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

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we are all reminded to be true followers of Christ, in all of the life which we have lived thus far, and to obey and listen to the will of God, as much as we are able to do it. This is an important reminder, as sometimes, we may end up living our lives and living our faith devoid of true understanding of what it is that God wants us to do in our lives.

In the first reading today, St. Paul wrote to the Church and the faithful in the city of Galatia, explaining to them, both to the Jewish and the Gentiles among the faithful, about what they should be doing in following God’s will and in obeying Him. The Jews, even among the Christians, at the time still thought that they had to obey the Law of Moses, all the accumulated and compiled traditions and customs of the Jewish people in its entirety.

And the inability to agree on whether the Christian faithful ought to follow the Jewish laws and customs or not, have divided the communities of the faithful in many places, including that of in Galatia. Some of the Jews wanted that all the faithful must obey the entirety of the laws and the customs of the Jews, while there those among the Jews and the disciples themselves who thought that it should not be the case.

But the Lord Himself made it clear to His people, through what He has revealed throughout His earthly ministry, and through what He has taught His disciples and the Apostles, and by the wisdom and understanding, truth and revelation bestowed on them by the Holy Spirit. The truth is that, to be followers of the Lord, then we must truly believe in Him, listen to Him, and keep all the commandments and do them in our own lives.

And the Lord said that His commandment is about love, first of all, the love of God with all of our hearts, minds and with our whole being fully immersed in the love of our loving Father and Creator, and then the same love which we ought to have for our fellow brothers and sisters, our fellow men, all brethren in the same God, our Father. It is not about a burden or an imposition of practices and traditions that were done, many of them, without understanding their real purpose and meaning.

Many of the people then just followed and obeyed the practices of the Law without knowing what they were for. For many of them, it ended up becoming a formality and something that is an obligation, and for some others, it was even worse, as they ended up making use of those practices and impositions of the Law, to advance their own selfish desires and positions, such as what was done by the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law.

Many of us unfortunately also share the same blame in this manner, as many of us have not been truly and wholeheartedly faithful, in how we approach our obligations to the Lord as Christians. To us, we have received the fullness of truth, as according to St. Paul, in the same Epistle he had written to the Galatians, which should have set us free from our bonds and from our old ways of sin. But many of us have not allowed God’s truth to set us free.

And that is because of our own inability to resist the temptations to sin and to keep on falling again and again into our sinful ways, and despite the reminders and calls which the Lord made to us, many of us are often still too stubborn to accept His calls deep in our hearts. Now, are we willing to overcome these challenges and resolve to overcome this unwillingness to allow God to transform our lives for the better?

Let us all turn towards God, from now on, with all of our hearts, with our every efforts, and commit ourselves towards Him with a new resolution and courage in our hearts. Let us all strive to seek our focus and our source of unity and our salvation in God, our loving Lord and Father. May the Lord be with us throughout this journey, and guide us to His everlasting glory. Amen.