Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)
Psalm 14 : 2-3ab, 3cd-4ab, 5
Those who walk blamelessly and do what is right, who speak truth from their heart and control their words, who do no harm to their neighbours.
Those who cast no discredit on their companions, who look down on evildoers but highly esteem God’s servants.
Those who do not lend money at interest and refuse a bribe against the innocent. Do this, and you will not be shaken.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)
Genesis 13 : 2, 5-18
Now Abram was very rich in flocks, silver and gold. Lot who went with Abram also had flocks, cattle and tents. The land was not sufficient to allow them to stay together, for their possessions were too great for them to live together.
A quarrel arose between the herdsmen of Abram’s flock and those of Lot. (The Canaanites and the Perizzites were living in the land at the time.) Abram said to Lot, “Do not let there be a dispute between you and me, nor between my herdsmen and yours, since we are brothers! Is not the whole land before you? Let us part company. If you go to the left, I will go to the right; if you go to the right, I will go to the left.”
Lot looked up and saw the whole valley of the Jordan : how well it was watered! Before YHVH destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, this was like one of YHVH’s gardens, like the country of Egypt, on coming to Zoar. Lot chose for himself all the Jordan valley and journeyed eastward. In this way they separated from each other.
Abram settled in the country of Canaan while Lot lived among the towns of the plain and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the people of Sodom were wicked, sinning greatly against YHVH. YHVH said to Abram after Lot had left him, “Raise your eyes and look from where you are, towards the north, the south, the east and the west; all the land you see I will give to you and your descendants forever.”
“I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; if the grains of the dust can be counted, then your descendants may be counted. Come, travel through the length and breadth of the land, for it is to you that I am giving it.” So Abram moved his tent and came to live by the oaks of Mamre at Hebron. There he built an altar to YHVH.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we listened to the words of the Scriptures, we are reminded that as Christians, each and every one of us should be truly faithful and committed to the Lord in all things, and we should not be like the hypocrites who did not truly believe in God, and who only paid lip service and did not have true love and commitment to the Lord. We are reminded through the examples highlighted in our Scripture passages today, of what each and every one of us as Christians need to do in our lives so that we may truly be committed as how genuine followers and disciples of the Lord should have done, in answering God’s call and in entrusting ourselves to Him, in our obedience to His will, His Law and commandments.
In our first reading today, taken from the Book of Genesis, all of us heard of the story of the calling of Abram, who would later on be known as Abraham, our father in faith and the ancestor of the Israelites and many other nations, whom God had called from the land of Ur of the Chaldeans, in what is now Mesopotamia and part of Iraq, into the region of Canaan in Israel today. God called Abraham, who answered God’s call and embraced His path, leaving his ancestral homeland behind and embarking on the long journey towards the Land that God had promised him and his descendants. Back then, Abram himself, though married, had not yet had any child to succeed him, and both him and his wife were already very old, and Sarai, later Sarah, his wife, was already beyond child-bearing age. And yet, Abraham chose to trust in the Lord and followed Him.
Abraham left everything that he was familiar with, his relatives and family, his ancestral place and more, and embarked on the lifelong journey of following God and committing himself and his family to His cause. Despite not knowing and not aware of what the Lord had in mind or planned for him, Abraham chose to trust the Lord anyway, knowing that God would always provide and He would always be faithful to what He had said and promised to him. That was how Abraham continued to walk in the presence of God, and entrusted himself wholly to the Lord, even when God tested his faith later on by asking him to sacrifice the son whom God eventually gave to him, Isaac, at Mount Moriah. Abraham entrusted himself and his son to the Lord, and chose to obey even when that decision must have been very difficult for him to make, and his continued faith was truly rewarded by God in the end.
In our Gospel passage today, we heard that the Lord spoke to His disciples that they must truly be faithful to the Lord and not be like the hypocrites who like to judge others and compare themselves to those whom they deem to be less worthy or inferior than they are. The Lord criticised all those who have been so petty in picking out the faults and mistakes, the flaws in others, when they themselves were filled with wickedness and flaws, in a criticism that was also obviously directed against the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law. At that time, many among the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law often prided themselves on their achievements and supposed superiority and looked down on others around them who did not follow the Law and the commandments of God in the way and manner that they had done. Yet, they had forgotten that their faith and way of living their obligation to God were actually rather empty and meaningless.
Their emphasis and preoccupation with how they were to live their lives in accordance to their overly strict interpretation of the Law of God, and their rather fanatical and rigid upholding of their tenets and beliefs led to them forgetting in the first place why they even followed the Law and the commandments of God. They placed their rites, actions and their customs ahead of the true faith and obligation to follow the Lord, forgetting that the Law of God is truly all about leading and guiding all of God’s people to Him, by teaching and showing them all His love and kindness. The Law of God is not about how one ought to live their lives filled with endless rituals, prohibitions and other forms of practices advocated by the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law. And certainly, it does not include the way how they treated their fellow men, with disdain and contempt.
That is why, all of us as we listened to these readings from the Sacred Scriptures today, we are all reminded to be truly and genuinely faithful to God, as our father in faith, Abraham had been, and not like those hypocrites who outwardly showed great expressions and actions of faith and piety, and yet, inside them, the Lord had barely a space for Himself because those people chose to place their own ego, desire and ambitions, their pride and greed as the centre and focus of their lives. They liked to be praised and enjoyed the fame and position, the privileges and the great things that they had enjoyed with their status, while Abraham, our father in faith, was willing to leave everything behind in following the Lord, entrusting himself wholeheartedly to God, obeying Him and placing Him at the centre of his very existence, as the centre and focus of his life.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore return towards the Lord, reemphasising our lives with renewed dedication and commitment to Him. Let us all face the Lord once again and make Him as the focus and heart of our whole lives, in the manner of how our father in faith, Abraham, and many of our holy predecessors, holy men and women of God had done in their lives. Let our lives, our every actions and interactions, in all things continue to be ever more faithful and committed to the Lord. Let us all be a most faithful and committed beacons of our Christian faith and truth, and be the dedicated missionaries of the Good News of God, in all the things we say and do, and in how we interact with our fellow brothers and sisters around us, both within and outside of the Church. This is what we have been called to do, and just as our father Abraham, let us all answer the Lord with great faith and commitment.
May the Lord continue to guide us all and bless us, and may He empower each and every one of us, that we may always ever be courageous and dedicated in our faith, in all things. May He bless our every good efforts and endeavours, now and always, for His greater glory. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Matthew 7 : 1-5
At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “Do not judge; and you will not be judged. In the same way you judge others, you will be judged; and the measure you use for others will be used for you. Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, and not see the plank in your own eye?”
“How can you say to your brother, ‘Come, let me take the speck from your eye,’ as long as that plank is in your own? Hypocrite, remove the plank out of your own eye; then, you will see clearly, to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 32 : 12-13, 18–19, 20 and 22
Blessed is the nation whose God is YHVH – the people He has chosen for His inheritance. YHVH looks down from heaven and sees the whole race of mortals.
But YHVH’s eyes are upon those who fear Him, upon those who trust in His loving-kindness; to deliver them from death and preserve them from famine.
In hope, we wait for YHVH, for He is our help and our shield. O YHVH, let Your love rest upon us, even as our hope rests in You.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Genesis 12 : 1-9
YHVH said to Abram, “Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and in you all people of the earth will be blessed.”
So Abram went as YHVH had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. Abram took Sarai, his wife, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran. They set out for the land of Canaan.
They arrived at Canaan. Abram travelled through the country as far as Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. YHVH appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” There he built an altar to YHVH Who had appeared to him.
From there he went on to the mountains east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. There also he built an altar to YHVH and called on the Name of YHVH. Then Abram set out in the direction of Negeb.
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