Day: February 21, 2014

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Friday, 21 February 2014 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Psalm 111 : 1-2, 3-4, 5-6

Alleluia! Blessed is the one who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in His commands. His children will be powerful on earth; the upright’s offspring will be blessed.

Wealth and riches are for his family, there his integrity will remain. He is for the righteous a light in darkness, he is kind, merciful and upright.

It will be well with him who lends freely, who leads a life of justice and honesty. For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered and loved forever.

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Friday, 21 February 2014 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

James 2 : 14-24, 26

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, to profess faith without showing works? Such faith has no power to save you. If a brother or sister is in need of clothes or food and one of you says, “May things go well for you; be warm and satisfied,” without attending to their material needs, what good is that? So it is for faith without deeds : it is totally dead.

Say to whoever challenges you, “You have faith and I have good deeds; show me your faith apart from actions and I, for my part, will show you my faith in the way I act.” Do you believe there is one God? Well enough, but do not forget that the demons also believe and tremble with fear!

You foolish one, do you have to be convinced that faith without deeds is useless? Think of our father Abraham. Was he not justified by the act of offering his son Isaac on the altar? So you see, his faith was active along with his deeds and became perfect by what he did.

The word of Scripture was thus fulfilled, Abraham believed in God so he was considered a righteous person and he was called the friend of God. So you see, a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. So, just as the body is dead without its spirit, so faith without deeds is also dead.

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Thursday, 20 February 2014 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Practice our faith, practice our faith, and practice our faith. That is the theme constantly repeated by St. James in his letter, which we heard today in our first reading. St. James placed a great importance in us having a living and real faith, one that is not just made with mere words or lip-service, but instead done in the spirit of love and true dedication to God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, continuing from my message yesterday about how important it was to love and to practice our faith, it is truly necessary to do so, because indeed, just as Jesus rebuked Peter in the Gospel today, the devil or Satan is everywhere, and at every opportunity, Satan will definitely try his best to undermine our efforts in faith.

That is because the devil does not want to see us saved from the fate that awaited us since the time when our ancestors first fell into sin, just as Satan himself and his fallen angels followers had fallen. They were to be condemned to death and eternal suffering, which we too were once destined to go to, and we were once destined and fated for this suffering, which we call hell, because it is a state of suffering because of the total separation we have to endure, from the love of God.

That is why our faith in God must be strong. It cannot be just by word or by empty nonsense, which means nothing to God. Our faith must be genuine, and must be genuinely loving, that is filled with love, both for God and for His children, our fellow brethren, all of mankind. If our faith is solid, strong and healthy, then we have no need to fear the devil and his forces standing to oppose us.

We have to be ever ready and ready to resist all the temptations of Satan and all of his advances which are designed to bring us to our downfall. In order to do so, then our faith must be strong, that it may become our strong shield of faith. We cannot be complacent in our faith, or the devil may find a weakness in our defense and attack us.

Follow the Lord faithfully and keep to His commandments and what He had taught us. If we do so, then we will have a powerful ally, none other than our Lord Himself who will come between us and the devil and his forces. That way, we certainly have no need to fear. The devil knows this, and he knows that if God is on our side and protects us, he will have no chance or power over us.

That is why he tries hard day by day to separate us from God, by planting fear and doubt in our hearts, as well as promoting to us the good things of the world and things that can divert our attention from the Lord. Brothers and sisters in Christ, it all comes down to us, and our ability to make a concrete decision. Will we choose our Lord or will we choose the devil and whatever lies he offers us?

Doubt no longer brethren, but believe. And if we have sinned and done things wicked in the eyes of the Lord, repent and sincerely change our hearts, our Lord who sees and knows all will see our faith and love for Him, and He will welcome us into His kingdom.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all together make a new commitment, to dedicate ourselves fully to the Lord our God, and to love Him with all of our hearts, our soul, and our minds. May the Lord continue to be with us, bless us, and protect us from the power and forces of the evil one. Amen.

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Thursday, 20 February 2014 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Mark 8 : 27-33

Jesus set out with His disciples for the villages around Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He asked them, “Who do people say I am?” And they told Him, “Some say You are John the Baptist; others say You are Elijah or one of the prophets.”

Then Jesus asked them, “But you, who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” And He ordered them not to tell anyone about Him.

Jesus then began to teach them that the Son of Man had to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the Law. He would be killed, and after three days rise again.

Jesus said all this quite openly, so that Peter took Him aside and began to protest strongly. But Jesus turning around, and looking at His disciples, rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are thinking not as God does, but as people do.”

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Thursday, 20 February 2014 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 33 : 2-3, 4-5, 6-7

I will bless the Lord all my days; His praise will be ever on my lips. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the lowly hear and rejoice.

Oh, let us magnify the Lord, together let us glorify His Name! I sought the Lord, and He answered me; from all my fears He delivered me.

They who look to Him are radiant with joy, their faces never clouded with shame. When the poor cry out, the Lord hears and saves them from distress.

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Thursday, 20 February 2014 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

James 2 : 1-9

My brothers and sisters, if you truly believe in our glorified Lord, Jesus Christ, you will not discriminate between persons. Suppose a person enters the synagogue where you are assembled, dressed magnificently and wearing a gold ring; at the same time, a poor person enters dressed in rags.

If you focus your attention on the well-dressed and say, “Come and sit in the best seat,” while to the poor one you say, “Stay standing or else sit down at my feet,” have you not, in fact, made a distinction between the two? Have you not judged, using a double standard?

Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters, did God not choose the poor of this world to receive the riches of faith and to inherit the kingdom which He has promised to those who love Him? Yet you despise them! Is it not the rich who are against you and drag you to court? Do they not insult the Holy Name of Christ by which you are called?

If you keep the Law of the Kingdom, according to Scripture : ‘Love your neighbour as yourself,’ you do well; but if you make distinctions between persons, you break the law and are condemned by the same law.

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Wednesday, 19 February 2014 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are called to reflect on our lives and on our attitudes towards our faith. Have we seen our faith as something that needs just to be there as a belief? Or have we seen it as something that constantly need to be kept alive by active contributions and works? That was what St. James in his letter in today’s first reading tried to tell us about the faith.

Our faith cannot be dormant or be based on mere words or letters of the word. Our faith must be supported with a strong foundation, that is the foundation of love and devotion to God. And in order to do that, we have to act, and be active in love. Remember what Christ had told us? That we ought to love one another, especially those who are least and weakest in our societies?

St. James was particularly condemned and shunned by the Protestant heretics, who held firm to their false and twisted idea of sola fide and sola scriptura, that is the firm belief that only the Holy Scriptures is correct and the only thing to be followed, and more importantly, sola fide, that means faith is sufficient, certainly by literal understanding of the words of Christ, when He said to some, that their faith had saved them.

Yet, they had truly missed the point by their extremely literal understanding of the true meaning of God’s message. Faith is important, and indeed we have to put our complete faith and belief in the Lord, but faith cannot be merely that, meaning just faith. We do not have true and living faith if we just merely say, Lord, Lord, I believe in You, and keep ourselves to reading the Holy Bible all day long without action.

Action, that is action based in love, is an integral part of our faith, and therefore, an integral part of our salvation in Jesus. We cannot separate action of love from faith in love itself, for God Himself is Love, and Jesus is the embodiment of that Love. God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son, Jesus Christ, that all who believe in Him will not die, but receive eternal life.

Faith is important, but can we believe in Love, that is the love of God, if we ourselves do not practice love in our words, deeds and actions? If our actions are instead based on hatred, prejudice, jealousy, and many other negative influences, then are we not contradicting our own faith in the Lord? And does that not mean that we have actually no faith in God?

That is precisely why the path of those who believed in salvation by faith alone is wrong, because many of them in their blind zeal to prove and fight for their version of the faith, they sowed much hatred, prejudice, and jealousy among themselves against the truth that is in God and in His Church. But again, they are not the only ones that are in the wrong, because we ourselves too often do not truly follow what the Lord wants from us.

We are often ignorant of our own faith, and we treat our faith as nothing more than a profession of the Creed and attendance at the Mass every Sundays. We do not truly practice our faith, and in our own daily habits and activities, we often do not reflect the love of God. This ignorance of our faith is something that we have to avoid at all cost, for again, I would like to remind you that this kind of faith is dead, and will do us no good before God.

Practice our faith, brothers and sisters in Christ, and put love in all of our words, actions and deeds. Put what the Lord had revealed and taught to us into real action. As Jesus had said, let all of us love one another, all of our brothers and sisters, children of the same God just as much as we care and love for ourselves. And of course, love God with all of our hearts and our strength.

But loving God does not mean for us to keep ourselves enclosed in our own world of desire for salvation, for doing that will mean selfishness. Loving God can be much more concretely professed, by following what He told us! Yes, that is to love our brethren, especially those who are the last, the lost, and the least. And Jesus Himself said that whatever we had done for them, we did them for God.

Hence, brothers and sisters in Christ, shall we heed what St. James had called us to do, and indeed challenged us to do? Shall we change our perspective on our own faith in God? Shall we from now on make our faith in God truly vibrant and alive? We have to make our faith in God concrete through actions, and that is actions based on love.

May our Lord Jesus Christ guide us and bless us with wisdom and understanding, that we may realise how important it is to love, and how crucial it is towards our salvation. May God continue to be with us and walk with us, that we may continue to love Him and devote ourselves to Him with full, living faith. God bless us all. Amen.