Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Psalm 32 : 4-5, 18-19, 20 and 22
For upright is the Lord’s word and worthy of trust is His work. The Lord loves justice and righteousness; the earth is full of His kindness.
But the Lord’s eyes are upon those who fear Him, upon those who trust in His loving-kindness to deliver them from death and preserve them from famine.
In hope we wait for the Lord, for He is our help and our shield. O Lord, let Your love rest upon us, even as our hope rests in You.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Genesis 12 : 1-4a
YHVH said to Abram, “Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and in you all peoples of the earth will be blessed.”
So Abram went as YHVH had told him, and Lot went with him.
Cardinal Jose da Cruz Policarpo, Cardinal-Priest of S. Antonio in Campo Marzio has passed away on Wednesday, 12 March 2014 at the age of 78. He was the Patriarch of Lisbon and therefore the Primate of Portugal, from 1998 to 2013, and was recently retired from his position.
http://www.gcatholic.org/hierarchy/data/cardJP2-8.htm#126
Cardinal Policarpo was created Cardinal in 2001 by Blessed Pope John Paul II in his eighth Cardinal creation consistory on 21 February 2001. His motto was Per Obedientiam ad Libertatem, which means “Through obedience, to freedom”. This means that through obedience to God, we will gain freedom from sin and death and gain eternal life.
![Cardinal Jose da Cruz Policarpo - Lisboa[1]](https://petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/cardinal-jose-da-cruz-policarpo-lisboa1.jpg)
We pray for Cardinal Policarpo, that he will rest in peace, and God will reward him for all his hard and great work as the long time servant of God as the shepherd of the faithful in Lisbon, for all the ministries and good works he had done there for the sake of God and His people. May the Lord welcome him into His embrace in heaven and give him eternal rest and happiness that he deserved.
With the passing of Cardinal Policarpo, the College of Cardinals now stands at 217 members, with 120 Cardinal-electors and 97 Cardinal non-electors. The number of Cardinal-electors now is just at the specified maximum limit.
There are now 0 Cardinal-elector vacancy in the College of Cardinals, 0 vacant Cardinal Suburbicarian Sees (for Cardinal Bishops), 1 vacant Cardinal Title (for Cardinal Priests) and 6 vacant Cardinal Deaconries (for Cardinal Deacons).
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we all belong to God, just as He had mentioned it in the first reading we heard today. Just as He had claimed Israel to be His chosen ones, to be His chosen people, we too, in the new covenant that Jesus had established with all mankind, have been made to be the people of God, and consecrated to Him in His love.
And as He Himself mentioned, that those who belong to Him ought to be like Him in our actions, words and deeds, that we may reflect Him in all the things that we do. And therefore, we should follow all of His commandments and laws He had revealed to us through the prophets as written in the Scriptures, and through Jesus His Son.
We are God’s children, and like all children do, we ought to follow what our parents are doing, imitating them in their actions, deeds and thoughts. And as God our Father and Lord is Love Himself, we too have to love then, and love just as God loved us. And the commandments of God itself is love, designed to help us to be able to better love one another and to love and dedicate ourselves to God.
And in love, this love is not the kind of love that we often know in this world. There are many kinds and forms of love, but true and genuine love does not equate with lust and desire for pleasure, and neither can it be associated entirely with the love that someone express for another, between a man and a woman, or love that exists between those who had already loved one another in the first place.
Instead, true and genuine love means to love without discrimination and conditions. It is an unconditional love which we offer to all. Genuine love means to do what Christ had told us to do, that is to love even our enemies and pray for them, that they too may know love through the power of our prayer and the example of our unconditional and genuine love.
Yes, brethren, too often we have tried to fight fire with fire, and adding even more fuel to the fire, which ends up in everything being destroyed. And that is what usually happens, when we try to confront hatred and violence with even more violence. Everything will be destroyed and crushed in the end. That is what will happen if we response to someone’s hatred and enmity with even more enmity and hatred from our side.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, that is why it is important for us to instead fight the fire with water, to cool down the fire and let it die down, that in the end everything may be calm again, and through the water, the barren and burnt ground may once again hold life in it. The same therefore, we should practice in our own faith. We have to confront hatred and enmity with love, even if the other side does not yet love us.
Counter their curses with blessings, and show them that we can bring to them a valuable piece of truth, that hatred and violence does not solve everything, and instead will bring things to complete disarray and destruction. Love is the way out of things, as well as peace. We have to always remember this whenever we act.
Make peace with one another and love, and let us all come together in devotion to God in love. Let us show those who still linger in darkness and in the shadow of hatred, that love is the way, and may our actions based in love and forgiveness, help them to get out of the darkness and into the light that together, we may be saved. God be with us all, to the end of time. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Matthew 5 : 43-48
You have heard that it was said : Love your neighbour and do not do good to your enemy. But this I tell you : love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in Heaven. For He makes His sun rise on both the wicked and the good, and He gives rain to both the just and the unjust.
If you love those who love you, what is special about that? Do not even tax collectors do as much? And if you are friendly only to your friends, what is so exceptional about that? Do not even the pagans do as much?
As for you, be righteous and perfect in the way your heavenly Father is righteous and perfect.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Psalm 118 : 1-2, 4-5, 7-8
Blessed are they whose ways are upright, who follow the Law of the Lord. Blessed are they who treasure His word and seek Him with all their heart.
You have laid down precepts to be obeyed. O, that my ways were steadfast in observing Your statutes!
I will praise You with an upright spirit when I learn Your just precepts by heart. I mean to observe Your commandments, o, never abandon me.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Deuteronomy 26 : 16-19
On this day, YHVH, your God, commands you to fulfill these norms and these commandments. Obey them now and put them into practice with all your heart and with all your soul.
Today YHVH has declared to you that He will be your God, and so you shall follow His ways, observing His norms, His commandments and His laws, and listening to His voice.
Today YHVH has declared that you will be His very own people even as He had promised you, and you must obey all His commandments. He, for His part, will give you honour, renown and glory, and set you high above all the nations He has made, and you will become a nation consecrated to YHVH, your God, as He has declared.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
In our faith, brothers and sisters, we must always be genuine. We cannot take our faith for granted, and neither can we only keep an outward profession for faith, but inside we truly lack the faith and do not believe in God. True faith in God requires us to devote ourselves to Him and be committed in our actions and deeds to show our true faith to God.
We must heed what the Lord wants from us, in our actions and deeds, in every single aspects of our lives. We often end up doing lip-service to the Lord and following superficially the laws and rules He had given us, instead of truly devoting ourselves to His cause. This we cannot do, brothers and sisters in Christ.
And we certainly will have to do and act in the way that we preach. We cannot say one thing and yet do another, different thing from what we had said. If we do so then our faith is shallow and not genuine, and can be easily swayed by the wickedness that is in this world.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, our Lord loves us, and I have to repeat it again and again, that God loves us, very much, that He gave us Jesus His Son to be our helper, and to show us the way, how to devote ourselves entirely to Him, by teaching us and showing us the examples of being a good and faithful servant of God.
The key thing of all these is that we have to love, and we have to base all our actions on love, and in all of our actions and dealings, we have to always align ourselves with the ways of the Lord, that is righteousness. We have to adhere to the principles that God had established, in His laws and tenets that we ought to know, understand, and obey.
God wants all of us to love, and to love tenderly, and to forgive when someone slighted us or made mistakes to us. He wants us to do the same too, when we have slighted someone else. He wants us to be reconciled with one another, and forgoing all the hatred and differences that kept us apart, that we all may once again serve Him together as one, united people, united in love.
And He wants to show us that faith in Him cannot be just limited to observations of rituals and obligations according to the law. We cannot be just bystanders and followers, following the instructions of our faith to the letter, without understanding it. What I mean is that, we have to truly understand what we are doing, and in doing so we will make our faith much more meaningful.
And that is why God wants us to forgive one another first and be reconciled before we make our offerings to Him. What He wants from us is a heart of love, untainted by hatred, jealousy and all the other negative feelings that mar the perfection of our hearts. Let this be a lesson to all of us, that we may take note of it, whenever we do something, and whenever we say something, that we truly reflect that we belong to God.
Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, today let us make a resolution before the Lord, that we will be ever better servants of His will, that we will forsake the way of hatred, jealousy and other negative ill-feelings, and change them for the way of love, practicing what we have believed in, that is our faith in the One and only True God, Jesus Christ, who came to us in love to save us. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Matthew 5 : 20-26
I tell you then, if you are not righteous in a much broader way than the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to our people in the past : Do not commit murder; anyone who does kill will have to face trial. But now I tell you : whoever gets angry with a brother or sister will have to face trial.
Whoever insults a brother or sister deserves to be brought before the council. Whoever calls a brother or a sister, “Fool!” deserves to be thrown into the fire of hell. So, if you are about to offer your gift at the altar, and you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift at once and make peace with him, and then come back and offer your gift to God.
Do not forget this : be reconciled with your opponent quickly when you are together on the way to court. Otherwise he will turn you over to the judge, who will hand you over to the police, who will put you in jail. There you will stay, until you have paid the last penny.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Psalm 129 : 1-2, 3-4ab, 4c-6, 7-8
Out of the depths I cry to You, o Lord, o Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears pay attention to the voice of my supplication.
If You should mark our evil, o Lord, who could stand? But with You is forgiveness, and for that You are revered.
I waited for the Lord, my soul waits, and I put my hope in His word. My soul expects the Lord more than watchmen the dawn.
O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with Him is unfailing love and with Him full deliverance. He will deliver Israel from all its sins.
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 