Month: September 2019

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Wednesday, 11 September 2019 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of the Sacred Scriptures reminding us of the need for us to overcome our attachments to the world and to put our complete trust in God for He Who is ever faithful and good, loving and forgiving towards us will always have our best interest in His heart, and He will always be faithful to the Covenant which He has established with each and every one of us.

All of us need to have that faith and trust in God, and we need to put our complete faith in Him and in His providence. God will always be by our side no matter what, even in our most difficult moments and in the midst of great challenges. And we talk about this because it is exactly what we are likely to be experiencing in our own respective lives as Christians. To be Christians, as Christ’s followers mean that we will have to endure rejection and oppression, ridicule and suffering as Our Lord Himself had suffered.

But this is where we truly need to make our stand and decide, to be with Christ or to be away from Him. To follow His path will mean that we need to make sacrifices and to let go of certain things, worldly possessions and attachments, our desires and our natural greed and pride, our ego and our ambitions, as mentioned in our first reading passage today from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians, in seeking for the things that are above earthly things.

We naturally seek things of this world to bring about fulfilment and satisfaction in our life. We seek for satisfaction and the fulfilment of our bodily desires and these things are the temptations that often distract us from the path towards God. We tend to be so busy and preoccupied in trying to seek all those worldliness that we forgot about God and walked away from the path He has shown us.

But today, in the Gospel passage which we have just heard, we heard a part of the Beatitudes in which the Lord reminded and reaffirmed His disciples and all those who have the desire to follow Him. He reminded them all that despite all the challenges that they might have to face as His disciples and followers, but all those would not be in vain, for in the end God will be with them and will reward them wonderfully for their faith.

The Lord wants us to seek the true happiness and joy, satisfaction and eternal glory that can be found in Him and through Him alone. He wants us to avoid being distracted and tempted by the many temporary satisfactions and false pleasures of this world. And we must be aware that Satan and his allies are always ever busy trying to ruin us all by tempting us and turning us all against God by manipulating our desires and emotions.

This is where we need to be strong in our faith and to deepen our love and relationship with God. Otherwise, it will be easy for the devil to strike at us and snatch us away from God and His path towards salvation. God wants us all to trust in Him and to follow His path even when we are faced with difficulties and challenges in life. God will never abandon us in our moments of greatest need.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore grow ever stronger in our faith towards God, and let us all turn towards Him with ever greater love, and seek to love Him with more zeal and faith, each and every passing days. May the Lord continue to be by our side and may He help us to be strong in our faith and in our dedication from now on. May God bless us all, now and forevermore. Amen.

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Wednesday, 11 September 2019 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 6 : 20-26

At that time, looking at His disciples, Jesus said, “Fortunate are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Fortunate are you, who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Fortunate are you, who weep now, for you will laugh.”

“Fortunate are you, when people hate you, when they reject you and insult you and number you among criminals, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for a great reward is kept for you in heaven. Remember, that is how the ancestors of the people treated the prophets.”

“But alas for you, who have wealth, for you have been comforted now. Alas for you, who are full, for you will go hungry. Alas for you, who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Alas for you, when people speak well of you, for that is how the ancestors of the people treated the false prophets.”

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Wednesday, 11 September 2019 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 144 : 2-3, 10-11, 12-13ab

I will praise You, day after day; and exalt Your Name forever. Great is YHVH, most worthy of praise; and His deeds are beyond measure.

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

That all may know of Your mighty deeds, Your reign, and its glorious splendour. Your reign is from age to age; Your dominion endures, from generation to generation.

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Wednesday, 11 September 2019 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Colossians 3 : 1-11

So then, if you are risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on earthly things. For you have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, Who is your life, reveals Himself, you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

Therefore, put to death what is earthly in your life, that is immorality, impurity, inordinate passions, wicked desires and greed, which is a way of worshipping idols. These are the things that arouse the wrath of God. For a time, you followed this way and lived in such disorders. Well then, reject all that : anger, evil intentions, malice; and let no abusive words be heard from your lips.

Do not lie to one another. You have been stripped of the old self and its way of thinking; to put on the new, which is being renewed, and is to reach perfect knowledge, and the likeness of its Creator. There is no room for distinction between Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, foreigner, slave or free, but Christ is all, and in all.

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Tuesday, 10 September 2019 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of God through the Scripture passages we heard reminding us of the need for each and every one of us as Christians to be truly devoted to God, and to be wholehearted in our commitment to love Him and to serve Him as His followers and disciples, into the lives of service He has called us into. He should be the centre and focus of our whole existence, and everything we say, act and do should be for the greater glory of His Name.

We should follow the example of the Apostles, the Twelve of whom God Himself has called to be His principal and most important disciples. He has called them from their various origins and backgrounds, some of them being fishermen, while others were intellectuals, a tax collector, a zealot and freedom fighter among others. But when He called them all, they left behind everything and followed Him.

Of course we know that not everyone remained faithful, as Judas Iscariot eventually betrayed the Lord for money to the chief priests and the elders, and St. Peter denied knowing the Lord when He was arrested, not just once but three times in total. And the other Apostles also fled in fear at that same time, abandoning the Lord in the hour of His greatest agony and suffering. Nonetheless, eventually all but Judas returned to the Lord with renewed faith.

All the Twelve Apostles, including St. Matthias who was included to their number replacing Judas Iscariot, except St. John the Apostle were martyred for their faith, after having spent many years and more in missionary journeys and works throughout many parts of the world, spreading the Good News of God and His truth to many people who have not yet had faith in Him or heard about His salvation.

Each and every one of them spent those years enduring difficulties and challenges, one after another, rejection and ridicule, persecutions and oppressions against them. The faithful people of God has also suffered a lot, and many martyrs came up from the early Church because of all those difficult challenges. And yet, they gave their all to God and devoted themselves wholeheartedly nonetheless.

Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all look at ourselves and our own lives. Can we truly be called as devout Christians in how we have lived our lives thus far? Can we truly consider ourselves as God’s faithful and committed disciples by our actions, words and deeds, or have we been rather distracted by the many temptations in life, or by the fear and apathy in our hearts and minds, preventing us from devoting ourselves to Him with all of our heart?

Many of us are often reluctant to dedicate ourselves more to the Lord, because of the many obstacles and reasons that keep us being distracted and unable to give more of ourselves to God. And we need to be aware of these obstacles and prevent them from causing us to fall into sin and disobedience towards God. We need to discern our path in life carefully, thinking of how we can better serve God in our respective capacity and making use of the various gifts and talents He has blessed us with.

Today each and every one of us are called to follow in the footsteps of the Apostles, spending our time, effort and attention to serve God and to follow Him through our every words, actions and deeds. Let us all spend this opportunity and time to think carefully about how we can follow the Lord more faithfully and truly put God first before everything else in our respective lives. Let us all be ever closer to God and be true Christians from now on. Amen.

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Tuesday, 10 September 2019 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 6 : 12-19

At that time, Jesus went out into the hills to pray, spending the whole night in prayer with God. When day came, He called His disciples to Him, and chose Twelve of them, whom He called ‘Apostles’ : Simon, whom He named Peter, and his brother Andrew; James and John; Philip and Bartholomew; Matthew and Thomas; James son of Alpheus and Simon called the Zealot; Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who would be the traitor.

Coming down the hill with them, Jesus stood in an open plain. Many of His disciples were there, and a large crowd of people, who had come from all parts of Judea and Jerusalem, and from the coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon. They gathered to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases. And the people troubled by unclean spirits were cured.

The entire crowd tried to touch Him, because of the power that went out from Him and healed them all.

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Tuesday, 10 September 2019 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 144 : 1-2, 8-9, 10-11

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

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

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

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Tuesday, 10 September 2019 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Colossians 2 : 6-15

If you have accepted Christ Jesus as Lord, let Him be your doctrine. Be rooted and built up in Him; let faith be your principle, as you were taught, and your thanksgiving, overflowing.

See that no one deceives you with philosophy or any hollow discourse; these are merely human doctrines, not inspired by Christ, but by the wisdom of this world. For in Him, dwells the fullness of God, in bodily form. He is the Head of all cosmic power and authority, and, in Him, you have everything.

In Christ Jesus, you were given a circumcision, but not by human hands, which removed completely from you the carnal body : I refer to baptism. On receiving it, you were buried with Christ; and you also rose with Him, for having believed in the power of God, Who raised Him from the dead.

You were dead. You were in sin and uncircumcised at the same time. But God gave you life with Christ. He forgave all our sins. He cancelled the record of our debts, those regulations which accused us. He did away with all that, and nailed it to the cross. Victorious through the cross, He stripped the rulers and authorities of their power, humbled them before the eyes of the whole world, and dragged them behind Him, as prisoners.

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Monday, 9 September 2019 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Claver, Priest (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of the Scripture reminding us of the love by which God has reached out to us through Christ, His beloved Son, by Whom He has brought salvation to us all and the whole world. Today we are all reminded that by God’s love and grace, He has willingly embraced us and has wanted us to be reconciled to Him, that we can be truly reunited with Him in perfect love.

God has revealed that first and foremost of all, He is a loving God and Father to all of us, and not some angry and wrathful God Who demanded us to be subservient and to kneel in fear. Instead, what He wants us to do is for us all to realise just how much He has loved us since the very beginning and therefore have the same kind of love within each and every one of us as well. We are all called to be loving just as God is loving.

Unfortunately it is by our own actions that we have failed to appreciate God’s love for us, in how we categorise God and make assumptions about Him, just like how the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law acted in enforcing the observances of the laws of God, particularly the law of the Sabbath as we heard in our Gospel passage today. They questioned the Lord if it was lawful for someone to be healed on the Sabbath.

This is when those people failed to understand the Law of God properly in its meaning, purpose and intention. They focused on the ‘letter’ of the Law but failed to understand the ‘spirit’ of the Law, and the two should not be separated one from the other. The Lord did not intend for the Law to restrict His people and make themselves difficult by imposing the Sabbath observance to prevent people from doing something that is good, as the Lord Jesus Himself plainly revealed.

Instead, we must all understand the purpose of the Sabbath itself in the first place in the historical context of how the Sabbath came to be. The Sabbath was meant to be a day of rest, not from doing good deeds but rather from all the busy schedules, activities and preoccupations of God’s people that had taken them away from God and distracted them from their faith in Him. In their pursuit for more worldly goods and happiness, it was easy for them to be swayed and fall into the temptations to sin.

That is why, the Sabbath was meant to help the people to take a break and stop whatever they were busy and preoccupied with, so that they can reorientate themselves and rethink the purpose and direction of their lives and refocusing their hearts and minds to God’s will. The Sabbath was therefore meant to allow God’s people to grow in their relationship with their loving God, Father and Creator, just as how we ought to honour the Sundays, the days of Our Lord.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we are therefore reminded to be genuine in our faith and dedication to the Lord, not just knowing the ‘letter’ of the Law but also the ‘spirit’ of the Law so that we do not end up being misguided like the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who were overly obsessed and focusing on the wrong parts of the Law, as they bickered and argued over the external application and observance of the Law rather than what the Law truly means for the people of God.

Today, all of us ought to observe and follow the example of one saint, whose feast we celebrate today, namely that of St. Peter Claver, a holy and devout priest who was remembered for his dedication to the poor and to the oppressed as a priest serving the faithful and many of the people in the then New World, the Spanish American continent. He ministered to many of the people who have not yet heard of God and baptised many of them into the faith over many decades.

He spent many years working among them all and especially among the slaves, all those who have been exploited for the sake of wealth and glory by those who wanted these things. He championed their rights and ministered among them, touching their hearts and minds as they saw in him the presence of God’s love and mercy in their midst. He reached out to them and many of them turned towards God with great faith as a result.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all heed the good examples of St. Peter Claver, his love for his fellow men, all those whom God had entrusted to his care, and his devotion and love for God throughout his life that he devoted all his time and effort to the care of God’s beloved people. Let us all be ever more faithful to God from now on and let us be true in our live for Him and in our ever stronger devotion to His greater glory. May God bless us all in our every endeavours, now and forevermore. Amen.

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Monday, 9 September 2019 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Claver, Priest (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)

Luke 6 : 6-11

At that time, on another Sabbath, Jesus entered the synagogue and began teaching. There was a man with a paralysed right hand, and the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees watched Him : Would Jesus heal the man on the Sabbath? If He did, they could accuse Him.

But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to the man, “Get up, and stand in the middle.” Then He spoke to them, “I want to ask you : what is allowed by the Law on the Sabbath? To do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” And Jesus looked around at them all.

Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored, becoming as healthy as the other. But they were furious, and began to discuss with one another how they could deal with Jesus.