Month: January 2013

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New Patriarch of Alexandria of the Coptic (Catholic) Church, Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak

http://www.gcatholic.com/dioceses/diocese/alex0.htm#5801

Cardinal Patriarch Antonios Naguib (77) has resigned from his position as the Patriarch of Alexandria of the Copts, due to his age, and his successor is Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak (57), the new Patriarch of Alexandria of the Copts, in full communion with the Pope as the Bishop of Rome.

Ad multos annos, Your Beatitude! May you and the Coptic Catholic Church be blessed by the Lord, and may He be with you through your new ministry as Patriarch!

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Details on the Episcopal Ordination of Coadjutor Archbishop of Singapore on Friday, 22 February 2013 at Singapore Expo

http://www.catholicnews.sg/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8295:announcement-episcopal-ordination-mass-and-reception&catid=3:newsflash

The Episcopal Mass and Reception in conjunction with the upcoming Ordination of our Coadjutor Archbishop, Rev Msgr William Goh will be held as follows:

EPISCOPAL ORDINATION MASS
Date : Friday 22 February 2013
Time : 7.30pm
Venue : Singapore Expo (The Max Pavilion and Exhibition Hall 9)
1 Expo Drive, Singapore 486150

Presider : The Apostolic Nuncio to Singapore, Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli & assisted by our Archbishop Nicholas Chia and Archbishop Murphy Pakiam from Kuala Lumpur
Admission : Tickets will be allocated to Parishes by mid-Feb 2013
Dress Code : Smart casual 

GENERAL RECEPTION (HIGH TEA)
Date : Saturday 23 February 2013
Time : 2.00pm to 5.00pm
Venue : Catholic Spirituality Centre
1261 Upper Serangoon Road, Singapore 534796

Admission : No tickets required. Open to ALL parishioners to meet the new Coadjutor Archbishop
Dress Code : Smart casual

The Organising Committee
Episcopal Ordination Mass & Reception
18 January 2013

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Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (beginning 18 January 2013)

The week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins today, 18 January 2013, and will last till 25 January 2013. Let us pray for the Unity of all Christians in the One Church, One Body of Jesus Christ our Lord. That no Christians will ever go astray again, severed from the Root of Jesse, Christ Himself, that is the Church.

+Ut Omnes UNUM Sint, ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam+
(That they all may be ONE, for the greater glory of God)

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Friday, 18 January 2013 : 1st Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Today’s first reading from the Letter to the Hebrews and the Gospel Reading brought forward a very clear message to all of us, that we must stay faithful and indeed have faith in the Lord. If we remain faithful in God, He will reward us, but if we abandon Him, we will not merit His Kingdom as our reward. And we should honour the Lord at all times, and respect the holiness of Sundays as God’s holy day, and participate fully in the Holy Mass on Sundays.

In our daily lives, we encountered many problems, difficulties, and challenges. Such is also the challenges that faces the Lord when He created our world. As He created our world, He laboured and toiled, shaping creation and our world as we know it today. And yet, after all things are completed, He pulled back and rested. This day when the Lord rested is the day that we now respect as the Holy Day of God, Sunday. In the third commandment, God commanded us to honour His Holy Day. Why should we honour such a day? It is important that we find some time in the midst of our busy lives to spend it with God, God who loves us, and God who created us. Particularly, we should participate fully in the Holy Eucharist every Sundays, and receive our Lord into ourselves through the Most Precious Body and Blood in the Eucharist.

The Lord Himself had said, “Come to me, all of you who work hard and who carry heavy burdens, and I will refresh you/give you rest. We deserve the Lord’s refreshment only if we had the courage to come to Him, and seek His forgiveness. Just as the Lord is present in the church in the Most Holy Eucharist, let us all come to be with Him just as the people gathered around Jesus in the home. By seeing our great faith in Him, the Lord will reward us, just as how Jesus healed the paralytic after seeing the great faith of those around Him, especially the four people who removed the roof in order to bring the paralytic before Jesus.

In the letter to the Hebrews, a contrast was made between those who listen to God directly (the Apostles, and the people gathered around Jesus in the house, when Jesus still walked this world with them, and the believers who indirectly listen to the Word of the Lord through the Scripture and the teachings of the priests and the church. But this do not mean actually that we cannot be as faithful as those who has seen the Lord. Remember that the Lord Himself said to Thomas, when he believed only after seeing the Resurrected Christ : “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believes”. That means, although we do not see the Lord directly, we can still believe in Him, and in His love, and particularly in this Year of Faith, we must strive to strengthen our Faith in God.

Then, the Gospel reading today also highlighted the Authority that has been given to Jesus, as the Son of God, to forgive sins. Why do we then confess to priests? Why do we tell them our sins? Can’t we just confess it to God and be forgiven? Christ has given the authority to forgive sins to His Apostles : “Those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven, and those whose sins you retain, they are retained”, and this authority came down from the Apostles, to the bishops, and finally to the priests that we meet in our lives. Through these priests, the Lord work His authority to forgive our sins, and this is why, we should confess frequently and regularly, that whatever sins, even little sins that we have, are forgiven by God, through our priests.

In addition to this, the authority of the Lord in forgiving our sins and His healing of the paralytic shows that the spiritual sickness of the soul through sin can indeed affect the physical dimensions of our body. Many of our physical illness can be tied to the poor conditions of our mentality, and our soul. So first, rather than seek to cure our physical infirmities, we should first seek peace with God, by asking for His mercy on us, that our sins will be forgiven. It is better for us to be not physically very healthy but having a pure and peaceful soul untainted by sin, rather then be very healthy, but have a corrupted soul filled with sin. Never neglect the soul, as much as we put much attention to our physical health by consuming vitamins and healthy foods. We also need spiritual food, the Word of God in the Scripture, and to pray to God constantly, speaking to the Lord, and listening to Him. That our being will not be just physically healthy, but also spiritually robust as well!

May the Lord bless us this day, that we will be spiritually healthy as we are physically healthy, and just like the actions of the four men who carried the paralytic to Jesus, let us care for one another, and comfort those who are sorrowful, and bring the Word of God to those who are in darkness, that just like the paralytic, they may be healed as well, and become children of the Light. Let us strengthen our faith in this Holy Year of Faith, and renew our commitment to love God, to honour His holy day in the Mass, and to love one another, just as God loves us. Amen.

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Friday, 18 January 2013 : 1st Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Mark 2 : 1 -12

After some days Jesus returned to Capernaum. As the news spread that He was in the house, so many people gathered, that there was no longer room even outside the door. While Jesus was preaching the Word to them, some people brought a paralyzed man to Him.

The four men who carried him couldn’t get near Jesus because of the crowd, so they opened the roof above the room where Jesus was, and through the hole, lowered the man on his mat. When Jesus saw the faith of these people, He said to the paralytic, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”

Now some teachers of the Law, who were sitting there, wondered within themselves, ” How can He speak like this, insulting God? Who can forgive sins except God?”

At once Jesus knew in His spirit what they were thinking, and asked, “Why do you wonder? Is it easier to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven’, or to say ‘Rise, take up your mat and walk?’ But now you shall know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”

And He said to the paralytic, “Stand up, take up your mat and go home.” The man rose and, in the sight of all those people, he took up his mat and went out. All of them were astonished and praised God, saying, “Never have we seen anything like this!”

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Friday, 18 January 2013 : 1st Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Hebrew 4 : 1-5, 11

Therefore let us fear while we are invited to enter the rest of God, lest any of you be left behind. We received the Gospel exactly as they did, but hearing the message did them no good, because they did not share the faith of those who did listen. We are now to enter this rest because we believed, as it was said : I was angry and made a solemn vow : they will never enter My rest – that is the rest of God after He created the world.

In another part it was said about the seventh day : And God rested on the seventh day from all His works. But now it is said : They will not enter My rest. Let us strive, then, to enter the rest and not to share the misfortune of those who disobeyed.

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Happy St. Anthony’s Day! (17 January 2013)

http://www.romereports.com/palio/animals-pay-a-visit-to-st-peters-square-for-celebration-of-their-patron-saint-anthony-english-8769.html

Today is the celebration day of St. Anthony the abbot, celebrated in Rome with the blessing of animals. St. Anthony the abbot or St. Anthony the Great is a third century AD monk who was noted for his great holiness and perseverance through numerous attacks and temptations by the devil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_the_Great

St. Anthony, pray for us!

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Pope Benedict XVI now tweets in Latin too! https://twitter.com/Pontifex_ln

Pope Benedict XVI tweets in Latin at https://twitter.com/Pontifex_ln

His main twitter account in English is at https://twitter.com/Pontifex

 

In total Pope Benedict XVI tweets simultaneously in nine languages :

French : https://twitter.com/Pontifex_fr

Arabic : https://twitter.com/Pontifex_ar

Italian : https://twitter.com/Pontifex_it

Polish : https://twitter.com/Pontifex_pl

Portuguese : https://twitter.com/Pontifex_pt

Spanish : https://twitter.com/Pontifex_es

 

I hope Pope Benedict XVI will soon tweet in Chinese and Tagalog as well! God bless our Pope and the Universal Church!

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New Apostolic Nuncio for Malaysia, Timor Leste, and Apostolic Delegate for Brunei, and news on the Episcopal Ordination of Coadjutor Archbishop of Singapore

Archbishop Joseph Marino, Apostolic Nuncio to Bangladesh, was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI yesterday (16 January 2013) as the new Apostolic Nuncio to Malaysia, and also hold the post of Apostolic Nuncio to Timor Leste, and Apostolic Delegate to Brunei Darussalam.

In the Archdiocese of Singapore, Coadjutor Archbishop William Goh will be ordained as a bishop on 22 February 2013, Feast of the Chair of St. Peter. Venue is yet to be finalised, but is believed to be finalised soon, including the time of the Episcopal Ordination Mass (and Dinner).

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Thursday, 17 January 2013 : 1st Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Anthony the abbot (Scripture Reflection)

In today’s readings, we clearly see that God work His power through miracles, as shown in the First Reading where Paul mentioned that God worked miracles through the forty years of Israel’s wandering in the desert after leaving Egypt and after their disobedience which caused God to make them to wonder for forty years to atone for their sins, and in the Gospel, where Jesus cured the leper and made him clean.

However, we can note that despite all of the miracles and deeds that the Lord had done, despite all the manna the people of Israel had eaten, and the other numerous miracles through the forty years, the people’s hearts remain distant from God, and they even frequently rebelled against Him by worshipping foreign gods of the Midians and the nations around them.

Compare this with the attitude of the people and the leper in the Gospel, where the leper believed in Jesus and through his faith, he was cured of his leprosy. Despite being told not to spread the word of Jesus’ miracle, the man spread the news to all, who began to come to Jesus in the wilderness. Jesus is God, but as it was not yet His time to reveal His divinity, He wanted to keep His ministry secret in a low-profile manner, and not to boast of His great power. But the people’s reactions is the complete opposite of the people in the First Reading, where they instead of rebelling against the Lord, they came to the Lord and they sought the Lord.

Paul warned the people to always stay close to God, especially in their hearts, and to encourage one another in their goal to stay close to God, and to always keep hope in Christ and not to fall into the traps of sin and evil. The people in the first reading represent the old self, who despite of God’s grace and blessing, hardened their hearts and their soul against the love of God. God is loving and merciful, but He also hates sin and disobedience, just as He showed when Adam and Eve disobeyed Him in the Garden of Eden. We, as humans, have pride in our hearts, and we tend to stay in our sinful ways and avoid God, too proud to humble ourselves to seek God in our daily lives, and content to be carried astray by the pleasures of this world.

However, the Gospel brought about the second type of people, the ones we should aspire to become, a people who are humble, who are willing to seek God even beyond their comfort, to go the extra mile ‘into the wilderness’ to seek God, to seek His forgiveness, and to bask in His love and mercy. The leper represents us, we who are healed by God of our afflictions, both through Baptism, and through the grace and blessings of God. Just as Paul mentioned, the leper, who represents us, should spread the news of the love of God to all, to those who are yet to hear the Good News, and in particular to those whose hearts are hardened against the Lord in their pride. In our daily lives, in our homes, in our families, and with our friends, with every simple things that we do, we should reflect this by living our faith through our good deeds and actions, so that everyone can see the Lord and His love through us. If we are able to do so, God will bless us, and we will be with Christ until the end, and when we go to His Kingdom, He will open the door and welcome you with the words, “Welcome friend, I know you, and through your humility and charity, and your ceaseless support of one another for My sake, you have merited eternal life.”

May God bless all of us, and may He grant us strength and humility, that we can indeed seek the Lord for forgiveness of our sins, and open ourselves to His love, and not to forget to spread this love to all around us, that all of us together, will be with Christ, and in Christ, we are saved. Amen.