  as we sail through the stormy seas of anxiety and despair,  let faith be our vaccine. The faith that believes in a God who appears through the burning bush of hopelessness, disease, and death and proclaims:  I am the Lord who called you out of your mother’s womb.   Our God is a restless God,  restless with an abounding and unconditional love.  He is the Lord amidst all the gripping  sadness and darkness, tenderly with a maternal love assures us

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion for the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. Your sons hasten back, and those who laid you waste depart from you.  Is: 45: 15-17

God’s love is not only unconditional love; it is a preferential love, a pastoral love for the least and the lost.    Today’s first reading brings this out in a very moving way: If you wrong the widow and orphan, my wrath will flare up against you!

Yes.  God gets angry when the poor and the vulnerable are wronged.  The Anawim of Yahweh,  the poor of Yahweh are protected by God. Those who are against the poor will be destroyed by God.   Pope Francis has made it crystal clear: a church that forgets the poor will be forgotten by God.  Pope Francis has brought to the notice of the church and to an uncaring world, the tears and brokenness of the migrants, widows, and those pushed to the margins of the society.   He has brought to notice of the world’s conscience the permanent pandemic of poverty, displacement, war, and neglect of those considered as useless to the society.

That kind of society, as St Paul points out, becomes the idol worshippers. Even churches can be like that:  The idol worshippers of the prosperity Gospels, the idol-worshiping Evangelicals of rich countries who call our Pope as socialist for his pleadings for a new world order that brings the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth to the heart of humanity.  God as Justice is conveniently forgotten.

Today we come to celebrate our God, who can be defined in a simple way: God is love, Love is God. The only meaning of Christian existence is to love.  The full-time vocation of every Christian is to love, fall in love, stay in love. St Paul will wax with joy in his Poem of Love:  Love will determine everything.  Christianity is a four-letter religion, LOVE!  Fratelli Tutti.  Christian God is God of love:  St John defines gloriously :

God so loved the world, that he gave his only  Son

                  Not to condemn but to redeem.   ( John 3:16).

God’s love looks like a mad love.  Abraham was willing to offer his son as a sacrifice.  But God stopped that.  But when his own Son cried out from the Cross  “Lord, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  God chose to let him die.

Not that he loved his Son less,  but he loves humanity, you and me, more.  That is God’s Love. He is our way maker; miracle worker;  even when we forget He continues to labor in love for our welfare.  Our God is Love; that is the new covenant with you and me.  I give a new Covenant, Jesus says: Love one another as I loved you.

Jesus liberated us from all the old Pharisaical laws.  Law brought sin, as St Paul observed.  Love brings grace.   Love ought to be shown in actions.  Love without action is dead, utmost an empty drama.  ( 1 John 3:18)

Christianity is love in action.  Very simple laws: Love God because he is our origin and destination.  In Him, With Him, and Through Him.  He is our Alpha, He is our omega.  We came from him, we will return to him.   Humanity is God’s love in action.

Loving God:  most of the people are comfortable with this commandment.   But St John asks a troubling question: If you say you love God but hate your brother, are you a real believer?  No.   If we cannot love our brothers and sisters, whom we see every day,  how can we love God whom we do not see?   (1 John 4:20). Those who do not love are the real atheists, condemned to the hell of hatred. Accordingly, some who claim to be Christians and show no love in their daily lives are worse than hardcore atheists who do not believe in God but do many good to the suffering humanity.  Forget Love; You are atheist, you are not a Christian.

Covid, as Pope Francis pointed out, exposed how humane we are. Are we moved by the suffering of those infected? Are our hearts moved by the tears and brokenness of the families those lost their dear ones?  Did our hands reach out with generosity to those poor who lost their livelihood and for whom every meal is a big way of the Cross?  We can only survive the Pandemic only through our concern for others.   Loving others is the major challenge today when we are asked to keep social distance, cannot smile at others, shake hands, hug our dear ones. This is the time for talking with the heart. Lockdown is the time for opening our hearts, first to our families, then to our neighbors. Love has no lockdown.

Church in Myanmar will inspire Catholics in Myanmar to amplify their presence through their Love for the stranger, Love for the widow, love for the orphan, and love for all those who are affected by the pandemic of poverty and anxiety.   The only way to love ourselves and love God in an empowering way is to share that love with our countrymen and women who face darkness.

This love needs to be translated into action.  Like Jesus, we need to multiply our loaves – of generosity.   The Bishops and parish priests appeal to our families to share what we have with at least 50 poor families in every parish. 16 dioceses and taking even 20 as a minimum number of parishes we will have 320 parishes and each parish supporting 50 families will be 16,000 families.  CBCM and KMSS will further target 5000 families nationwide.  We can reach out 20,000 families – fulfilling Jesus’ dream of “I was hungry, you gave me food’.

Church is offering its buildings as quarantine Centres.  When we asked for volunteers to accompany those infected, 35 sisters and 15 youth generously volunteered.   Jesus will appreciate them: “I was  sick, you accompanied me in my recovery.”  The church will be abundantly rewarded for her mission of Love.

Today’s Gospel reminds us our salvation depends on just two commandments: Loving a living and liberating God and showing that love in action through our concern for others.   Doors of the Church may be closed.  But the doors to our heart can never be closed. There is no mask for our heart.  There is no handwashing of our mission of love.  There is no ‘social distancing’ in our mission of Love,.  Our evangelization and Liturgy may be stopped. But our mission of Agape and Diakonia marches on.  Because we will be judged by the commandment of love on the last days. Faith, Hope, and Love: Love lasts forever.

Stay Safe Stay Blessed.

 Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, SDB Archbishop of Yangon

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Greetings in the powerful Name of Jesus.

Let every tongue that proclaims Jesus as the Lord be blessed with good health, peace of mind, and all prosperity.   Once again, my brothers and sisters in Christ, we meet at the crossroads of the historical challenge.  The second wave COVID  is here.  A virulent wave.  Fear and anxiety grip many hearts, especially the millions who will be infected with the pandemic of hunger and poverty.  Think of all children.

Yes, this is the moment of shock.

But this is also the moment of solidarity. This is the Good Samaritan moment. Let us not be the priest and the Levites who see the wounded men and women around us and move away.     As the  Pope urges us, this is not the time to be infected with the virus of selfishness, the virus of indifference, the virus of fear, the virus of anxiety.

Let the Christian Community,  spurred by its faith, go out with the three S vaccine:   Solidarity,  Sharing and Service.  Together we can work miracles,  walk on the water of human fellowship.   Let not our hearts be disturbed. God is in charge.   He who fed the thousands in the desert and healed thousands in the Pandemic of the desert will send His angels to care for us, cure us.  The living God is in charge, my brothers and sisters,  let us stand firm.

Today’s readings come as a soothing balm to the disturbed minds:  The first reading opens up with the spectacular imagery of  God as the Vineyard keeper.   With the tenderness of a mother, he tends the vineyard.  Israel is his vineyard. Humanity is his vineyard.  The wounded people are his vineyard.  He is the vinedresser.  He will dress our wounds.

The first reading talks of  His disappointment with the result.  The Lord looks for faith as the fruit of his hard work.  As Myanmar struggles with the virus,  let faith in the Living God be our seed.   Let inner light be our guide.   We shall overcome with God’s help.

The second reading St Paul seems to speak to everyone in Myanmar,  every heart troubled by the explosive attack of the virus.

Yes.  We were protected last six months from the ravages of the virus.  But in the last month,  the tide turned around.  The virus is virulent.  Suddenly our numbers are thousands and deaths are in hundreds.  Fear hovers over the city.   Anxiety mutilates the hearts of many.

St Paul has the consoling words from  the  Letter of Philippians :

Have no anxiety at all but in everything, prayer, and petition,

with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God Then the peace of the Lord that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  

               ( Philippians 4: 6-9)

What a great assurance!

Yes, brothers and Sisters!  These are not times of fear. These are the times of kneeling and raising our hands in prayer and say with faith: “Yes, Lord we wish to be healed. Heal us, console us, make us whole.”  These are the times of faith of a mustard seed.  Together, as the Pope says, we can move the mountains of fear, anxiety provoked by this virus. We shall overcome together. Let us kneel down with the name of Jesus.

The Gospel speaks of the ‘stone rejected by the builders becoming the cornerstone.’ Rejection is a toxic feeling.   Children rejected in early stages end up as criminals, adults who felt rejected end up doing dangerous acts.

These days,  many feel the pandemic of rejection: people rejected from work, people rejected from relationships,  families that rejected sick people,   communities that reject those who are in medical needs.   There is a great temptation to be selfish, self-care. Pope Francis has warned that the  Social distancing can easily become the social rejection of the vulnerable.

The example of Jesus on the Cross comes to our mind.  Even on the Cross, he did not reject his mother, his disciple. He did not even reject the thief on the Cross.   Let compassion be our cornerstone.  Let care be our common home.   Thus we become the cornerstone in the Kingdom of God.    Let the Lord work this miracle in our hearts.   Reject none;  help all in these dark times.    Let Compassion be the guiding light.  Then we can exclaim  with Jesus :

By the Lord, it has been done

And it is wonderful  in our eyes

This week  we commemorate four major  significant spiritual  events :

1. Climax day for Season of creation.
2. Feast Day of St. Francis Assisi
3. Feast Day of the Holy Father.
4. Releasing the encyclical: Cari Fratelli.

1. Climax day for Season of creation.

Amidst the gloom of the Coronavirus, where fear grips us, humanity needs to worry about a  very great danger that creates viruses like Corona.    For too long powerful minority in the world is playing with the creation created by  God.  The  Bible says when  God created he found everything Good.    For the last fifty years, God’s gift of creation is being mercilessly wounded by human greed.

Pope Francis is called the Green Pope for his relentless struggle against the man-made ecological disaster.  He is clear in the message:  Treat nature as a gift, a  grace from a generous God.  Not as a commodity to make money.    His great encyclical, Laudato si, shook the world with its powerful message: The cry of the poor and the Cry of nature are interconnected.   Coronavirus is a grim reminder.  Playing with nature ends in disaster.  Nature never forgets.  We are asked to treat nature with dignity and respect.

From September to October each year, Catholics all over the world are inspired to celebrate God’s Season of Creation by praying and acting together to protect our common home. We have only one home.  This celebration of creation starts on 1^st  September, the world day of  Prayer for Creation.   Today on the feast of Francis of Assisi,  it ends.  This is the climax of the prayer week, the Season of Creation.  As followers of Christ, we share a common role as caretakers of God’s gift, Creation.   As the Pope says, our destiny as human beings is interwoven with the fate of others.   We stand together or fall together. There is no alternative.

The theme of this year’s Season of Creation is the jubilee of Earth, New rhythms, and New Hope.   We are invited to consider the integral leadership between the rest of the earth and ecological, economic, social, and political ways of living.  The ravages of the global Pandemic, Covid 19 have painfully reminded us of the need for just and sustainable systems.   Covid is not purely a natural disaster, it is also a man-made disaster.    We invaded the natural habitat where plants and animals lived in harmony.  But now they have lost their habitat and they have entered our space and body.

Feast of St Francis of Assisi

Today is the feast of the great Saint of  Ecology: Francis of Assisi. Pope Francis has loved the saint and is the first Pope to bear the name of the Saint of poverty.  As a mark of his devotion to this saint who loved  Lady Poverty and nature,   This week, Pope Francis traveled to the birthplace of the Saint, Assisi,   as a pilgrimage of reminding us of the ecological conversion.   In these dark days of COVID, we need the intercession of the Saint of Poverty to protect us.     He is also the saint of Peace.  Most of us who are anxious and troubled can pray with him: Make  Me a  Channel of Peace, Where there is anxiety let me bring inner peace, where there is COVID wound.  let me bring healing.

Feast of the Holy   Father, Pope Francis.   Pope Francis celebrates the feast of his namesake and patron, St Francis of Assisi today.   Pope Francis is a gift God gave to us during this time of Pandemic.  He has been praying,  consoling blessing us all from the day this virus arrived.   Pope Francis is the healer, the consoler, remembering each one of us in his prayer.  May the Good Lord give him many more years of service to God and humanity.  Happy Feast Day Pope Francis!

Pope  Francis has been praying and also offering alternate models of society where the poor and the marginalized will be the center of attention. He has raised awareness  about the “ Pandemic of  Poverty”  and the “ virus of injustice.”   He is proposing not only the healing of the planet but the healing of the unjust structures that the virus took advantage of and unleashed death and mayhem.   The Pope is  working  towards a new world, reflecting the dream of the Book of Revelation: “ I saw  a new heaven and new earth, there will be no more tears;  I will make all things new.”   Pope is urging us to have a Christian hope:  that we can walk on waters, we can move mountains through faith in a God works wonders in us and through us.

Release of the New Encyclical: Cari Fratelli

On these days of spiritual darkness and anxiety, the Pope encourages us to be at the service of one another.    We belong to the same flock and our Shepherd is Jesus Christ who was not hesitant to give his life for us.   As a sign of affirmation of a healing Jesus in our lives,  Pope Francis will be releasing a new Encyclical  called Fratelli Tutti ( Dear Brothers and Sisters – taking the words of Francis of Assisi)

“Let us all, brothers, look to the Good Shepherd who suffered the passion of the Cross to save his sheep.”  St Francis urged every one of us to become a saint by following the example of Jesus  our Good Shepherd.  “The sheep of the Lord followed him in tribulation and persecution, in insult and hunger, in infirmity and temptation, and in everything else and they have received everlasting life from the Lord because of these things,” the passage continues. “Therefore, it is a great shame for us, servants of God, that while t a  saints (actually) did such things, we wish to receive glory and honor by [merely] recounting their deeds.”

The  Encyclical calls us to become disciples of Jesus; not just devotees.  It is so easy to pray to Jesus during these times, rather than facing the world, reaching out to those in need.   St Francis urges us to emulate the Saints, not just honoring them.   Being the disciples of the Cross cost us so much.    St Francis says that the disciples who participate in Christ’s Cross shared in his glory of everlasting life.   Let us not reject this stone of discipleship which will become the cornerstone in the  Kingdom of God.

Let this week turned out to be the week of Lord’s vineyard. The Wine of the Lord’s blessing,  heal our nation, especially Yangon and  Rakhine where the virus has gripped thousands.    Following St Paul advice let us continue to pray and support those affected.    Let compassion become the cornerstone of our faith.   We shall overcome my dear Brothers and Sisters because the Lord is our vineyard keeper.  He is our vine, we are the branches.  We will be healed.

Stay Safe   Stay Blessed;  Jesus is the Lord.

The post Cardinal Bo’s Homily for October 4, Feast of St. Francis Assisi appeared first on ZENIT - English.

***

SOUTH-EAST ASIA FREEDOM OF RELIGION OR BELIEF (SEAFoRB) NETWORK

“PEACE-BUILDING AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION ACROSS INTER-RELIGIOUS LINES”

Remarks by His Eminence Cardinal Charles Maung Bo

25 – September 2020 at 4.30 pm

Dear Friends, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

First let me express my heartfelt privilege to be able to finally join the SEAFoRB Network, if sadly only virtually, online, rather than in person.

Every year for the past five years you have kindly invited me to participate in SEAFoRB – in Bangkok three times, Dili one time and Manila one time – and each year unfortunately other commitments prevented me from being able to join you. But I hope you know that throughout the past years that the South-East Asia Freedom of Religion or Belief conferences and network have developed, I have always been with you in spirit and in solidarity, even though not in person.

I applaud, celebrate and indeed support the vision of SEAFoRB – to bring people from throughout our rainbow region, our region of rich diversity in ethnicity, culture, language, history and religion – together. To bring different religious leaders, civil society groups, human rights defenders, policy-makers, legislators, academics and journalists together to work for one common cause: peace in our beautiful region.

So I am delighted to finally be able to address you – and I do so in four capacities.

First, as a humble priest with a pastoral concern for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the displaced, the refugees, the sick, the persecuted.

Second, as Archbishop of Yangon in one of this region’s most diverse nations.

Myanmar is truly a rainbow nation, with a Buddhist, Burman majority population but a rich ethnic and religious diversity where we are still struggling with, learning about and working out the principle of “unity in diversity”.

My country is a wounded nation, a nation that has experienced some of the 21^st centuries most egregious examples of conflict, inhumanity and suffering, and yet is trying to find its way from decades of military dictatorship into an era of democracy and pluralism, however fragile. It is a nation that so many times in recent years has seemed to be at the dawn of a new era – and yet the sun has not quite risen and the darkness continues to eclipse the light of peace. Yet still we seek peace in Myanmar.

Third, as President of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences – a body that brings together the bishops of the Catholic Church from throughout the entire Asia region: from Korea to Cambodia, from Taiwan to Thailand, from India to Indonesia, from Pakistan to the Philippines, from Japan to Kazakhstan.

If you want to understand peace-building and the concept of ‘unity in diversity’, you don’t need to look to inter-religious lines – just start with the rich diversity of cultures, ethnicities, histories, contexts, political systems and opinions among the Catholic Church across this most diverse of regions.

But fourthly, I speak as Co-President of Religions for Peace – a worldwide movement bringing together religious leaders of different religious backgrounds, in the cause of peace.

And so with these four perspectives, how do I address the question before us today: what is the role of religious actors in peace-building and conflict resolution.

I would answer this question with the following four points:

• We are to be peace-builders and peace-makers – every single one of our faiths teaches and preaches peace;
• We are to be justice-seekers, freedom-fighters, pursuers of human dignity – true peace, genuine reconciliation, real conflict resolution cannot happen if injustice remains, if freedom is denied, if human dignity is threatened;
• We must be seekers of common ground – we must identify what our common humanity holds and what is our shared morality that brings us together, even among our differences and diversity;
• At the same time we must not be afraid of difference – we must celebrate and respect difference. We must be confident enough in our own beliefs, faith, values and traditions to respect the difference in the other as well as seeking the common ground. We should always celebrate what the former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks, termed “The dignity of difference” in what he also promoted as “the home we build together” if we are – to use another of his phrases and another title of his book – “to heal a fractured world”.

When I was a young priest, I worked in Shan State in northern Myanmar, where I later became Bishop of Lashio. That region of my country is rich in diversity – diversity of problems, as well as diversity of beauty. It is culturally and naturally a beautiful region, mountainous and with different ethnic and linguistic and religious groups. It is also an epicentre of conflict between armed groups and the Myanmar military, drugs, human trafficking, sexual violence, forced labour, injustice. It was a good training ground for the work of a religious leader in the field of peace-building across inter-religious lines.

How did I approach this task? For a start, I tried to learn the languages.

Coming from the majority Burman population, I was acutely conscious of the need to relate to my Kachin, Shan, Lisu, Wa and other brothers and sisters. And so I learned enough of their languages to be able to greet them, say some words in my homilies, express some messages of solidarity to them.

Learning each other’s languages – or at least some words – is key.

Later, as a bishop and especially as Archbishop of Yangon, I became more involved in the field of inter-faith dialogue.

I consider dialogue to be absolutely essential to peace-building and conflict-resolution. However, I also believe dialogue must be based on clear values and achievable goals.

Dialogue among like-minded friends from different faiths where we easily recognize our common humanity is good, it establishes friendships and it sends a signal to our communities. But it is of limited value. Friends will always get together, people of different faiths who are open-minded and ‘moderate’ will always engage. That’s not the barrier. The question is how to break down barriers.

For dialogue to make a difference, it must be replicated at the grassroots levels, within villages, within neighbourhoods, among people who live side by side day by day, not simply between religious leaders who meet from time to time for dinner or conferences in hotels and air-conditioned meeting rooms.

And it must translate into mutual understanding and meaningful action, such that if one individual or small group from one community is in danger, a call to a religious leader may be enough to calm the tension, quell the conflict and save lives. And in my country, Myanmar, there have certainly been wonderful Buddhist monks who have done exactly that and deserve our applause and deep respect.

I also believe that we must be clear that inter-faith dialogue and freedom of religion or belief go hand in hand, but neither must be compromised by the other.

In other words, in pursuit of dialogue we must never sacrifice the beliefs, customs and values that we each cherish in our different religious traditions. Yet at the same time, we must never hold onto them so rigidly, so nervously, that we’re unprepared to engage in respectful dialogue with the other.

We must see the spirituality and dignity in our fellow human being of another faith, while at the same time nourishing our own, and celebrating – not defending or pushing either. We must have the quiet confidence that comes from love of one another to not feel threatened by difference but rather to respect and celebrate it.

Last year I travelled with Cardinal Tagle of the Philippines to visit the refugee camps in Bangladesh, where over a million Rohingyas who have fled my country, Myanmar, are now living as refugees.

I say simply today: whatever the historical arguments, whatever the legal determinations, what has happened to these people is a scar on the conscience of my country, and it must be put right.

For there to be real peace, true reconciliation, there has to be justice. The crimes committed against Muslims in Myanmar – not only in Rakhine but throughout the country – is an assault on human dignity itself and all of us, of whatever faith, must cry out for justice. For without justice, there cannot be peace.

At the same time, while the Rohingyas have very rightly receive worldwide attention, and I do not detract from that, there is also a need to pay attention to the plight of the predominantly Christian Kachin, Chin, Karenni, and many among the Karen, as well as our Buddhist brothers and sisters among the Rakhine, Shan and Mon, and among those who have struggle for so long in the wider democracy movement too.

If I were to conclude, what is the role of a religious-leader in peace-making, I would say this:

• Pursue truth
• Seek justice
• Defend freedom and human dignity
• Attempt dialogue and understanding
• Celebrate diversity

Four years ago I co-authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, with our next speaker, the distinguished Ibu Alissa Wahid, in which we concluded: “We we must learn to separate race, religion and politics. …. Religion is also too often misused as a political tool. It should be an affair of the heart, mind and soul, not a matter of ethnicity or birthplace. We must fight for a vision that says people are citizens of their country of birth, with equal rights regardless of religion. … We must speak out for the freedom of religion or belief for all. As Burma’s first cardinal and the daughter of Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), Indonesia’s former president and prominent Islamic scholar, the two of us have tried to show by example how important this is. We have spoken out for Burma’s Muslims and for Indonesia’s Christians when they face discrimination and persecution. We urge the region’s religious and political leaders to do the same.”

In that spirit of friendship – and shaping a harmony based on mutual respect and self-confidence, with every human being of every race and religion having an equal stake in the future based on an inherent human dignity – peace can be achieved and conflict can be resolved, with the help of religious leaders of all traditions throughout this region and beyond, if they have the heart, mind and will.

I commend SEAFoRB for your continuing initiatives despite this COVID-19 pandemic that is changing the way we all work, meet and collaborate. I hope that in 2021 I can engage again with SEAFoRB, if possible in person. I wish you and your endeavours every blessing and success.

I look forward to what I know will be inspiring words from Ibu Alissa Wahid, whose work defending freedom of religion or belief in Indonesia and beyond inspires me, and Dr Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Religion or Belief, whose example motivates us all, and I hope that together we can – despite the challenges we face – unite, hold hands (even if socially distanced and metaphorically) – and defeat the voices of hatred and intolerance and promote the champions of understanding, mutual respect, freedom of conscience and true peace.  THANK YOU

***

Sermon – 26th Sunday: Cardinal Charles Maung Bo., SDB, Yangon.

First Reading Ezekiel 18:25-28

2nd Reading Philippians 2:1-11 Or Philippians 2:1-5

Gospel Matthew 21:28-32

106th WORLD DAY OF MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES 2020

Like Jesus Christ, forced to flee. Welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating
internally displaced persons – Pope Francis

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Blessings in the powerful Name of Jesus. Let his mighty hand stay with every one of you, console you, comfort you and heal you. More than ever we need one another, trust one another, lean on one another, we need the Lord. The World needs the healing hand of the eternal Healer.

History has shown we shall overcome, normalcy will return. We are meeting again online. Our hearts are united, we are united in faith. We are united in the Mystical body of Christ.

Once again we meet amidst another Lockdown, stay home. These are dark times, when evil seems to be on a winning spree. For six long months, the Lord protected our simple nation from the ravages of the merciless contagion. But the last one month the Covid Virus seems to be dancing its sadistic dance in the streets of major cities. We pray for all the areas where this virus has penetrated.

We pray for every person who in pain, who is affected, who is overcome with panic. To the thousands who are sick, our heart goes to them, our hands are raised with bent knees imploring quick recovery. For millions who lost their livelihood, we pray to the Lord who gave manna in the desert and multiplied five loaves and fed five thousand people “Lord Feed our people. Heal our People. Wash them clean with your Blood” Myanmar Church is already planning its response. We shall stand by our brothers and sisters through prayer and by our generosity.

These are times of prayer. These are times of compassion. During the Nargis cyclone, we wrote, when Myanmar was attacked by natural disasters, compassion became the common religion. We all become brothers and sisters. We were strengthened by unity. A massive disaster went away.

Today when the virus has declared a war against humanity, let us move to compassion as our common religion. We shall overcome as one people, one nation. It is time to stop all conflicts. Let the brotherhood of humanity assert itself.

God who took pity on the suffering Israelites and called Moses to redeem them, today he looks at our country and says “ I hear the cry of the suffering people.” Bible records ten pandemics. In each God showed himself to be “ full of compassion, moved by mercy.: to his people. We pray the Lord of Creation shows the same compassion to all of us. Jesus who took pity on the starving people today calls to every one of us “Be compassionate as your heavenly father is compassionate.”

This Sunday, the Pope calls us to remember the Migrants and refugees. More than 40 million people were thrown out of their homes because of the permanent pandemic of hatred and poverty. Let us pray with the Pope “ Like Jesus, thousands are displaced, let us welcome, protect and promote and integrate thousands who live inside our borders as IDPs.” To all the people living in the IDP camps in our country, we join our Holy Father and pray for peace and dignified return home. Jesus was an IDP, a refugee and a migrant. He lived like thousands of our Myanmar Youth. He understands our tears. Let us welcome every stranger as we would welcome Jesus.

Today’s readings affirm a God who is loving, forgiving, seeking those who are least and the lost. Many fundamentalist preachers have proclaimed this Covid as the punishment from God. Today’s first reading says God preserves the life of the right and just. God is like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, waiting for our return. God is love. God is not revenge. Covid is not the time of God’s revenge, it is not punishment. It is a time of love. It is a time of bringing God one another in virus attack.

The second reading gives us a clue to this scourge of virus. Humility and unity in the face of common enemy. As the virus broke off in the world scene, the countries headed by autocrats and head strong leaders full of inflated ego, let their people to die in thousands. Some of the most affected countries are headed by men, whose lack of empathy and compassion made millions to be infected and thousands to die. As St Paul writes in the Second reading to Philippians, these leaders did everything “ out of selfishness and vainglory, looking out for their own glory.”

Those who saved their people are humble leaders, mostly women leaders. Because in the words of St Paul, “ They humbly regard others as more important than themselves.” The self-emptying humility of these leaders saved lives. Covid started where there was an arrogant leadership and flourished in countries where arrogant leaders had their selfish agenda. Simple and humble leaders like New Zealand Prime Minister, Miss Jacinda Ardern give a leadership that defeats even the pandemic. The self emptying of thousands of front line workers saved millions.

They embodied the ‘self emptying’ the kenosis of Christ praised by St Paul with those immortal words: “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God, something to be grasped. Rather he emptied himself, taking the form of the slave.”

This is a great lesson during the Covid Time. The egoism of the world leaders is killing thousands. Egoism in our relationship will kill us and others. By protecting ourselves we protect others.

The same lesson comes to the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the gospel today. Assuming that they are the rightful heirs to God’s Kingdom, they forgot mercy and compassion. With inflated ego, they could load the innocent with the laws and rules. Their lack of humility is castigated by Jesus with the searing words: the prostitutes and the tax collectors will enter the Kingdome of God before any one of you. Jesus was candid all through: the first will be last, the last will be the first. Mary will affirm this in the Magnificat:

He has shown might with His arm,
He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and has exalted the lowly.

The virus threat taught us how life is so fragile. A month ago, our nation saw only 8 deaths now the death rate is around 100. Hundreds of our innocent people who went about their work a month ago are now sick. The fragility and the passing nature of our life teaches us only one commandment: Life is so precious, let us not waste in hatred of one another, let us one Love one another as Jesus loved us.

This love commandment is the antidote we are seeking amidst these dark times of panic of pandemic. That is the vaccine we are looking for the suffocating darkness of infection. We need to be healed by love. The message of God is Love. The word love appears more than 500 times in the Bible, more times that ‘death’ or ‘hell’ implying we are called upon to live in love. It is not important how many years we lived, but it is very important to know how many people we really loved in this short life.

The Pharisees in today’s Gospel had enormous spiritual powers. They used that power to subjugate people. Covid also throws great questions about power. Power is not to dominate, power is to service. The real power, Pope Francis says, is in the service. Covid pandemic is teaching us to give up the power of arrogance but to go to the power of love, the power of empty hands with hearts full of empathy. Nobody knows the purpose of this pandemic – except that it has shaken the humanity. Every pandemic does not leave teaching painful lessons.

Some lessons the Pharisees and lawyers failed to learn the lessons of Jesus. But the humble and the simple people of Israel, the prostitutes and the tax collectors learnt. This contagion is teaching us : Be humble, we all belong to the same God.

We draw more lessons from the parable Jesus says : About two sons. The first son refuses his father’s call to go and work in the field. Then he voluntarily goes by himself and works in the vineyard. The second son, when asked the same request by the Father, he readily agrees but later does not go. The first one obeyed in deed and the second one obeyed only in words.

The Gospel parable is directed at the hypocrisy of the religious and civil leaders of the Jewish society of Jesus day. The Pharisees were guardians of law but not the love of God. They wanted God be served by the strict observance of the Law. But it is clear they did not have the spirit that Jesus was preaching through his life and teaching, namely Love, Love and Love. Show compassion, caring and forgiveness for the weak and vulnerable. Pharisees are like the second son : hear the word but made no effort to carry it out. Since Jesus was preaching a forgiving love, they rejected him.

COVID exposed such religious and civil leaders. Even today some leaders who talked about national security failed to give human security when the virus attacked them. Fundamental preachers who preached about God’s punishment with fire and brimstones are not found in the quarantine centres or hospitals. The prosperity gospel crowd is the second Son, listening and even preaching the Word but forget to show it in action.

On the other hand, Jesus tells them that the tax collectors and the prostitutes are making their way into the kingdom of God before they do. These certainly were not keeping God’s Law. They even had said no to his commandments many times. But then they encountered Jesus and they experienced a radical transformation in their lives. They listened to him and they responded.

The sinners, the outcasts of both Jewish and Gentile society, are like the first son. They do not obey God’s commands, they commit many sins, but later they accept the teaching of Jesus and become his followers. The first will be last in the Kingdom – the Pharisees are; the last will be the first – the humble people of Israel.

Christians encounter the same risk. Our outward observance of faith may not be enough. Jesus warns us as he warned the Pharisees: «Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. (Mt 7:21). St James calls for “Faith with action’.

COVID challenged the liturgical observance. But it has opened the door for faith in action. We have seen the cases exploding at a fearsome rate. Panic and fear grips every person. How can a Christian reach out? Like the first son or the second son of the Gospel of today?

Despite our great challenges during this time, how we can still reach out to our pandemic affected brothers and sisters – that is the real test to our faith the Covid has thrown to us. Hundreds of volunteers, health workers are at the frontlines. exposing themselves to great risk to save others. These may find God’s blessings rather than people who spent hours together in depression about why God had brought pandemic on human family. This is the time not to ask “why” like the Pharisees did but to move towards ‘what and how’ we can do reach out those in lockdown areas with whatever help we can render. Let us become the first sons despite our mind constantly telling us to be cautious and say no, let our heart reach out to our people.

Those of us who cannot offer anything, let us offer our prayers. In times of crisis you do not benefit less, but more from prayer. Grant it to yourself to indulge in His love. It is the best antidote to fear. St Augustine wrote : ” Love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words.”

Let us become worthy of the Kingdome by looking after one another in whatever way we safely can, especially remembering the poor and the vulnerable. We will overcome. Everything will pass away. Because the living, loving and liberating God is in charge. He is not the Lord of Death, He is the Lord of Life. Emmanuel, Live in us

The post Cardinal Bo: Pray, Grant It to Yourself to Indulge in His Love appeared first on ZENIT - English.

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The Feast of Our Lady of Assumption

Mary’s Magnificat – Her search for the vaccine of Justice

Sermon Preached by Cardinal Charles Maung Bo., Archbishop of Yangon-Myanmar

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1st Reading:     Revelation 12: 1-6

2nd Reading:   1 Corinthians 15: 20-26

Gospel: Luke    1: 39 – 56 (Magnificat)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Happy Feast of Assumption

Today we gather to celebrate the greatness of our Lady.

Mary the maiden from Nazareth was raised to the pinnacle of glory today. The human family joins her in her blessings.   She is celebrated by the great English poet as ‘our tainted nature’s solitary boast;

Woman! above all women glorified,

Our tainted nature’s solitary boast;

Purer than foam on central ocean tost;

Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn

    The Virgin-

At the end of her earthly life, she was assumed body and soul into heaven. It was indeed fitting that no decay would touch her body because she had given birth to Jesus – the Lord of yesterday, today and tomorrow – and also because she was sinless. She was immaculately conceived and remained sinless throughout her life. Death is the result of sin as Scripture tells us (Rom 6:23) so therefore she was assumed body and soul to heaven at the end of her earthly life.

One of the titles we give to our Lady is Ark of the Covenant and our first reading opens with John’s vision of heaven in which he sees something which would startle his contemporaries – he sees the Ark of the Covenant and he sees:

“A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars…” (Rev 12:1)

The woman in John’s vision was pregnant and giving birth to a male child and at the same time a dragon was waiting to harm the child but both the mother and child were spared by divine intervention.   We can understand this vision of John as Israel in the Old Testament giving birth to the Church in the New Testament and the dragon is the evil forces trying to destroy the Church.

This feast comes amidst the ravages of a pandemic.   The pandemic is the dragon waiting to destroy lives.   We stretch our hands to Our Mother today to save us.  As the COVID started its menacing dance of death, Pope Francis offered the human family to the protection of Our Mother.   Let our Mother whose body was taken without any damage totally to heaven, intercede with the Living God, to protect all of us.  Let all the bodies which are invaded by the virus be touched by the prayer of our Immaculate Mother.  Let the Mother who stood at the foot of the Cross, stand with our brothers and sisters, the front-line health workers and bless him.   The mother who urged her Son to change water into life-giving Wine in the marriage at Cana, made him touch the blood of millions of affected people, cleanse their blood

We are glad that as Catholics we have a Mother who intercedes for us.

We pity those non-Catholic Christians who chose to devalue Mary, who was extolled by Elizabeth as ‘mother of My Savior.’   Mary is humanity’s eternal interceder.

This feast reminds the world, the role played by the woman in salvation.   The Bible shows God works wonders through women:   the power of God is expressed through women, very special women, women who were neglected or ridiculed by the society, like old Sara and Hannah who could not have a child.  God intervenes in their life to continue the liberation of Israel.

In the Old Testament, barren women were blessed by God as a sign of his blessing of Israel.   In the New Testament, it is not the barren woman, but a virgin. In the life of the Virgin, Mary God intervenes to bring Savior to the world.  Mary is an integral part of Salvation history.  Denying Mary is denying the Bible, Denying Mary is denying the mission of Jesus.   Rejecting Mary is the rejection of the central message of the Bible.  It is rejecting the message of Yahweh who told the shepherd Moses: “I heard the cry of my suffering people, the slaves of Egypt.”

Today’s Gospel tells us the great mission proclamation by Mary through her Magnificat.  Today’s feast reminds us of those who struggle for the salvation of the world ‘never die’ but become part of God’s family.  Mary lives today.  When Jesus offered Mary to John as ‘Behold your mother,’ he offered to humanity for its salvific work, which continues today.

The Bible is a glorious story of God as Justice, God who takes sides with the suffering people, the God who hears the cry of his people (Exodus 3).

This God will establish his Kingdom through the lives of two sterile women in the Old Testament:  Sarah and Hannah.    After four centuries of spiritual darkness and moral decadence that had left the social fabric of Israel torn to shreds, Israel had become a nation in desperate need of change. The surprising instrument of change was Hannah, whose barrenness was symbolic of the nation’s spiritual state.

The Old Testament God is a God of Justice.  God who takes side with the suffering people.  This message of salvation comes through the barren women like Hannah. She articulates this message through her Song:

The Lord makes poor and makes rich; He brings low and lifts. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the beggar from the ash heap, to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory.  (1 Samuel 2: 1-10)

Hannah for the Old Testament, but for the New Testament, it is Mary. Mary’s Magnificat sounds like the Magna Carta of human liberation

He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty. (Luke 1: 46-55)

Two women, two different contexts, Hannah of the old testament was old and sterile, Mary was a virgin and pure.   God chose these ‘lowly’ to be vessels of salvation.  And both understood the mission well.

Because they did God’s mission, both could say ‘My Soul Glorifies the Lord,’

That is the reason they found favor with God.   Mary who was instrumental in the incarnation of Son Jesus has been a co redemptory.  Participated in the salvific mission of Jesus Christ.

Because of her participation not only in the ‘flesh of Jesus’ but also in the ‘mission of Jesus’ she became holy, worthy to be of immaculate conception and assumption into heaven.

We need to understand this feast today in that sense.  We need to understand Mary and her Mission well.

Mary, in our tradition, was a vehicle for Jesus: a holy womb, a good and compliant and obedient girl.  But when we read the Magnificat we are shocked to discover that Mary wasn’t quiet, nor was she what we would call meek and mild.  Her language was fiery and non-compromising.

She looks like a revolutionary with a blazing fire of zeal for God’s justice.

Throughout history, we would learn, poor and oppressed people had often identified with this song — the longest set of words spoken by a woman in the New Testament (and a poor, young, Jewish woman!)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian who was executed by the Nazis, called the Magnificat “the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary hymn ever sung.

Some countries — such as India, Guatemala, and Argentina — have outright banned the Magnificat from being recited in liturgy or public.

And evangelicals — in particular, white evangelicals — have devalued the role of Mary, and her song, to the point that she has almost been forgotten as anything other than a silent figure in a nativity scene. The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings.

Most of the non-Catholic Christians, especially those from rich countries, the evangelical, the prosperity Gospel Pharisees, have a hidden agenda of blunting the message of hope to the poor, by relegating Mary’s role in redemption.

Window shopping Pentecostals, cherry-picking biblical words to sustain their vulgar display of wealth have hidden Mary, abused her and buried her revolutionary song of the Magnificat.  The song doesn’t sound like good news if you are well-fed, or rich, or in a position of power and might — or if you benefit from systems that oppression.  Mary becomes a thorn in the flesh of many rich Christians, who blissfully forget the poor and part of systems that commit economic and environmental injustice.

How can they accept Mary?   When they preach their Gospel flying across in the custom-made private planes, their heart will sink if they hear her words:

He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty. (Luke 1: 46-55)

Which her son Jesus would castigate later saying:

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”  (Mt: 19:24).

Mary was a prophetess in the mode of Isiah, Amos and other great prophets who castigated the powerful and the privileges who forgot the poor of Yahweh.  Like the prophets, she would seek justice, ask for justice and righteousness to flow like a river.

Her Magnificat would be   articulated later    by her son in his Galilean manifesto:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
   to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor  (Lk 4: 18-19)

Theologian Warren Carter writes that in the time of Jesus, 2 to 3 per cent of the population was rich, while the majority lived a subsistence-level existence.  Mary was born into an unjust structure.  She was poor.  When she was pregnant, Rome wished to test their citizen, made her walk nearly 70 Kms, as some of the arrogant government made the migrants walk thousands of Kms during this Pandemic.

Mary echoes the dream of God, a world without want, where everybody can pray “Our Father who art in heaven.’ Christ did not come to take people to heaven only.  He came so that ‘Thy Kingdom Come, thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.”

A heaven on earth. That was the dream of Mary.  The dream of the Bible. A world of justice.   Those who domesticated bible, smothered its defiant fiery rage against injustice and subjugation, have manipulated to bury Mary in their miserable grave of amnesia. It is similar to the efforts to hide the Sun with the palm of our hands.  Failure is destiny. The economic and political worldview of many non-Catholic Christians has led to a silencing of Mary and God’s dream for the world.  Nothing to do with Bible or theology.

Very often a prayer said: “Blessed is the womb of Jesus” Yes, she is the Ark of the Covenant but she was NOT only the womb of Jesus, but she was also the VOICE of Jesus.  The Voice that articulated his Mission.  The fist that rose against the Roman occupation and the looting of Israel by the cronies, that left nearly 97 per cent of its people in utter poverty.

COVID has exposed the injustices in the world.  We pray to Mary to protect us from the COVID pandemic.  But the Pope has pointed out poor people have been inflicted with another virus:  The Pandemic of Hunger, the Pandemic of abuse, the Pandemic of no human dignity.  Nearly 122 million people have lost their livelihoods and hunger stares at their face.  Another month of COVID the death rates due to hunger pandemic will overtake the death toll due to COVID virus.

This world, blessed and given to our first parents has become the looting ground for the rich and powerful.    One per cent of the rich control more than 60 per cent of the wealth and the small percentage of people are looting the natural resources.

And now the greatest threat comes from authoritarian leaders.  Unjust rulers.  Injustice is the biggest virus that will see millions dying during this Pandemic.

And what is the vaccine?

It is already invented in the Bible: Justice. God as Justice.   This is what the humble virgin from Nazareth would proclaim in her encounter with Elizabeth, the mother of the prophet John the Baptist.

Assumption day is the day our Lady is calling us to read the Bible to understand God as God who takes side with the poor and the oppressed.  Those who see God in the liberation of human suffering are already creating heaven on earth.   Let us pray to Mary our mother to give us the courage to see the assumption in our lifetime.

God bless us all and heal the World.

+Cardinal Charles Maung Bo

The post Cardinal Bo’s Homily for the Feast of Our Lady of Assumption appeared first on ZENIT - English.

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19^th Sunday of the Year

Be a Miracle Maker – Walk on the water

Sermon preached by Cardinal Charles Maung Bo., Archbishop of Yangon, Myanmar

First Reading 1 Kings 19:9a,11-13a The Lord appears to Elijah in a whisper.

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 85:9-14  The Lord is the source of salvation.

Second Reading Romans 9:1-5  Paul speaks of the blessings that have come to the Israelites.

Gospel Reading Matthew 14:22-33  Jesus walks on water, and the disciples acknowledge him as the Son of God.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

All blessings in the name of Jesus.

Jesus the miracle maker let him work great miracles in your life.

Today’s readings are a timely reminder to our disturbing, challenging context.

Today is August 9^th.   A dark date in the history of mankind.

The date when human history changed forever. The date when man’s evil surpassed the evil of Lucifer. This is the day in the year 1945 when the second atom bomb was dropped on Japan. The bomb was dropped at 11:02 a.m., 1,650 feet above the city. The explosion unleashed the equivalent force of 22,000 tons of TNT. The hills that surrounded the city did a better job of containing the destructive force, but the number killed is estimated at anywhere between 60,000 and 80,000. The flesh melted, an apocalyptic rain fell on thousands, scorching their bodies with radium heat.

Just an atom did that act of evil.  Men knew how to unleash the energy of the atom – and kill his fellow men and women.  From that day Superpowers are spending trillions of dollars in the war industry of mutual hatred and annihilation.   The stormy seas of war and displacement of millions ferociously rock the boat of humanity till today.  With nine countries armed with around 15,000 atomic bombs up to 53 times stronger than those dropped in the Second World War, the stakes are arguably higher. Apocalypse can occur any moment.

An invincible atom holds such monstrous power.

And now millions are attacked NOT by an atom. But by something much smaller than an atom – the Coronavirus.

The invisible virus has become the invincible enemy of humanity.

In a tale of twisted irony, this tiny contagion has brought nuclear Superpowers to their knees.  In a devasting lesson to arrogant powers and inflated egos,  this tiny virus is throwing an ominous warning:  Either stand together as one human family or fall together and fade as a species.   Our fall as a species does not need the destructive power of tons of TNT.  The tiny virus can bring us to the threshold of our doom.

Today’s readings prove to be antidotes to the visceral virus of the inhumanity of man against man, brother against brother. Cain against Abel, Pharisees against Jesus, Ancient Rome against Christianity, white against the blacks, one religion against another.

The readings throw a great challenge and warning to all of us:   Return to humanity.  

The first reading is from the book the first Kings.   The prophet Elijah was asked to go into a cave and wait for the arrival of the Lord.  The gullible prophet, like the superpowers of today, was expecting a spectacle of power and glory at the arrival of the Lord.    The scenes depicted in the Bible are so sadly reminiscent of the effects of the atom bomb:  The Bible says “ There came a mighty wind, so strong it tore the mountains and shattered the rocks!!!”  a verbatim description of when the atom bomb exploded on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But listen to the Bible:  There the Lord was not in the mighty shattering wind.

Then came the earthquake.   Like the one that came in the aftermath of the atom bomb.   The bomb released monstrous energy equivalent to seven earthquakes.  The Bible Elijah quivering in the cave was looking for the Lord in the earthquake.

The Bible is adamant:  The Lord was not in the earthquake!

Then the story continues in the Bible and in  the spectacle of the atom bomb.  “ After the earthquake came the fire.” The fire after the atom bomb of Hiroshima and Nagasaki burnt for weeks.  Poor Elijah was looking for the mighty Lord in the searing dance of fire.

The Bible is unyielding:  The Lord was not in the fire!

Then the Bible takes a U-turn, revealing a God: ‘gentle and compassionate’   After the fire came the sound of a gentle breeze.  There in the gentle breeze.  Elijah, at last, savoured the soothing presence of God and in total gratitude, the Bible says, Elijah, covered his face and went to experience the Lord.

Wading through infectious lava of Corona, we look back at history and desperately look for God in the 20^th Century darkness when millions died in the war, millions became refugees and when the world went mad with the atom bomb.

A wounded  world was searching for God in various places:

• He was not to be found in the diabolic   storm of Hitler and his Nazism
• He was not found in the earthquake of communist arrogance of Josef Stalin
• He was not found in the fiery Mao whose policies killed millions in famine
• He was not found in the wallowing celebrations of exploitation of the capitalistic countries, their arms industry scientists and cerebral cronies of corruption.

Amidst the suffocating darkness of hatred, death and mayhem of the twentieth century, God was to be found in the gentle breeze of the life and mission of men and women who stood against evil, as diminutive David stood against the monster Goliath.

• The breeze of service to the most neglected by a frail nun, Mother Teresa
• The gentle and soothing breeze of non-violence against the arrogance of imperialism and colonialism by the ‘half-naked’ Mahatma Gandhi
• The gentle breeze of the resurrection of Jesus as the Liberator, through the charismatic preaching of a man of colour: Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

Yes.  Today’s readings admirably make us reflect on the two apocalyptic threats to human existence:  The nuclear threat and the Pandemic.   Both threats expose all of us to the threat of minuscule powerful persons who decide who lives and who dies, who eats and who starves.

Countries have invested more in arms than in health.  There are more soldiers in every country in the business of killing.  But there is less number of doctors and nurses even in poor countries.  18 million are affected and 700,000 have died. It is this plight that St Paul moans in the second reading from the letter from Romans: “My sorrow is great, my mental anguish endless.”

What has happened to this earth, which God created and ‘found everything good?’ (Gen 1:31)

Today’s Gospel   throws   an illuminating  light on this issue:

The scene is another storm – another confusion and fear of the disciple.

Today’s Gospel directly follows last week’s account of Jesus feeding a crowd of more than 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two fish. For the sake of the crowds, Jesus had postponed his time of solitude. This week,  Gospel says, now, at last, Jesus finds some time for quiet and prayer. He sends his disciples ahead of him by boat, dismisses the crowds, and then withdraws to the mountain to pray. Yes, Jesus prays to his father. He needs the time to be with the Father – to thank Him, to be refreshed, to come to know His Father even more fully.

When Jesus was praying, the disciples do not farewell. They struggle to weather the wind and waves, making little progress in their journey. We are reminded of a previous story in Chapter 8 of Matthew’s Gospel when Jesus calms the seas. This time, however, Jesus does not calm the seas, and the disciples do not express fear until they see Jesus walking toward them on the water. In this story, it is not the storm that is feared but the sight of Jesus before them, whom they mistake for a ghost.

COVID has brought such a situation.  We are in the boat of uncertainty.  We feel the Lord is away. Some feel he has abandoned us.  Some unscrupulous preachers even preach that God is punishing us through COVID.   But if we look at the disciples in the boat, without Jesus, they are struggling with a violent sea and they had no way to escape.

Even the Saviour is mistaken as a Ghost.  A threat.

As the world is tossed around in the sea of COVID uncertainty, every other person suddenly looks like a ghost.  Everyone can infect me; everyone’s presence is a threat to my welfare.  Runaway from humanity.  It is sick.  It is a mortal threat.

Jesus message rises above that suffocating sea of despair:

Courage! It is I! Do Not be afraid.

COVID has confused our sensibilities.   We are frightened and   even while Jesus is approaching us, our shattered and scared minds cry out “It is a ghost!”   To those of us lost our loved ones, or have them in lonely quarantine or serving those affected as front-line health workers, the soothing voice Jesus wafts over the stormy seas of the  pandemic:

Courage! It is I! Do Not be afraid.

This pandemic has brought too many ghosts.  For those with money, the poor and the vulnerable become the ‘Ghost’ to the white people the black people who seek justice become the ‘ghost’   to rich countries with power and wealth, the poor countries become a ‘ghost’.

To all those who are tossed by the hatred of the other, those who demonize others, Jesus assures them:  Courage!  It is I!  Do not be afraid: During these uncertain times, I was hungry, you gave me food, I was sick you tended me, I was naked you dressed me, I was abandoned you took me in, I was in Quarantine and you worried about me, I was worried and you reached out with compassion.

Whenever you have done that to the least of my brothers and sisters you have found me and exclaimed:  It is the Lord!   Your eyes are opened and see every man and woman as “Truly you are the son and daughter of God.”  That is the epiphany during these dark days.

Today’s readings encourage all of us to become the miracle workers and walk on waters.  Yes, miracle workers!  Gandhi once said we all can become miracle makers “by moving from what we ARE doing towards what we CAN do.”  Many of us can do many things but are satisfied with the minimum what we ARE doing.   A miracle happens when we move from the minimum towards doing all the good we CAN do in our lives.  When we move from the perpetual state of hatred of others as enemies towards looking at everyone as my brother and sister miracle happens.   When we move from the state of being in perpetual selfishness towards a state of sharing,  as the disciples were motivated during the multiplication of loaves, we become miracle workers.

There are dark days, true. We are in the same boat, as the Pope said during his consoling sermons during the COVID ravaged Lent season.  Like the disciples in the same boat, we are tossed around.  But Christ arrives in the form of our brothers and sisters.   An insecure world sees only a ‘Ghost.’

But we can walk on the water.    Buoyed by inflated compassion, reconciliation and justice we can walk on the waters of concern and reach out to the wounded humanity.   We can cross any lethal seas of despair when we remember the words from the Song of Songs:

Love is Stronger than Death.  (Song of Songs 8:6)

We have faced as human family two major threats in the last two centuries:  the splitting of the atoms that brought atom bombs and the resurgence of the virus.  Millions have perished.

This Sunday reading comforts us: Together we can win if we can return to our original vocation of ‘love one another as I loved you’.   Amidst all these challenges, Jesus will appear. All threats will change into the consoling message: Courage! It is I!   Yes. COVID will go away and we will emerge stronger as a human family because it is the Lord who is walking towards us.

Let us realize that what we felt threatened has  ultimately turned out to be  the presence of Jesus and acclaim together:

Truly   You are the Son of God.  Heal us!

Stay blessed.

The post Cardinal Bo: ‘Be a Miracle Worker; Walk on Water’ appeared first on ZENIT - English.

Today we celebrate the Parents’ day.  The feast of St Anne and Joachim, the parents of our dear mother Mary.  To all the parents listening to us, warm greetings and blessings.  Let long life be your reward.

With a grateful heart, we praise and thank the Lord for the gift of our parents.   We tasted God’s love first time through our parents.   We are inspired by the example of  Jesus our Lord, who even from the Cross took care of his mother Mary and entrusted her care to his favorite disciple.  Jesus showed his love for his mother until the end. This Sunday is a Sunday of gratefulness celebrating the unconditional love of our parents as Jesus did.

Not all parents enjoy a good life.  We are also come here to kneel on our knees to pray for affected parents’ sickness and abandonment by their own children.  We remember those elderly parents who are victimized by the Pandemic.   We pray today with stretched out hands for those elderly parents who had to be left alone in the isolation wards, ICU wards to struggle with their last moments during this pandemic. We also pray for those parents who are buried without the presence of their dear and near ones.

For those of us blessed to have our parents still alive, this Sunday is a great day of thanksgiving. Grateful because they collaborated with God in creating us. They are in a vantage position of only after God.

 Christianity approaches  God in family terms.  Christian  God is not the monotheistic man, demanding total slavish obedience.   Christianity is a loving family with the Trinity as the all inspiring family of love and harmony.

Today as we celebrate the head of every family, our parents, we need to take Trinity as an example of a loving family. The relationship between the father and son is exemplified in Trinty.  Our heavenly Father sets the example by publicly honoring His Son more than once (Matthew 3:17; 17:5). Jesus preaches a heartwarming passage of the closeness He has with His Father (John 5:18-30) and the mutual respect and honor that is present in their relationship. Our heavenly Father honors His Son and expects us to honor Him also (John 5:23).

Today’s reading leads us to contemplate our family as a reflection of Trinitarian love.  The first reading tells us how wisdom and ability to discern the good from evil, must play the central place.  Like  Solomon who requested God only for Wisdom to govern his people, parents, and children in the family need to look for wisdom to understand one another.

The second reading guides us to the infinite value of human dignity that should be our guiding our star in our family.    Each one of us is created in the image of God. Parents and children need to treat one another as the image of God.

God created the first family to share his love.   Because of the family,  humanity has survived and thrived.   The Gospel  asks each  one of us to treat the family  as the treasure that is so precious we are willing to sacrifice  anything else to get that  pearl of immense  value

The Bible portrays  God as the  Father of all of us.  It was he who created us out of nothing.  He was the one who blew the power of the spirit into us. He is the father and mother of all human beings.   He was the one  who marked us ‘before the creation of the world’ and said: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you before you were born I set you apart.”  (Jer: 1;5).

 His motherly love is poignantly expressed  in Isaiah:  chapter 49

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. Your sons hasten back, and those who laid you waste depart from you.

Thus  God raises his love to the love of the mother.   Today we are grateful to the gift of life through our simple mothers.

Our parents may not have chosen us, but  God chose them to our parents.  The Lord promises, «I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty» (2 Cor. 6:18).  Parents are the image of the living God.  Thus inthe Ten Commandments, (Exodus 20:2-17 and Deut. 5:6-21). the fifth commandment urges us “  Honor  Your Father and Mother”,

On this day let us see how  God’s word sees the role of parents and children.

                     a. Parents Role in nurturing a Christian Family

1. God is love and parents need  to be God’s messengers of Love : 

God told Jeremiah, “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3). Jesus said, “For the Father, Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God” (John 16:27)… and, God so loved the world that he gave his only son, not to condemn but to redeem the world. (John 3:16).  Everyday every tongue proclaims our God as our Father in heaven.

Our heavenly Father, the Christian God is all love. God’s first creation was not a monastery or a monk or a nun.  His first creation was the family, the first parents.  Family is the opening of our long journey as a species of love.

And we have come to celebrate that primordial love of God.   That is the love parents convey to their children.  This is the first task of every parent: be the witness of God’s love to one another and to the children.

        2. Parents are the evangelizers of children

The life of the parents is the first Bible the children.  Like  Jesus taught his disciples, the parents need to communicate Jesus. The Father models the truth as an example. This is why Jesus came into this world to reveal the Father’s heart and demonstrate His love (John 13:15). Being an example to your children is one of the most powerful and authoritative teaching tools you possess as a parent. Be an example to your children of love, truth, mercy, grace, and giving.  Jesus said, “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant, does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all thing that I heard from My Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). (Prov. 4:3-4).

     3.  A nurturing,  guiding role of the parents in the moral life of children. 

From the beginning, God gave Adam and Eve the freedom to eat of any of the trees of the Garden (Gen. 2:16-17). He did not dictate these issues. However, He did communicate a moral boundary so they would not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Parents must draw clear moral boundaries.  Love combined with nurturing discipline is the great gift parents can give to their children.  

b. Five Duties of Children to Parents:

1. Children have the duty of honoring and respecting father and mother.

Children are to show honor to their parents through a respectful attitude toward their parents. Honoring the parents is done through the appreciation of their efforts in bringing up the children with great difficulties, their sacrifices, and their unselfish decision to have children.  According to St Paul,  those who do honor to their parents have a special promise.   Among ten commandments only one commandment has a promise if observed: That is the fifth commandment of honoring parents.  Those who honor the parents will enjoy a healthy and long life.

Honor your father and mother” (which is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on the earth.”  Eph : 6:2-3 

2. Children have the duty of obeying father and mother.

The new Christians had a clear code of life.  The code for the child in the family is obedience.    Ephesians 6:1:  “Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.”

Colossians 3:20:  “Children, obey your parents in all things:  for this is well-pleasing unto the Lord.”  The young generation is to be guided in life through discipline and guidance of the parents.   Social media and modernity have posed a grave threat to the integrity of the family.   Myanmar has seen thousands of youth forced to seek unsafe migration.  Even amidst threatening context children who had moral guidance from the parents survive threats to human dignity in other countries.

3. Children have the duty of listening to the counsel of father and mother.

As the parents get old they emerge as a fountain of wisdom.   The Bible knows the wisdom of the parents.  This is the setting for the entire book of Proverbs which begins, “My son, hear the instructions of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother” ( Prov: 1:8). The child has a great treasure of good counsel to learn from his parents.   Those who refuse to listen to the elderly parents do it at their own peril.  Modern days there are three approaches to parents:  when we are children, we think our parents know everything when we become adults, we think they do not know anything, and when WE get old, we realize our parents were ALWAYS  right.  Regret follows when we knew we missed their sage counsel.

4. Children have the duty of caring for father and mother in their old age.

During  Bible times there was no home for the aged, where the young couple can dump their parents and forget.  The burden of care for aging parents from a Biblical perspective is not the duty of the state but the children.   Bible entrusted the welfare of old parents in the hands of the children.   St Paul was categorical :

Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their

own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.   ( 1 Timothy 5: 8).

 When children become a parent they realize how much their parents did for them.  In the natural process of time, the children are allowed to serve parents even as they served the children.

5. Where there have been failures and breaches, children have the duty of understanding and forgiving father and mother.

There are difficult families.  There has never been a reconciliation between the children and parents. Part of personal emotional and spiritual maturity is realizing that parents were not perfect and perhaps did not do all perfectly in upbringing the children. But in ordinary circumstances, the disposition of children toward parents should be one of grace even in their parent’s faults. As St Peter exhorts “ above all things have fervent charity among yourselves ( 1 Peter 4:8)  children need to extend forgiveness to the past painful events.

As the Pandemic is still on the arrogant march,  it is the family that is keeping the fight against the virus going on.   The family has been the unit of humanity that has withstood all challenges to the disintegration of the human family.

May we celebrate the gift of our parents today. As  St Anne and Joachim brought forth our mother Mary, the protector of all against the pandemic, let each family be the holy family and let parents and children stand together at this moment of  COVID  challenge.

Cardinal Charles Maung Bo., SDB, is Archbishop of Yangon, Myanmar, and President Federation of the Asian Bishops Conference.

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