Month: July 2014

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Sunday, 6 July 2014 : 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 144 : 1-2, 8-9, 10-11, 13cd-14

I will extol You, my God and King; I will bless Your Name forever. I will praise You day after day and exalt Your Name forever.

Compassionate and gracious is the Lord, slow to anger and abounding in love. The Lord is good to everyone; His mercy embraces all His creation.

All Your works will give You thanks; all Your saints, o Lord, will praise You. They will tell of the glory of Your kingdom and speak of Your power.

The Lord is true to His promises and lets His mercy show in all He does. The Lord lifts up those who are falling and raises those who are beaten down.

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Sunday, 6 July 2014 : 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Zechariah 9 : 9-10

Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion! Shout for joy, daughter of Jerusalem! For your King is coming, just and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

No more chariots in Ephraim, no more horses in Jerusalem, for He will do away with them. The warrior’s bow shall be broken when He dictates peace to the nations. He will reign from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

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Saturday, 5 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Anthony Zaccaria, Priest (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests or Saturday Mass of our Lady)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we listen to comforting words of the readings from the Holy Scriptures and in particular the Holy Gospels how the Lord is with us, and He is on our side at all times, and through Him salvation of all mankind, that is all of us, will come to us. He will succour and save us from our fate that was death and bring us into life. This He promised us and made full through Jesus His Son.

For we are all the Church of God, that is part of His Body. Remember that Jesus mentioned, that we are the Body of Christ the Church, and He is the Head of that Body? Therefore all of us who had been baptised in the Name of Jesus Christ and the Most Holy Trinity, and became part of the Church are indeed united intimately and very closely to Christ, who is also the Bridegroom of the Church.

The Gospel today highlighted how the disciples ought not to be sorrowful or to fast in agony because the Lord is with them. Yes, and that is what we should also do, brothers and sisters. We ought to be joyful and rejoice because God is with us and He will not leave us, even if we are to abandon Him, because He is always faithful. But if we choose to ignore and abandon Him, then we will have no part in Him when He comes again in glory.

We are often like unfaithful wives, who abandoned our husbands when things did not go our way, and we seek other sources of pleasures and comforts, which corrupts us and turn us away from God. We abandon God for the idols of this world, the idol of money, of possessions, of worldly glory and passions, and the pull of power and pride which darkens our heart and keep it away from the light of Christ.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Anthony Zaccaria, a priest and a zealous fighter of the faith, fully and completely faithful to the Lord, and in total dedication to His cause. He was part of the early Counter Reformation efforts of the Church in fighting against the heresy of the Protestant ‘reformation’, when mankind were misled by their human desires and pride, to break away from the unity of the Body of Christ and instead seek human glory and praise.

St. Anthony Zaccaria was truly devoted to the Lord and to his fellow men, giving himself totally in service to them in love and genuine faith. He preached the Good News of the Lord to many and reached out to them to bring them out into the dignity and glory of the light of God. He preached and fought for the purity of the faith, and introduced to the people strict and close devotions to the Lord through prayers and penitence.

He also founded three different religious orders, through which many people ended up following the Lord as he had once done, and which took part in defending the faith and the Church against the heresies of the Protestant rebels of the false reformation. He was truly committed to return the unity to the Body of Christ in the Church, casting away all the iniquities and sins of the people of God, and returning faithfully to the embrace of our loving God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we too today in this world must continue the hard and good works of St. Anthony Zaccaria, in defending our faith and the Church of God and all of God’s holy and beloved people. We cannot be idle and be ignorant in this age filled with danger and evil, where Satan lurked within the hearts of the faithful, waiting for the right moment to lure and drag many souls into hellfire with him.

Let us all be vigilant and strong, and with the intercession of St. Anthony Zaccaria, let us make this world a better place and a place for all the faithful to truly love God and devote themselves to Him with all of their hearts, that united as one, they may together glorify the Lord, the Bridegroom of the Church and. Lord of all the faithful. God bless us all, and be with us always till the end of time. Amen.

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Saturday, 5 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Anthony Zaccaria, Priest (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests or Saturday Mass of our Lady)

Matthew 9 : 14-17

Then the disciples of John came to Jesus with the question, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast on many occasions, but not Your disciples?”

Jesus answered them, “How can you expect wedding guests to mourn as long as the Bridegroom is with them? The time will come, when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.”

“No one patches an old coat with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for the patch will shrink and tear an even bigger hole in the coat. In the same way, you do not put new wine in old wineskins. If you do, the wineskins will burst and the wine will be spilt. No, you put new wine in fresh skins; then both are preserved.”

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Saturday, 5 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Anthony Zaccaria, Priest (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests or Saturday Mass of our Lady)

Psalm 84 : 9, 11-12, 13-14

Would that I hear God’s proclamation, that He promise peace to His people, His saints – lest they come back to their folly.

Love and faithfulness have met; righteousness and peace have embraced. Faithfulness will reach up from the earth while justice bends down from heaven.

The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its fruit. Justice will go before Him, and peace will follow along His path.

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Saturday, 5 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Anthony Zaccaria, Priest (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests or Saturday Mass of our Lady)

Amos 9 : 11-15

“On that day I shall restore the fallen hut of David and wall up its breaches and raise its ruined walls and so build it as in days of old. They shall conquer the remnant of Edom and the neighbouring nations upon which My Name has been called.” Thus says YHVH, the One who will do this.

YHVH says also, “The days are coming when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes overtake the sower. The mountains shall drip sweet wine and all the hills shall melt. I shall bring back the exiles of My people Israel; they will rebuild the desolate cities and dwell in them.”

“They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will have orchards and eat their fruit. I shall plant them in their own country and they shall never again be rooted up from the land which I have given them,” says YHVH your God.

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Friday, 4 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard about the story of the calling of Matthew or Levi by Jesus to be one of His Apostles, and we also heard how the Lord will punish those who are wicked and carry on with their wicked lives at the expense of others. These two stories remind us how important it is for us to seek God’s mercy and to be converted to the true faith in God, and to turn away decisively from our old lives of wickedness into new lives in truth and righteousness.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord is loving and merciful to all of His children, but He does not want us to sin, and He hates sin in all of its forms, some of which examples had been highlighted in the first reading today, namely the actions of those who does not have the Lord in their hearts and the wicked things that they did in cheating others for their own self benefits. The lack of fairness, justice and many other acts that are indeed in violation of the Lord and His truths.

The essence of today’s readings can truly be summarised to the two words that Jesus spoke to Matthew as he was seated at his tax-house, that is ‘Follow Me!’, the desire that God has for all of us, which is to abandon our sinfulness and our obstinate behaviours in resisting His love, and to follow Him faithfully till the end of our lives, as Matthew and the other Apostles and saints had done.

We need to be like Matthew, who did not hesitate to leave all the wealth and worldly happiness that he had, and immediately harkened to the words of the Lord, following Him without condition and without qualms. He left behind all his position could offer him, and all the wealth that his job could have given him, and in doing so, he lost the treasure of this world but gain the treasure of the world that is to come, and this treasure he will never lose.

The first reading indeed warns us that we mankind are easily tempted and swayed by the pleasures and goodness of this world, so that we forget our real purpose in this world and fall into the trick and trap of Satan. What os our real purpose, brothers and sisters in Christ? That is to love and glorify our Lord and God, instead of what many of us are doing now, to love ourselves and seek material wealth and worldly glory, as well as human praise.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the feast day of St. Elizabeth of Portugal also known as St. Elizabeth of Aragon, the Queen consort of Portugal during the high Medieval era Europe. She was truly renowned for her zeal and great piety in life, both before and after becoming the Queen of Portugal. She came from quite a religious family and many of her relatives had already been made saints in their own right.

But what truly set St. Elizabeth of Portugal from her contemporaries was truly how she led a faithful and devoted life to God, shorn of the hunger and greed for pride, human praise and glory, and rather, she lived humbly and with full of love for one another, and for those less fortunate and weak in the society. She inspired many others by her lifestyle and actions, making peace when there were wars, donating food and help to those who were affected by famine and diseases, and many other acts that truly set her apart as a holy woman and an inspiration for the faithful.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, she worked so hard and was eventually overcome by her exertion and sickness. But even as she passed from this life into the eternal life with God, she continued to work her wonders, through the miracles that happened at her tomb, and through her works and inspirations that brought so many people back to the Church and returned so many to their zealous ways before God.

We can all follow her life examples, and aspire to be like her as well. We must be more true and devoted to our faith in the Lord, more than ever before. How do we do so? By following what St. Elizabeth of Portugal had done. Be loving and forgiving to others around us, be charitable to the weak and the needy, and by not thinking and worrying only about ourselves and keeping our ego. Be open, brothers and sisters in Christ! Let everyone and all of us together enjoy the love of God through the doors of our hearts, open wide in acceptance of one another as brethren in Christ.

May Almighty God, through the intercession of St. Elizabeth of Portugal, continue to instill in us, within our hearts the love both for God Himself and for mankind, especially those who are in most need for our help. Amen.

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Friday, 4 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

Matthew 9 : 9-13

As Jesus moved on from there, He saw a man named Matthew at his seat in the custom-house, and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And Matthew got up and followed Him.

Now it happened, while Jesus was at table in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners joined Jesus and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, “Why is it that your Master eats with sinners and tax collectors?”

When Jesus heard this, He said, “Healthy people do not need a doctor, but sick people do. Go and find out what this means : ‘What I want is mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

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Friday, 4 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

Psalm 118 : 2, 10, 20, 30, 40, 131

Blessed are they who treasure His word and seek Him with all their heart.

I seek You with my whole heart; let me not stray from Your commands.

My soul is consumed with desire for Your ordinances at all times.

I have chosen the way of truth; I have set my heart upon Your laws.

Oh, how I long for Your precepts! Renew my life in Your righteousness.

I gasp in ardent yearning for Your commandments that I love.

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Friday, 4 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

Amos 8 : 4-6, 9-12

Hear this, you who trample on the needy to do away with the weak of the land. You who say, “When will the new moon or the sabbath feast be over that we may open the store and sell our grain? Let us lower the measure and raise the price; let us cheat and tamper with the scales, and even sell the refuse with the whole grain. We will buy up the poor for money and the needy for a pair of sandals.”

YHVH says, “On that day I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your festivals into mourning and all your singing into wailing. Everyone will mourn, covered with sackcloth and every head will be shaved. I will make them mourn as for an only son and bring their day to a bitter end.”

YHVH says, “Days are coming when I will send famine upon the land, not hunger for bread or thirst for water, but for hearing the word of YHVH. Men will stagger from sea to sea, wander to and fro, from north to east, searching for the word of YHVH, but they will not find it.”