Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we are reminded of just how great and powerful God’s love has been for each and every one of us, who are although sinners, but still beloved by God and are very precious in His eyes. Yet, we are often ungrateful and ignorant of this love which God has for us as we fail to recognise that love being present in our midst and although it has been around us all the time.

St. Paul in our first reading today, taken from his Epistle to the Church and the faithful in Rome, spoke precisely of this wonderful love by which God had endeavoured to gather us all, His beloved ones to Himself. Truly, in the words of St. Paul, ‘Who can separate us from the love of Christ?’ which is shown by how God did everything for our sake even though we have disappointed Him and rebelled against His will.

And although we have sinned and made ourselves unworthy before Him, but God still loves us as always and He wants to reconcile us to Him, by sending us His Son, to be the One through Whom He would save us all and bring us into eternal life He has promised to all of His beloved ones. His love still endures even though we have often overlooked this love and ignored Him for other things in the world.

That love allowed Christ to undergo much pain and suffering as He embarked on the mission which God, His heavenly Father has entrusted to Him, in bearing the Cross and being rejected by man, so that through His humble obedience and perfect willingness to follow the way of God, His Father, He may become for us the source of our salvation and liberation from our fated destruction because of our sins.

It is often the pride in us, the greed and desires within our hearts and all the temptations present within our world today that prevented us and distracted us from being able to love God with all of our hearts. As the Israelites of old showed us, and which the Lord Himself lamented for, those people persecuted the prophets and messengers sent into their midst to remind them and bring the word of God to them because they refused to admit their mistakes and sinful ways.

And Christ Himself faced the greatest suffering and rejection of all, as He had to endure opposition from the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who resented Him and His teachings because of their pride and attachment to the status and privileges that they had accumulated within the community and hence leading to them acting in the way to preserve their status and power, even by persecuting the Messiah of God and by sending Him to His death on the Cross.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, have we realised yet by now how we have often refused God’s love and being stubborn in our mistaken and sinful ways? We have often allowed ourselves to be swayed and tempted by our various worldly concerns and desires, our many attachments and our involvement in worldly pursuits that made us to be oblivious or even resistant to God’s generous love and mercy.

And we have to remind ourselves just how Christ still loves us so much even through the greatest moments of His sufferings, as He bore the weight of the Cross and enduring the most bitter and painful treatment of all. He even forgave His enemies and those who have condemned Him from the cross. Now, then, let us all realise that He has done the exact same thing to each and every one of us, for all of us are sinners, and by our sins we have truly condemned Christ to His suffering and death.

Yet, by His love and dedication to us, He wants to forgive us and He wants us all to be reconciled to Him. This is something that all of us need to realise and understand, so that we no longer waste our time and the opportunities God has given us in our lives, to turn towards Him and to love Him from now on. Let us all embrace God with genuine love just as He has loved us first, and shunning all sorts of sinful and wicked things that have once kept us away from truly enjoying the fullness of God’s grace and love.

May God replace the hearts of stone in us, and put within each and every one of us a living heart filled with love, first of all for Him, and then for our fellow brethren. May God be with us always, now and forevermore. Amen.