Day: February 24, 2017

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Tuesday, 28 February 2017 : 8th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Sirach 35 : 1-15

Keeping the Law is worthy many offerings. Being faithful to the commandments is like a peace offering. Returning kindness is an offering of fine flour; giving alms is a sacrifice of praise. Renouncing sin pleases the Lord, and shunning injustice is a sacrifice of atonement.

Do not appear before the Lord with empty hands. The commandment requires that you bring an offering. When the offering of the righteous is burnt on the altar, the fat drips down and a fragrant aroma rises to the Most High. The sacrifice of the just man pleases God and will not be forgotten. Honour the Lord with a generous heart and do not be stingy with the first fruits of your harvest.

Offer your gifts with a smiling face and when you pay your tithes do it gladly. Give to the Most High as He has given to you; give generously to the Lord according to what you have; the Lord will repay, He will reward you sevenfold. If you attempt to bribe Him with gifts He will not accept them; do not rely on offerings from dishonest gain.

The Lord is Judge and shows no partiality. He will not disadvantage the poor, He Who hears the prayer of the oppressed. He does not disdain the plea of the orphan, nor the complaint of the widow. When tears flow down her cheeks, is she not crying out against the one who caused her to weep?

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Monday, 27 February 2017 : 8th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as we quickly approach the season of Lent, and its advent this Ash Wednesday, we remember in the Scripture passages today about God’s mercy. God is ever loving and merciful to all of His children, who have been separated from Him and became lost in the turbulence of this world and swallowed by the darkness of sin.

Yet, God never gave up on us, and on every opportunity He always tried to help each and every one of us to find our way back towards Him. He has always kept the door of His mercy open to welcome us back. However, it is we ourselves who often reject God’s very generous offer of mercy. We thought that God is a God without mercy and love, where in fact it was we ourselves who have closed the doors of our hearts to Him.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, it is often our attachments to the things and temptations of this world which have caused us to be distracted and kept away from God. That was why Jesus mentioned in the Gospel today about the difficulties that the rich people were facing, as exemplified by the young man who was rich and was willing to follow Jesus until He asked him to leave behind all of his worldly belongings.

Jesus was not attacking or criticising the rich because of their possessions. This is a misconception which many people often have, thinking that Jesus always condemns the rich and their possessions. Instead, in reality, He was actually condemning the inability to detach and let go, which means that we mankind are often too engrossed and grow too attached to our worldly possessions that we are unable to move on in our faith.

We cannot become too dependant on them, and be hesitant to let go of what we have, when the time comes for us to let them go. After all, all these possessions are indeed blessings and graces which God had granted to each and every one of us. To some of us have been given more, while others have received less, but all of these ultimately came from the Lord, and they do not belong to us.

Rather, whatever we have received, we should be generous in sharing them and using them for good purposes, for God had given us much gifts, and to those to whom He had given more, then more will be expected from them. We cannot bring whatever we have to the world that is to come, that is beyond death. We all know that upon death, all of us will leave behind our earthly treasures, and instead, look forward towards the true treasures found in God alone.

That said, it does not mean that each and every person should sell everything that they have and give all of them to the poor. It means rather that we should do our best in our abilities in order to make good use of whatever blessings and goodness we have received, so that by doing what the Lord had asked us to do, while we may decrease in our earthly riches, but we gain far more bountiful riches in God.

As Christians, all of us should spend some time thinking through what the Lord Jesus had told His disciples today, and also heed what He had asked the young man to do. All of us have to let go of our pride, our human greed and desires, and all the other things which had prevented us from reaching out to God, and from finding our way to Him.

All of us need to spend more time with the Lord, to deepen our relationship with Him, and learning to be humble and to be obedient to God. Let us all also understand that we need to build for ourselves the true treasures of heaven, and not be distracted by the illusory and the temporary wealth of this earth. May all of us grow ever stronger in our faith, and grow ever closer to the Lord our God. Amen.

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Monday, 27 February 2017 : 8th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Mark 10 : 17-27

At that time, just as Jesus was setting out on His journey again, a man ran up, knelt before Him and asked, “Good Master, what must I do to have eternal life?”

Jesus answered, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments : Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not cheat, honour your father and mother.” The man replied, “I have obeyed all these commandments since my childhood.”

Then Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him and He said, “For you, one thing is lacking. Go, sell what you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come and follow Me.” On hearing these words, his face fell and he went away sorrowful, for he was a man of great wealth.

Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God” The disciples were shocked at these words, but Jesus insisted, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

They were more astonished than ever and wondered, “Who, then, can be saved?” Jesus looked steadily at them and said, “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God; all things are possible with God.”

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Monday, 27 February 2017 : 8th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 31 : 1-2, 5, 6, 7

Blessed is the one whose sin is forgiven, whose iniquity is wiped away. Blessed are those in whom the Lord sees no guilt and in whose spirit is found no deceit.

Then I made known to You my sin and uncovered before You my fault, saying to myself, “To the Lord I will now confess my wrong.” And You, You forgave my sin, You removed my guilt.

So let the faithful ones pray to You in time of distress; the overflowing waters will not reach them.

You are my refuge; You protect me from distress and surround me with songs of deliverance.

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Monday, 27 February 2017 : 8th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Sirach 17 : 20-28

Their misdeeds cannot be hidden from Him, all their sins are before the Lord. He holds a man’s almsgiving dear as a priceless signet ring; He cherishes a good deed like apple of His eye. One day He will rise and reward them; He will place their prize on their heads.

He allows those who repent to return; He comforts those whose hopes are fading. Be converted to the Lord and give up your sins, plead with Him to lessen your offence. Return to the Almighty, turn aside from wrongdoing and totally detest evil.

For who in the grave will praise the Almighty, if the living do not give Him glory? The dead man is as if he did not exist and cannot give praise; he who has life and health can praise the Lord.

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Sunday, 26 February 2017 : Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday all of us heard the words of the Scriptures telling us about the need for all of us to have our priorities in life right, that we do not get distracted by the many temptations of life, and that we will be able to discover the true peace and harmony in God. The readings today give us the assurance that God loves all of us His people, and He will not abandon us in our time of need.

In those readings, we are presented with the realities of our world today, that we mankind are often distracted by our many worldly concerns, the concern of our needs and wants, the concerns of our desires, and we often get troubled and focused on our human and worldly concerns, worrying about ourselves and trying to preserve and care for our own needs.

In all these, we have forgotten that above all these things, we have been given the great gift beyond all of the other gifts from God, namely our very own lives. God had graced us with life-giving spirit, and we have received this life we have thanks to Him Who granted them to all of us. God had also provided each and every one with what they need in life, and no one has any need to have any wants or desires, for God had given each and every one enough for themselves.

But we mankind are not easy to be satisfied and pleased, as since the very beginning, we have been tempted by many things, and Satan himself took advantage of this fact. God had created us all mankind with all the things that we need, and we have been placed in the blessed Eden to enjoy forever the rich blessings of God, but we were not content. Instead, we desired for more.

And that was what led Eve to be bought over by the temptations and the sweet lies of Satan, who lied to her telling her that if she would just eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, she then would become like God, by knowing what is good and evil. She and her husband Adam succumbed to the temptation, and we know of what happened after that. Not only that they have not received what they wanted, but they have been deprived of their original blessings because of their disobedience.

Throughout the Scriptures and in our daily lives, we witnessed to the many times when humanity, the people of God erred in their ways. We witnessed how a person would fight with another person debating and disputing over material wealth, over food, over money, over all sorts of worldly goods. We see just how wicked we mankind can be, in our desire to seek for more things for ourselves.

And this would never end, if we ourselves do not restrain our desires. We have seen in many occasions how mankind will always demand for more, seeking for more, wanting for more. That is also how corporate and business world usually operates, by seeking profit and revenue over anything else. And when a certain profit, revenue and good thing are attained, then it is natural for the demand for even more profits to appear.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we live in a world that is saturated with materialism, and often unbridled capitalism and mercantilism. It is a world also filled with selfishness, individualism and also human greed. That is why we see so many people being exploited by those who are in power, by those who are with influence and wealth. That is why we see so much injustice in our world today.

We see so many people being deprived from their daily needs, just so that the necessary resources could be given over to the mighty and the influential, to serve their own purposes. We live in a world today where in the hearts of many people, God had no place at all. Many of the people have abandoned God, seeking instead the pursuit of money, of material possessions, and other forms of worldly satisfaction.

This is where all of us as Christians have been challenged by the Lord Jesus, Who calls all of us to be His witnesses before the world, to be those who would carry on His message and truth, and to be examples for many others to follow through our own actions, words and deeds. We as Christians are supposed to be the role models for others, be exemplary in how we carry out our daily lives, that others may come to realise their mistakes and come to repentance.

First of all, as Christians, we are challenged to put God at the centre of our lives. God must be at the most prominent part of our lives, and in fact everything we say and do, must have their origins in God. What does this mean, brothers and sisters in Christ? It means that all of us must be obedient to God, and we must be filled with righteousness and justice in accordance with God’s ways.

We should not proclaim ourselves as Christians if we do not act in the same manner as a Christian should have done. Otherwise, we will create a scandal for our faith, for the Church and for the Lord, and it is a great sin before God and men alike. Many called themselves Christians, and yet they were greedy, filled with jealousy, anger, wrath, arrogance, selfishness and all other things that are unbecoming of our Christian identity.

Secondly, all of us are called to put our trust in the Lord, which means giving our complete and full trust to Him, knowing that He will take good care of us and bless us with everything that we need. We may think that this can be easily done, but often we are mistaken about this. It is actually not easy for us to put our trust in God, when we mankind often doubted the Lord, doubting and refusing to believe in His love and grace.

Many of us failed to see God’s love and faithfulness because we are too busy worrying about ourselves, about various things that we should really not be worried about. All these stemmed once again from what we have just discussed earlier on, about our inability to restrain our human desires and greed, which led to our fall into sins and darkness. As Christians, we are all called to overcome our worries and fears, and learn to put God ahead of everything else.

Lastly, all of us as Christians are challenged to take action, and to look beyond ourselves and our needs and wants. We must not be overcome and be distracted by our desires, by the temptations of this world. We must be selfless and think about others before ourselves. That is what is being a true Christian is like, that is to be more like Christ. Remember that Jesus Himself had placed Himself completely in the hands of His Father, and obeyed Him completely, and through that, all of us have been saved.

We must be those who would stand up and speak up against injustice and wickedness, against all sorts and forms of evil, and all the greed and desires of man. As Christians we must be daring and be willing to commit ourselves wholeheartedly for the betterment of our brethren, especially to all those who are downtrodden, who have been abandoned and without hope. We have to be a light of hope for others, reflecting the Lord Who is the true Light of the world.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, therefore today let us all pray together, that each and every one of us will be strengthened in our faith, so that in all the things we say and do, we will always proclaim the glory of God, and place God at the centre of our lives, and in the centre of everything we have. Let us not allow our selfishness and the obstacles that Satan placed in our path to prevent us from doing what we ought to be doing as Christians, that is to give ourselves out of complete love for one another, just as our Lord Himself had done.

May the Lord help us all to overcome the weaknesses of our flesh, and help us to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to Him. May He empower us all to become His children, that we may prove to all others who see us, that we are Christians, as people who believe in the Lord, not just in name only, but also through real and true commitment. Let us all be examples for others to follow, that many more people may be saved, and let us be champions against injustice and wickedness in this world. May the Lord be with us all, and bless us all forevermore. Amen.