The Uninvited

The Vatican Observatory via www.vaticanobservatory.va

“The Uninvited” is the title of the on-going exhibition at Gallery Gitanjali in Panjim of the work of the cartoonist Angela Ferrão. While personally unable to attend the exhibition, I have long followed, and appreciated, the work of Ferrão, who has the wonderful ability to piercingly penetrate an issue and render it visually. One way to look at her work, currently in exhibition (one I urge you to attend) is to see it as a critique of the way Goa has been developed as a tourist destination, whether for foreign nationals, or now, even more problematically, for the more demanding citizens of our country.

To be fair, however, the problem may not be Indians in Goa, given that contemporary tourism is about uninviting the local populations from their own homes – a fact that Ferrão highlights in her exhibition. Tourist destinations across the world, and in Europe – a space I have been able to view in close proximity for the past decade – have begun waking up to the problems of mass tourism. The residents of these destinations have also started protesting the manner in which their hometowns and regions are destroyed by the desire of global elites who seek to plant their second, third, or fourth homes, in these hitherto charming locations. Goans, then, are not alone.

If we look historically, tourism did not begin this way. One point of origin of contemporary tourism was “The Grand Tour” that the upper-classes of England, and other Northern European countries, undertook between the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. The final destination of the Grand Tour were the various cities of Italy associated with the Renaissance and classical antiquity (i.e. ancient Rome and Greece). What started out as a trickle of rich and privileged young men – whose visits were not without problems, but given the low volume were perhaps manageable – has now grown into a flood. The deluge that is contemporary mass tourism is washing away the very locations that are the objects of touristic desire. What is worse, given that so many of these tourists have no real engagement with the places that they will visit, they do not realise that they are not seeing the real thing. These mass tourists arrive in droves, assisted by guidebooks and social media recommendations, and merely tick the boxes that they have been given. Having done so, and taken tons of images (which they will probably never see again, and are of dubious aesthetic and personal value in any case) they go back satisfied with the garbage that they have been fed.

Tourism is recommended because of the belief – drawn from the time of The Grand Tour – that travel expands your soul and sensibilities, you come back a richer person. This is not the case anymore; travel has now become a way to get away from the humdrum existence that is the lives of most people in the large metropolises of the world. That they destroy the locations they visit is not necessarily something they care about, since the point of travel has now become about consumption – the more the better.

I was recently offered an experience comparable with that of the young milords of The Grand Tour: an opportunity to visit the Vatican Observatory. While the visit to the installations, set within the fabled gardens of the Castelo Gandolfo – the summer residence of the Popes – was in itself a treat, those of us on the trip were offered something that made the trip even more worthwhile, the presence of a knowledgeable and captivating Cicerone, the wise and eloquent guide.

The man who guided us around the Observatory was the renowned astronomer and physicist Guy Consolmagno SJ. But you would never know that if you saw the man – who with his wild hair, long beard, bushy eyebrows, wilder eyes and animated speech, could well be your favourite uncle. A companion on the tour, also a seminarian where I study, was at pains, however, to inform us that Consolmagno was no regular tour guide, he was a bona fide scholar whose research has been published in the finest international research journals. Consolmagno was also Director of the Observatory and clearly loved showing us around.

Perhaps the key to understanding Consolmagno’s tour of the Vatican Observatory was to emphasize the dialogue between science and faith that has always been a part of the Catholic Church’s tradition. He pointed out that the entire discourse of the clash between science and faith was invented in the 19^th century. This should come as no surprise to any student of modern history. The partisans of the modern republics were extremely hostile to the Catholic Church which they saw as a roadblock in their road to gaining complete power. It made sense that they would present the church as an institution of science-hating (Mad) hatters.

Galileo, he pointed out, was – despite the challenges posed to his research – a faithful Catholic, who had two daughters who were nuns. The astronomical knowledge of priests of the Catholic Church were critical to the Gregorian calendar we use and take for granted. Had it not been for this reform from the late 1800s, which introduced the leap year, our calendar would have been completely out of sync with the seasons we lived in. Consolmagno also introduced us to the figure of Father Angelo Secchi SJ, another Jesuit, whose astronomical and other expertise was regarded internationally, and directed the Observatory of the Roman College – one of the institutions that eventually led to the establishment of the Vatican Observatory.

What was fascinating about this tour was the realisation that the Jesuits who man the Observatory – one of them being the Goan Fr. Richard de Souza SJ – are all well-regarded members of the international scientific establishment. More interestingly was the realisation that because these men are religious (Consolmagno is not a priest but a brother) and do not have to operate within the same kind of funding cycles that govern the lives of professional academics, they are able to do long durée research that can then support the work of professional academics.

The tour took us about an hour and a half, perhaps it was two hours, but we came away from that tour with a deeper understanding of the world around us, and it seemed to me that this is what tourism ought to be. Not a rush from place A to place B, accompanied by a wild shopping spree, but a reflective engagement with a space, a history, and people. Angela Ferrão, offers a similar opportunity to be your Cicerone as she walks you through the injustices tourism has wreaked in Goa. Take it!

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 13 Dec 2023)

Robbing God of His Due: Homily for Friday of the Thirty-third week in Ordinary Time

"The Purification of the Temple", Raymond Balze, 1850.

‘“It is written,” He said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.”’

Anger, and outrage, are often the emotion we ascribe to Our Lord when we reflect on the episode of the cleansing of the Temple that forms part of our lectionary today. However, grief could well be the emotion that describes His emotion, especially since even in, or perhaps, especially in, contemporary times, we have turned his house, the house of prayer, into a den of thieves.

What have we stolen? I would suggest to you that it is the appropriateness of the worship that is due to Him that we have stolen from Him.

It is the first reading – from the first book of the Maccabees – that offers us a clue. A reading that speaks to us about the re-dedication of the temple, and the restoration not just of proper worship, but of dignity and nobility to the worship.

Appropriateness, dignity and nobility. These are the qualities we must bring to worship in his house of prayer.

“They… offered sacrifice according to the law”; how often do we offer Mass outside of the Missal.

“All the people prostrated themselves”; how often do we skip genuflection before the Blessed Sacrament, and simply bow.

“They ornamented the facade of the temple with gold crowns and shields”; how often are altar and church furnishings of cheap, synthetic materials, instead of precious natural materials and the best that we can offer?

And let me assure you that I am not speaking of the Beda, I am reflecting on my experience in locations across the world I have had the misfortune to worship in. Sunday Masses without incense, Eucharist treated casually, I could go on. (It does not need to be said that there are places where I have been edified by seeing worship worthily conducted.)

Every time we worship casually, instead of with appropriateness, dignity, and nobility, we rob our Lord of the worthy prayer that he merits.

However, bear in mind these words from the preface to Eucharistic prayer four:

              our praises add nothing to your greatness but profit us for salvation

When Christ said he would raise the temple in three days, he was referring to the temple of His own body, and so often the cleansing of the temple is understood as the cleansing we must make of our own bodies which is the temple of the Holy Spirit. As it turns out, therefore, when we offer prayers inappropriate to His dignity, or lacking in nobility or dignity, it is our own salvation which we compromise.

‘“It is written,” He said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.”’

(A version of this homily was first preached at the Pontifical Beda College on Nov 24, 2023)

 

On the virtue of meekness: Homily for the Thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time

"The Arrest of Christ", follower of Hieronymus Bosch, circa 1450–1516, Noordbrabants Museum.

My dear brothers and sisters,

The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, is like a perennial stream, for those of us who labour through the desert of life. He is a clear stream always offering water for those who thirst, a reference point for those who have lost their way. Even today, in the Gospel we just heard, he offers words of wisdom that we should take seriously, in particular, the virtue of meekness.

Consider these words which we just heard proclaimed in the Gospel:

The scribes and the Pharisees

have taken their seat on the chair of Moses.

Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you,

but do not follow their example.

For they preach but they do not practice.

We may not live among the Pharisees today, but we continue to have leaders, both within the Church and outside, who fail to live up to their responsibilities, who in many ways, and often times, are grave disappointments, if not reason for scandal. What should our response to these men (and women) be?

In the words of Christ:

do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you,

but do not follow their example.

For they preach but they do not practice.

In other words, meekly follow the good they preach, regardless of their own personal practice. Too often have we heard people say, I stopped going to church, or for Mass, because of the way that priest behaved. Christ Himself tells us today, this is no good reason to stop going to mass, or abandon our Holy Mother, the Church. Rather, even while acknowledging the problematic behaviour, we should continue to follow their teaching.

When Our Lord asks us to “observe all things whatsoever they tell you” he is referring to the various practices of the Mosaic law. Translating it to our times, it would mean that we follow all the pious practices that our ecclesial leaders counsel us to do, and all of the teaching of our Holy Mother Church. The misbehaviour of priests, or others, is no reason to reject their teaching, which we must comply with in the spirit of meekness.

Some translations of the Gospel that we heard today, substitute the phrase “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses”, with the phrase “have occupied the chair of Moses”. When reading this translation some days ago I was struck by the various meanings of the word occupied. It could, mean that the person sitting on the seat is doing so illegally, or illicitly. In other words, they do not have a right to that chair. Even if it were so, Our Lord suggests, we are required to obey them if what they teach is in conformity with the law.

What does Christ counsel us therefore when we are faced with a situation that we do not like? Or one that is objectively wrong? Christ offers us the virtue of meekness. For those of you who were at Mass on All Souls Days you would have heard Christ preach to us: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.” Today, he offers us a way to understand meekness more concretely.

Now some of you may come up after Mass and say, or go away from Mass thinking, he is saying this because he will soon be a priest and is only seeking to strengthen the power of the priests over the laity. I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth!

I am suggesting the practice of the virtue of meekness because this is something I am struggling with myself. I am preaching the importance of this virtue because I have realised that this is one of the virtues that will help up us restore the brokenness in the world we live in.

You see, we live in a revolutionary world. A world where rather than leave things in the hands of God who is the final judge, and a just judge, like revolutionaries we seek to address matters ourselves. The problem is, however, as Pope Benedict XVI has so eloquently elaborated, revolutionary attitudes only bring about more pain and suffering since we take on the challenge of being God. When we see something that we don’t like, we decide that we are going to fix the matter and bring about a resolution of the problem. The trouble is, in soi doing we often only create a new problem, or worse compound the existing crises infinitely more.

I should add, however, that meekness does not mean that we simply sit on the sidelines and do nothing, bleating away like Mary’s little lambs. On the contrary, following the teaching of the Church, would require us to respectfully, graciously, sympathetically, point out the problems in our brothers’ behaviour. Don’t forget that admonishing the sinner is one of the spiritual acts of mercy.

Now, it is possible that we will suffer the repercussions of this act of mercy, but to suffer these repercussions, and respond proportionately and justly to them, is a part of our practice of the virtue of meekness, acts for which we will be rewarded at the end of our lives and on the day of judgment. Sometimes, however, there is nothing to be done. We must just suffer in silence and offer it up. Under no circumstances, however, are we allowed to discredit the office that these leaders hold. On the contrary, our Lord seems to be quite clear that we obey these sinful men precisely because of the high office that they occupy.

As for these sinful men, let us leave them to the true judge of this world. He has already assured us in our reading this Sunday from the Prophet Malachi:

If you do not listen,

if you do not lay it to heart,

to give glory to my name, says the LORD of hosts,

I will send a curse upon you

….

I, therefore, have made you contemptible
and base before all the people,
since you do not keep my ways

At the end of the day, the virtue of meekness, is about recognising the power and the faithfulness of the true judge of the world in our lives here on earth. Let us, therefore, make our own the words we heard in the psalm today:

O LORD, my heart is not proud,

nor are my eyes haughty;

I busy not myself with great things,

nor with things too sublime for me.

(A version of this homily was first preached on 5 November 2023 to the congregation at the Chiesa di San Silvestro in Capite, Rome.)