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| Parents and family members of Bernard Then Ted Fen at the memorial Mass |
Evil and its perpetrators have brought harm and sufferings to countless people and taken the lives of many in the world. These agents of evil have their own agendas – ranging from ethnic superiority to religious fundamentalism, from political ends to dictatorial powers, from exclusive ideologies to business monopolies, from drug pushing to human trafficking. All these agendas need money and different means have been employed to get it. One such means is kidnapping for ransom money. Unfortunately, our beloved son and brother, Bernard Then, was a victim of this inhumane and immoral, heartless and evil strategy of a group of religious extremists in a neighbouring country.
Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, the evil has been at work in the world. It has seized many men and women to be its agents and through them victimised millions of others. The first reading for this evening’s Mass unravels the thinking of perpetrators of evil. Let me quote just a couple of lines from it: “The godless say to themselves: ‘Let us lie in wait for the virtuous man, since he annoys us and opposes our way of life... Before us he stands, a reproof to our way of thinking; the very sight of him weighs our spirits down.’”
The life of those who follow God’s ways becomes intolerable to the godless – that is evil men and women. This is because the consciences of these latter are disturbed even by just the sight of the former. The virtuous remind them of God and therefore of His will which, instead of keeping, they have gone against. Since the godless want to remain in their evil ways, the best way to stop their consciences being disturbed is to do away with the virtuous.
God saw all this evil going on in the world. He sent prophet after prophet in the Old Testament to draw people away from it and turn back to Him. He seemed to be unsuccessful as many still chose to remain in sin. In the end, he sent his own Son Jesus to do that. What does today’s Gospel say of Jesus? “Jesus stayed in Galilee; he could not stay in Judaea, because the Jews were out to kill him.” The powers-that-be whose wrong political and religious ideologies he challenged were out to destroy Jesus. Their greed for authority and power had brought sufferings and oppression to many. In the end, they succeeded in crucifying Jesus.
During his papacy, St John Paul II often talked about the crucified Lord. One statement he made was: the Cross was God’s answer to evil in the world. Indeed, Jesus’ death on the cross is evidence that God has come into our world to suffer with us, victims of evil.
If Jesus’ death on the cross was the end of all that God was doing to deal with evil in the world, then he was a God of failure. But Jesus’ death led to his resurrection. He rose to life and in doing so, he brought life to all humankind who had been victimised by Satan the prince of all evil. At the time Satan thought he had destroyed Jesus on the cross and therefore brought death to all humankind, Jesus rose to life and scored an absolute victory over him. Victims of Satan and his forces were given a new life – eternal life.
A totally unexpected prayer Jesus offered to his Father while hanging on the cross was: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). Following that, he responded to the repentant criminal – a perpetrator of evil – with these words: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43). By extension, Jesus’ forgiveness of his enemies and his assurance to the repentant criminal are applicable to all sinners, including perpetrators of evil. What is called for is repentance – a turning away from evil and turning back to God. The repentant criminal underwent that process of conversion when he rebuked his fellow criminal and then turned to Jesus to request: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23:42). The centurion who took part in Jesus’ crucifixion also converted when he experienced the love and forgiveness Jesus showed on the cross; he then “praised God, and said: ‘Certainly this man was innocent!’” (Lk 23:47).
Love and forgiveness marked Jesus’ life and ministry until his death. They constituted the way God tackled evil in the world. God’s love and forgiveness revealed and personified in Jesus drew perpetrators of evil to conversion – to turn away from evil and turn back to God. Jesus’ apparently senseless death on the cross drew a salvific meaning from his resurrection to life. It became the path to salvation and conversion.
In the strength and power of the crucified and risen Jesus, I believe, Bernard’s senseless and violent death at the hands of perpetrators of evil could turn out to be a way to draw people back to God. The very Christian attitude shown by the bereaved family, his parents and siblings, his dear wife and relatives, marked his violent death. Their love for him surely brought them to a deep sense of loss; but their love for God and for Christ enabled them to see life beyond his death – life in the kingdom of God. Their Christian love for others gave them the generosity and courage to forgive those responsible for the death of their beloved Bernard. That love and forgiveness of theirs were clearly reflected in the prayer of St Francis which they included in their announcement of this Memorial Mass tow days ago. Let me cite this prayer here:
Make me a channel of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me bring your love
Where there is injury, you pardon, Lord
And where there’s doubt, true faith in you
Where there’s despair in life, let me bring hope
Where there is darkness, only light
And where there’s sadness, ever joy
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
In giving to all men, that we receive
And in dying that we’re born to eternal life.
This evening as we celebrate this Holy Mass in memory of Bernard, we are filled with this great hope that Bernard did not lose his life in vain; rather, he is in the eternal embrace of God the Father in Jesus. Where we are concerned, his death is hopefully a wake-up call to the authorities to beef up ways to protect the lives of innocent people and ensure peace in our country and in the world.
