Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of Our Lady)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today each and every one of us are reminded of God’s love and His faithfulness to the Covenant which He has made with all of us. From the Book of Job, we heard how the Lord restored Job and blessed him even more than he had been previously blessed after all of his sufferings. And from the Gospel passage we heard the Lord affirming His disciples and followers.
In our first reading today, from the Book of Job we heard how after all the sufferings that Job had to endure, losing everything he possessed and even most of his family members, humiliated and denounced even by his family and close friends, who told him that he must have sinned against God to merit such sufferings. Job remained firm in his faith in God, but through all that he suffered, he did wonder why he had endured all those bitterness, and gave in to despair.
The Lord reminded Job that He has always been by his side even through his darkest moments, and He has always cared for him, and He told Job that it is not right for him to despair and to question His motives, and he needs to put his trust and faith completely in God. As we heard, the Lord opened Job’s perspectives and revealed the magnitude of His plans and works, and how He would bless him for his faith.
Job recognised his errors and repented from his mistakes, and embraced God’s love fully, never having abandoned Him and remaining faithful even through his most difficult days. And God, who brought Job out of his misery, helped and blessed him even much more generously than before. And therefore, God shows us all that those who hold onto Him, despite the trials they may have to endure, will receive eternal glory, true joy and satisfaction in the end.
In our Gospel passage today, the Lord proclaimed to His followers and disciples just how blessed and fortunate they were, for having been counted among His followers and how He has been victorious against the forces of Satan, the devil and the great enemy of all the people of God. Satan has been cast down from Heaven and punished with all the other rebel angels. And this is the prelude to the final defeat of Satan and all of his plots and plans against God’s people that will come with the Cross.
Satan and all of his wicked forces have always been trying to crush us and to make our lives difficult. And by the means of many temptations and false promises, they have been working hard in dragging us down with them, as they hoped to turn us against God and to subvert us by persuading us to reject the path of God and embrace instead the seemingly ‘easier’ and ‘better’ path that the devil offered to us. And Satan always makes to think that it is futile to try to oppose him, and he wants us to fear him and to suffer so much that we give in to our temptations and all of his persuasions and coercions.
However, this is where we are all reminded yet again, that no matter what, and no matter how mighty Satan and his forces arrayed against us may seem to be, but they are all nothing compared with the power and the glory of God. And despite all of Satan’s efforts, his power is limited and his might has been crushed, as his rebellion has been defeated, he was cast out and condemned, and his final defeat had been predetermined by God, Who is all powerful and all knowing, revealing before all that we do not need to fear Satan because while he will be cast down into hell for eternity, we, who are God’s people and followers, will be raised to eternal glory and true joy with God.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, are we aware of just how beloved we are by God? We are God’s most beloved ones, and God provides us in everything that we need. As long as we hold strongly to our faith in Him, we shall never be disappointed. Whatever sufferings we may be experiencing now, all these are nothing compared to the joy that is to come for us, in the end and at the conclusion of our faithful journey. But many of us often do not realise this and we are often too busy in trying to get away from fear, all of our insecurities, and we lack the faith in our Lord.
Let us therefore follow the example of Job, and strive to persevere in faith regardless of the challenges and trials that he had faced, and which we are likely to face as well in our own lives. Are we able to persevere in faith the way that our holy and dedicated predecessors had done? We have all been called to follow the path of the Lord, and we are called to entrust ourselves to His cause. And because we have also witnessed and received this faith from the Lord, we are now called to be God’s witnesses among all of our communities in this world today.
Through our actions, our words and our deeds, each and every one of us should become faithful and great inspirations for our fellow brothers and sisters in faith. May the Lord help us and guide us in our journey of faith, and help us in resisting the temptations of all the desires and the coercions by which the devil has always been busy using in trying to drag us into the path of sin, and lead us into our downfall. May the Lord strengthen us all and give us the courage and perseverance to be always faithful in each and every moments of our lives. May God be with us all, now and forevermore. Amen.
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 