Can we be the ‘Other Christ’?

No. There is nothing blasphemous about the term ‘other Christ’ (or alter Christi, a term applied to the role of priests as 'the other Christ') being applied to us lay people. In fact, it is about something Christianly possible. It may even be the beginning of many possibilities. I am hurriedly writing this post so that I can file it before you and I prepare to participate in the Good Friday service.

You may be familiar with the practice of holding Blood Donation camps at parishes during the Holy Week. By donating blood, we try to emulate our Lord who shed blood for us, thereby showing that love is stronger than death. “This is my blood…which is poured out for many.” (Mark 14:24)

We all know that donating blood serves to save lives such as of those undergoing major surgery; who are victims of accidents or burn; or are anaemic. Blood is a living donation (a gift that one makes while still alive) and also a life-giving donation.

But friend, have you ever considered organ and/or body donation? This is something you decide upon while you are still alive. While your organs become a gift at once to several needy people after you pass from this earthly life, a body donation helps greatly improve the quality of human life in the long run. (Did you know that as a matter of fact, the medical students who would soon be doctors who treat us, do not really have enough human bodies from which to study anatomy?)

In fact, for us Catholics, who believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist (the institution of which is celebrated on Maundy Thursday), these would be a sterling way to ‘make real’ our love for Christ. Imagine if we could make our own, the very words of Jesus: “This is my body, which is given up for you.” Luke 22:19. We would actually be doing it in remembrance of our Lord.(Luke 22:19 again!)

Several years ago, I signed a Living Will donating my organs (eyes, kidney, liver, heart and lungs) after death through the Mohan Foundation (www.mohanfoundation.org). I am presently re-working a document by which I pledge to convey my body to Madras Medical College after my death for medical learning or research purposes.

If God would give me a chance that my living will could be carried out (there are some legal and medical conditions to it), I would consider myself so honoured. And I would like to share this idea with you during this Holy season. If you are interested to get a format of these documents I mention, I will be glad to share them with you or help you write one for yourself.
Here are a few pieces of information that may motivate you make this Christian call:

1. Our Pope Benedict XVI registered as an organ donor in 1999, prior to becoming Pope. “To donate one’s organs is an act of love that is morally licit, so long as it is free and spontaneous,” he told Zenit International News Agency. (see also http://www.zenit.org/article-24191?l=english)

2. Pope John Paul II reinforced the Church’s support of organ donations. In 2000, when he addressed the 18th International Congress of the Transplantation Society, the pope repeated his words from Evangelium Vitae, regarding “the donation of organs, performed in an ethically acceptable manner, with a view to offering a chance of health and even of life itself to the sick who sometimes have no other hope” (#86). (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2000/jul-sep/doc...)

3. For Christians, burial is not the only form of disposal of dead bodies. The Catholic Church allows for cremation as well. We can infer from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 2301) that so long as we do not deny faith in the resurrection of the body, cremation or donation of body for scientific research is permitted. (http://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_comp...)

4. The Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994 enacted by the Government of India legalizes making free organ donations in India. (http://demotemp286.nic.in/LAw%20Codes/acxt_2%5CTransplantation%20of%20Hu...)

I close finally with a poem on Body Donation penned by Bhaskar Venugopal, a friend and a Brahmin convert:

THE GLORIOUS BODY


On one dark Friday, his body hung on the cross
People stood around weeping, mourning their loss
They slowly turned around and began to leave
The events of the day, they could hardly believe

Then came a rich man to claim his body
A rock was hewn and a grave was made ready
The humble king who had no crown or throne
Was now laid to rest in a borrowed tomb

The governor ordered for the tomb to be sealed
Fearing that the body his disciples could steal
So the soldiers rolled a stone and kept a close watch
A plan so secure, no earthly power could quash

The Sabbath passed by, a day of solemn rest
Time had arrived for his claims to be put to test
Before the break of day, the women lost their calm
They ran to the grave with spices and balm

They wondered how they could enter the tomb
For there was none to help them roll back the stone
But when they arrived, they saw the stone rolled aside
And there sat an angel arrayed in a robe so white

“He has risen” the angel declared
And they fled from the place, alarmed and terrified
Now there was no need to embalm a body
That had passed from death to glory

One day our bodies will perish and die
But in heaven, forever, we will remain alive
Earth’s loss will become heaven’s gain
But our earthly bodies will rot in vain

You could choose to seal your grave with a stone
Or be known through the ages as one with an empty tomb

Donate your body, when you enter glory!

 Picture: Shot at the Vatican Museums, Aug 2005

Bribe and the Bride

Bride?! This is gonna be quite juicy baby!! (Sorry, I am quite unabashed using the juice word.)

You are young. Unmarried, perhaps. How you look and what people think about you matter a great deal to you. Especially, if you have a crush on someone or are hoping to court someone into a relationship (that may, God-willing, end in a marriage). You are quite careful what people who are close to that special person think about you, your family, your friends, your character, where you go and so on. Gyms, beauty parlours, dentists, English-speaking courses, cloth stores and a host of other businesses are doing quite well thanks to that ‘special person’.

What preparation the he and the she make ahead of courtship. Can the committed ones be left far behind? No way. In fact, their preparations are investment (not a gamble as for the ones who still trying). All of us are waiting to be united with the desire of our heart. It may even be a coveted job or chance to get a scholarship or win a competition. We can do anything for it.

Bribe? Now, what about that? Well, this is juicy too. It (the bribe) makes things so smooth, we just slip and slide into a cinema hall (with a black ticket) or past a pot-bellied traffic cop without being booked or out of the Corporation office with that building approval to construct Noah’s Ark to save the world and its species. Wow!

Bribe and corruption have become an integral part of our society – No one can escape it. Now, if you read past the previous line either agreeing with it or without giving it a second thought, PAUSE. If you think this is a system that has come to stay and that one person cannot stop this culture which is bleeding our society, RETHINK.

Was not Jesus betrayed for 30 pieces of silver? I daresay it was incidentally Judas who did the act which eventually led to Jesus’ assassination. But whenever I part with some money or a favour (‘influence’, ‘recommendation’, ‘political pull’ – sound familiar?) to a person it was not due, to make a person do/think something he otherwise wouldn’t do/think, I betray Jesus. Perhaps my life becomes easier with the bribe, or I get a service out of turn, or I can suppress some things like documents that may work against me or it is just that I am passively submitting to ‘the system’. Call it what you want, it is a bribe.

I am not talking here about poor people who succumb – owing to illiteracy or lack of awareness or other debilitating socio-economic factors – to this so called system. For instance, relatives of an accident victim having to pay menial staff at the General Hospital so that they get a bed to shift the victim from the emergency room or worse still paying illegal money to even get admission into the Emergency Room! Richer people may call this money a tip. Obviously, such people don’t succumb to a tipping system – they simply can afford it.

But “cursed be anyone who takes a bribe to shed innocent blood. All the people shall say, “Amen!”.” (NRSV, Deuteronomy 27:25). Oops! What am I citing? None of us who have accepted the Lord Jesus as our personal saviour – ever receive bribes. It is unthinkable!

But I urge you, friends, to take a second look. As we enter into Holy Week in a few hours, let me draw your attention to the other side of this system – the reasons why I call bribe a ‘financial adultery’ – as something that takes away the purity of ‘bride of Christ’. Read on:

I pay a bribe or tip to this man at the Emergency Room. He’s the guy who carts the stretcher, cleans the stains and disposes the waste. He has a wife and two children. His salary is just about enough for the family to eke out a decent living. As a perk, the hospital takes care of the medical needs of his family. But the tips that he has been collecting for a few years now have now become full-fledged second income. After meeting some of the fancies that his wife and children may have (movies, a DVD player, a fridge or some jewelry), there is still some money left to dispose.

Lately, a new ward girl has joined in. She is young, pretty and unmarried. Our man’s fancy? Well, it is her. He gets her some kadalai (peanuts) at times – just to crack with some tea during the evening. One day he buys her flowers. You can imagine up the rest. And yes, a year later, his wife returns to her parents with their two children.

Alternate View Finder 1: Our man could now afford some branded liquor and spent much of that ‘extra’ money on it and became alcoholic. He faulted and defaulted at work and got served a memo and eventually dismissed. His wife was forced into working as a maid and his children could not school anymore. Only here, his paramour is a liquor bottle!

Alternate View Finder 2: Our man is by now so used to extorting money for the service he is duty-bound and paid to render, he starts tormenting very needy people for money, often leading to deaths for want of immediate attention at the emergency room. He also lends the ‘extra’ money on usurious interest rates. The people unable to pay are dealt with through goons paid by our hero. His colleagues envy his prosperity and begin emulating his methods and the illicit culture simply grows and grows.

Note here that the money I gave that man in hospital eventually led to him being unfaithful to his wife and broke his family. In the alternate cases, it spoilt his health, livelihood and family life; led his children to remain semi-literate OR otherwise led innocents to suffer (like Jesus did); it perverted justice and did no-one any good in the long run.

So tell me brothers and sisters, does it matter if you received a bribe or gave away one? As long there is one who gives, there will certainly be one who takes. So in either role, we have betrayed innocent blood. This is the reflection I would like to present from Deuteronomy 27:25. We have all played Judas sometime or the other (albeit unwittingly) because bribe corrupts the heart (Ecclesiastes 7:7). .

We, Christ’s church, are His bride. We are waiting to be united with him at His second coming. Though we may have lived in this corrupt system of bribery out of ignorance or helplessness or because we thought it is just a trivial part of our everyday lives, let us recognize this system as something that questions our very faith, our values and morals as Christ’s followers. It prevents us from being faithful to Him – at least in the measure we would be faithful to someone we so deeply desire to be united with, in our earthly lives.

All our fasting, prayer, praise and worship, seminars and bible-reading notwithstanding, are we ready to “present ourselves (‘the body of Christ’) to Him in splendour, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind so that we may be holy and without blemish (blameless).” (NRSV, Ephesians 5:27).

The Father sacrificed His only Son so that our sins are blotted out. Can bribe be replaced with any good thing? Yes, it can. Once again, it is a sacrifice – this time on our part – the sacrifice of going through the agony of long queues, waiting lists, red tape, corrupt officials, repeated rejections and the ignominy of being called a fool. After all, we want to take after Jesus, don’t we?

If we are called to be the yeast that will transform society (Matthew 13:33), can we anymore be complacent with just keeping our bodies alone in perfect comfort and pleasure? We may be few or small just like the yeast. But we are capable of changing the world. But we should be ready to believe in the Beatitudes, bear some pain, have some patience and stand up against evil systems.

In big and small ways, let us – educated people, who are privileged to have the knowledge of a suffering Lord through the salvation that He bought us with His blood – stand up against bribe and corruption in all forms. Let us be ready – in this sense too – to lose our lives for His sake, so that we may gain it – for ourselves and for others.

Prayer: Dear Jesus, your mother said, “do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). Please give me the courage to obey. Amen.

Next Post: ‘Bridling Bribe – Some Insights’

Picture Courtesy: ‘Broken vows’ by Paree Erica