Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of our Lady)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, we are reminded to keep in mind that we mankind are always sorely tempted to boast of ourselves, and to think solely of ourselves, and to be worrying about what we want in life. We always by our nature selfish, and we always act by instinct to preserve our own safety and well-being first, just as animals do.
But we can do better than that, brothers and sisters, for we all know that God loves all of us, and He cares for all of us, for all of our needs and concerns, and He provides freely all that we need to live, as He had also done the same to the animals and plants, in short, for all of creation. God created us all not because He just want to do so, but because He wants to share His love with us, and to care for us with perfect love and compassion.
As a result, indeed, there is truly no need for us to worry at all about anything. We worry because our minds and hearts are filled with concern for ourselves. We cannot detach ourselves from the many concerns and desires that continuously assail us with all their temptations and demands, such that we continuously worry ourselves, either about what we are to eat, or about what we will have in the day, in terms of money, human relationship and many other things.
We also worry because God is not in our hearts and minds. If we have kept the Lord in us faithfully and placed our trust in Him, then we would definitely have not been fearful and we would not have worried about anything. We worry because our fears and our desires grow stronger than our trust and faith in the Lord, and we do not believe that He could help us, or worse, thinking that He had abandoned or ignored us.
Often, this is what people feel when they pray and then their wishes were not heard. But this is because we fail to understand what a prayer truly is. We frequently think of prayer as the channel for miraculous help, and that God can grant us anything we want. But God is truly not someone who will fulfil all that we want, since we all should be aware of human nature, that when we have something, we tend to be not satisfied and wanting even more of what we already have.
That is why when we think that the poor ones are suffering, but the rich in fact also suffer, because the more they have, the more they too worry and desire for even more things. As a result, this causes a continuous vicious cycle that continues to feed our own desires, and then cause us to worry even more as we obtain more of what we wanted.
The key to break away from this great dilemma is by learning to put our trust and hope in the Lord our God. If we can trust in the Lord, then we should know that in His own way, He has been providing for us what we need, either through what we receive in this life, or by what He had done through others around us, whose hands and actions were inspired by the Lord to show His works for our sake.
God works in mysterious ways, but it is often that we fail to understand how He cared for us in His own ways. He gives us what we need and bless us richly. But the true reward lies in the end, when the faithful shall receive the fullness of God’s grace in His heavenly kingdom. This is the promise which He had given to all of His faithful. And this is when we should indeed put our trust in all of His promises and love for us.
May Almighty God strengthen the love which we have for our Lord in our heart. May all of us be more able to love Him more, and trust Him more in all things, so that we will be worrying less about ourselves and what we are to have today, and do the best we can do today, building up our treasures in the everlasting life promised to us. God be with us all. Amen.
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 