Month: July 2023

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Friday, 4 August 2023 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. John Vianney, Priest and Patron of All Priests (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Matthew 13 : 54-58

At that time, Jesus went to His hometown and taught the people in their synagogue. They were amazed and said, “Where did He get this wisdom and these special powers? Is He not the carpenter’s Son? Is Mary not His mother and are James, Joseph, Simon and Judas not His brothers? Are not all His sisters living here? Where did He get all these things?” And so they took offence at Him.

Jesus said to them, “The only place where prophets are not welcome is his hometown and in his own family.” And He did not perform many miracles there because of their lack of faith.

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Friday, 4 August 2023 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. John Vianney, Priest and Patron of All Priests (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 80 : 3-4, 5-6ab, 10-11ab

Start the music, strike the timbrel, play melodies on the harp and lyre. Sound the trumpet at the new moon, on our feast day, when the new moon is full.

This is a decree for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob, a statute He wrote for Joseph when he went out of Egypt.

There shall be no strange god among you, you shall not worship any alien god, for I, YHVH, am your God.

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Friday, 4 August 2023 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. John Vianney, Priest and Patron of All Priests (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Leviticus 23 : 1, 4-11, 15-16, 27, 34b-37

YHVH spoke to Moses, “Then there are appointed feasts of YHVH at the times fixed for them, when you are to proclaim holy assemblies. At twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month is YHVH’s Passover. And on the fifteenth day of this month it is YHVH’s feast of Unleavened Bread.”

For seven days you shall eat bread without leaven. On the first day there will be a sacred assembly and no work of a worker shall be done. For seven days you shall present an offering by fire to YHVH and on the seventh day you shall hold a sacred assembly and do no work of a worker.”

YHVH spoke to Moses and said, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them : When you enter the land that I will give you and you reap its harvest, you will bring to the priest a sheaf, the first fruits of your harvest and he shall wave the sheaf before YHVH for you to be accepted; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.”

“From the day after the Sabbath, on which you bring the sheaf of offering, you are to count seven full weeks. The day after the seventh Sabbath will be the fiftieth day and then you are to offer YHVH a new offering. The tenth day of this seventh month shall be the Day of Atonement. You are to hold a sacred assembly. You must fast, and you must offer a burnt offering to YHVH.”

“The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the feast of Tents for YHVH, lasting seven days. The first day you shall hold an assembly; you must do no work of a worker. For seven days you must offer a burnt offering to YHVH. On the eighth day you are to hold a sacred assembly and you must offer a burnt offering to YHVH. It is a day of solemn assembly in which you shall do no work of a worker.”

“These are the appointed feasts of YHVH in which you are to proclaim holy assemblies for the purpose of offering offerings by fire, burnt offerings, grain offerings and drink offerings to YHVH, according to the ritual of each day.”

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Thursday, 3 August 2023 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this day as we listened to the words of the Scriptures, we are reminded yet again of God’s ever encompassing presence, love and kindness, by which He gathered each and every one of us, His beloved ones, from being scattered all over the whole world. He came into our midst, dwelling among us, showing us all how much He has loved us all these while. And He came into our midst bearing His truth and love, His Law and commandments, His path and salvation. He established His Kingdom and dominion over all of us, delivering us all from the tyranny and power of sin and evil, which have had power and control over all of us, for a really long time, just like how God has come and rescued His people, the Israelites, from the tyranny and dominion of the Egyptians and their king, the Pharaoh.

In our first reading today, all of us heard from the final chapter of the Book of Exodus in which the details about the building and establishment of the Holy Tent or the Tent of Meeting, the centrepiece and focus of the whole community of the people of Israel where the Lord’s very own Holy Presence resided among His people, enthroned upon the cherubim statues on the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant itself contained the two slabs of stone with the Ten Commandments of the Lord, the Staff of Aaron and the manna, the bread of heaven by which God gave the people of Israel sustenance throughout their journey in the desert. Then, we may also not realise it at first, but the Ark of the Covenant and all the things contained within were actually a prefigurement of the New Covenant that God would bring unto this world.

How is that so? That is because Mary, the Mother of God, according to the teachings and traditions of the Church, is the New Ark of the New Covenant, by bearing within her the Lord and Saviour of the world, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And because through His Son, our Saviour, God established with us a New and Eternal Covenant, thus reconciling us all to Himself and establishing with us that enduring and lasting connection by which God willed us all to come to Him and to be reunited to Him. If the Holy Tent of Meeting represented the love and the willingness of God to be with His people, even while He was still intangible in His Holy Presence upon the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies of the Tent and later on the Temple of God in Jerusalem, then by the incarnation of the Son and Word of God Himself in the flesh, becoming the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, God has revealed unto all of us His love manifested perfectly in the flesh, before all of us.

Yes, it means not only that His love has been made manifested even more clearly to us, but His love and truth, His glory and Presence have been made tangible and approachable to us. The Lord Himself came into our midst, walking in our sight and dwelling place, and coming to touch us and to bring healing upon us all. And in our Gospel passage today, the same Christ, Son of God, our Saviour, revealed more of the Lord’s intentions in leading us all to salvation and eternal life in Him and through Him. God does not abandon us all and He has always patiently guided us to Himself. However, at the same time we must also realise that we cannot take God’s love and patient care for us for granted, just as the Gospel passage today highlighted how the kingdom of heaven, which reach is truly great, gathering all the faithful people of God, but those who remain out of its reach to the end shall be crushed and destroyed.

We are all therefore reminded each and every moment that we are the disciples of the Lord, His followers and beloved people, and all of us have been given so many opportunities and chances to seek the Lord, His forgiveness and grace. Each and every one of us have been called to seek the Lord, to find Him and to gain His forgiveness. If we are truly God’s people, then we should not have disobeyed against Him and sinned against Him, and we should not allow the temptations of worldly glory, fame and desires to lead us astray. The Lord has extended to us many chances and opportunities for us to seek Him, again and again, as He reached out to us with love, and He sent unto us His most generous forgiveness, promised unto us through Christ, Our Lord and Saviour. And it is now truly up to us to embrace His love and forgiveness that He has given us most freely and most generously.

Many of us and our predecessors had remained in the path of sin and evil because we did not open our hearts and minds to the Lord, and we did not let Him to enter into our beings, to transform us from the creatures and people of darkness into the people and creature of light. All of us have the capacity and the potential to do what is good, right and just in the presence of God, or to do what is evil and wicked in the sight of the Lord. It is our free will and choice to do what we can, be it good or bad, just or evil, and we have been given the wisdom and the ability to embrace this choice, and it is really up to us to choose our path in life. Are we going to continue to follow the false way of worldly temptations and evils, the allures of worldly attachments and glories, or are we going to embrace the Lord more wholeheartedly and dedicate ourselves henceforth with our whole heart and mind, in following God at all and every moments of our lives?

Let us all therefore discern carefully our path going forward in this life, and let us all turn once again towards God’s ever generous love and mercy. Let us all no longer be ignorant of this love and compassionate mercy that God has given us, ever since the very beginning, be thankful and be grateful for all that He had done for us. Let us no longer be wayward and rebellious in our path and way of life. Let our every actions, words and deeds, our every moments and our every interactions be filled with God’s grace and love, and be truly exemplary and faithful to Him, so that by our role model and great examples we may inspire many others who see and witness our works and lives, and all those whom we encounter and interact with, may all of us be the guiding beacons of God’s light and truth. It is through each and every one of us, that the kingdom of God becomes manifest in this world, through our every actions and exemplary deeds.

May the Lord our God, our Saviour and King continue to be with us and may He guide and empower each and every one of us in our journey and faith in life. May He bless our every actions and endeavours, our every good efforts so that in everything that we do, we will always commit ourselves to the cause and the path that the Lord has shown us, the path of His righteousness and justice. May God be with us always, and bless us all, now and forevermore. Amen.

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Thursday, 3 August 2023 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Matthew 13 : 47-53

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a big fishing net, let down into the sea, in which every kind of fish has been caught. When the net is full, it is dragged ashore. Then they sit down and gather the good fish into buckets, but throw the bad away. That is how it will be at the end of time; the Angels will go out to separate the wicked from the just, and to throw the wicked into the blazing furnace, where they will weep and gnash their teeth.”

Jesus asked, “Have you understood all these things?” “Yes,” they answered. So He said to them, “Therefore, every teacher of the Law who becomes a disciple of the kingdom of heaven, is like a householder, who can produce from his store things both new and old.”

When Jesus had finished these parables, He left that place.

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Thursday, 3 August 2023 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 83 : 3, 4, 5-6a and 8a, 11

My soul yearns; pines, for the courts of YHVH. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young, at Your altars, o YHVH of hosts, my King and my God!

Happy are those who live in Your house, continually singing Your praise! Happy, the pilgrims whom You strengthen, they go from strength to strength.

One day in Your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be left at the threshold in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of the wicked.

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Thursday, 3 August 2023 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Exodus 40 : 16-21, 34-38

Moses did this; he did exactly as YHVH had commanded him. The Holy Tent was set up on the first day of the first month in the second year. Moses set up the Holy Tent. He fixed the bases for it, put up its frames, put its crossbars in position, set up its posts. He spread the tent over the Holy Tent and on top of this the covering for the Tent, as YHVH had commanded Moses.

He took the Covenant and placed it inside the Ark. He set the poles to the Ark in place and put the mercy seat on it. He brought the Ark into the Holy Tent and put the screening veil in place; thus he screened the Ark of YHVH, as YHVH had commanded Moses.

Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting and the Glory of YHVH filled the Holy Tent. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because of the Glory of YHVH that filled the Holy Tent. At every stage of their journey, whenever the cloud rose from the Holy Tent, the people of Israel would continue their march. If the cloud did not rise, they waited and would not move their camp until it did.

For the cloud rested on the Holy Tent by day, and a fire shone within the cloud by night for all the house of Israel to see. And so it was for every stage of their journey.

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Wednesday, 2 August 2023 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Eusebius of Vercelli, Bishop and St. Peter Julian Eymard, Priest (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops and Priests)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we heard of the word of God from the passages of the Sacred Scriptures, we are all reminded of the need for all of us to come ever closer to the Lord and to seek His treasures of truth and love, of His glorious majesty and compassionate kindness, which He has always generously and richly granted to us. All of us as Christians are God’s beloved people, and we have all received His wisdom and truth, through the Holy Spirit that He has imparted upon us. However, many of us still do not realise the importance and the value of these treasures of faith which the Lord has promised us, and which He has shown and revealed to us. Instead, many of us are busy in pursuing worldly treasures and pursuits of worldly glory and pleasures, which truly distracted us from the path of righteousness, virtue and grace, through which we can reach out to the Lord and to His salvation.

In our first reading today, taken from the Book of Exodus, we heard the continuation of the story of what happened around the time when the Israelites were camping at Mount Sinai, the holy Mountain of God, where Moses, God’s servant and the leader of the Israelites went up and gained for the people of God, for all of us, the set of Law and commandments, especially the Ten Commandments which God set over all of His beloved people, to guide and help them to remain true to the Covenant which He had set up with all of them. The Lord has called upon all of His people to follow Him faithfully, as He freed them from the slavery in Egypt. Many of them had grumbled and rebelled against Him, and just right after He gave them His Law and His Covenant, they established and built a golden calf idol to be their god and lord over them, in defiance and betrayal of God’s love and kindness.

But God forgave His people and showed them His most wonderful mercy. Those who were responsible most for the rebellion and the disgraceful pagan worship of the golden calf were crushed and made to suffer the consequences of their sins, while the rest of the people repented from their mistakes. And hence, as we heard, God did not hate us all and instead, He truly loves each one of us, but He detested and despised the sins and wickedness that we have committed in our lives. Each one of us should not take God’s love for granted and we should not spurn the love that He has always generously lavished upon us all these while. Like the people of Israel, who had often been ungrateful of the love of God despite them having been shown the great compassion and love of God in many occasions, and yet, they still grumbled, disobeyed and rebelled against God.

In our Gospel passage today, we heard of the parables that the Lord used in revealing the truth and knowledge of the kingdom of God to His disciples, that is with the examples of the treasures of the field and also the pearl of great price. Those examples represent just how important the great graces and blessings of God can be to us, and how each and every one of us should learn to put the Lord and His truth, Law and commandments as the centre and focus of our attention and our whole lives. We should not allow the worldly temptations and the allure of power, greed and desire to turn us away from the righteousness and salvation in God, just as those had mislead and misguided the people of God in the past, in their inability to resist the temptations of evil and sin, of worldly attachments, of glory and fame, amongst many others. The Lord has always been patient in guiding them all to His path, and sent His messengers to help and correct the people whenever they were wrong.

That is why, today all of us are reminded as Christians, as God’s beloved people, that we should always strive to lead a life that is truly worthy of the Lord as well as exemplary and filled with righteousness and justice. We should not allow the false treasures, pleasures and the excesses of our worldly existence and life to prevent us and to become obstacles in our path and journey towards the Lord. We have to keep in mind that it is only the true treasures and the precious grace of God that will last forever and that will keep us safe and good to the end of days and beyond. No matter how many worldly things and goods we have with us, none of these will be sufficient to satisfy us, and none of them can last forever. No form of worldly glory and fame, of joy and pleasures of the flesh, of the body and all the money and material satisfactions all around us can replace the true joy that we can only find in the Lord alone. Hence, that is why we should strive to resist those worldly temptations and allures, and reorientate ourselves and our lives towards the Lord and His path.

Today, the Church celebrates the feast of not just one but two of God’s faithful servant, holy men who dedicated their lives to the Lord, who lived their lives with great commitment and love for God, and the Lord has made them to be great and inspiring role models and examples for many of us, the faithful people of God so that we may follow their examples and inspiration, in their dedication and commitment, their holiness and great actions. St. Eusebius of Vercelli and St. Peter Julian Eymard are truly blessed and worthy servants of God, His holy and just role models, for us all to follow. St. Eusebius of Vercelli was one of the Church fathers, a Roman bishop from Sardinia, in what is today part of Italy, who was remembered as a great and humble shepherd of the people that were entrusted to his care. St. Eusebius of Vercelli dedicated a lot of his time in living among his priests and flock, and cared for their spiritual needs, helping and guiding them on the way to the truth and salvation in God.

He was instrumental in the efforts of the Church in combatting the heresy and falsehoods of Arianism, the great heresy which had afflicted the Church and many among the people of God at that time. And as part of that ministry and work, he had to endure great challenges and sufferings, as he went up together with those who upheld the orthodox and true teachings and Christian faith against those who sided with the heretics. He had to endure bitter sufferings as he faced the opposition from those who supported the heretics and the false wicked ways. However, he remained firmly true to his faith and commitment to the Lord, and devoted himself wholly to the Lord, to the very end of his life, dedicating himself to guard the faithful against the false and heretical teachings that misled many to their destruction and downfall. His commitment to the Lord and his inspiring examples should be great inspiration to all of us as Christians.

Then, St. Peter Julian Eymard was a great and dedicated priest of the Lord who was renowned for his commitment and piety to the Lord, and for his popularisation of the dedication to the Blessed Sacrament, to the Real Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist. He dedicated much of his time and work in reaching out to the faithful and to all those in his ministry and areas of responsibility, who are suffering and in need of both physical and spiritual help. St. Peter Julian Eymard spent a lot of time reaching out to the lost souls and to those who are facing difficulties and hardships of the world, and helped many to find their way to the Lord. His commitment to serve the Lord and his efforts in gathering like-minded men and women in the two religious orders he founded, the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament and the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament, and the popularisation and spread of the effective Forty Hours devotion are truly great examples and inspirations for all of us to follow.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all be inspired by the great examples shown by St. Eusebius of Vercelli, St. Peter Julian Eymard and countless other saints, holy men and women of God, all those who have shown us what it means for us to be truly dedicated and committed Christians, servants and followers of the Lord. Let us do our very best to lead a life of virtue that is truly worthy of the Lord, lives that are truly exemplary and great, free from the corruptions of various worldly temptations all around us, and worthy of those whom God had called and chosen, being ever thankful and grateful that He has always shown us such great compassion, tender love and mercy. And may He bless us all and keep us all in His grace, and empower each and every one of us to walk ever more faithfully in His Presence, now and always, forevermore. Amen.

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Wednesday, 2 August 2023 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Eusebius of Vercelli, Bishop and St. Peter Julian Eymard, Priest (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops and Priests)

Matthew 13 : 44-46

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure, hidden in a field. The one who finds it, buries it again; and so happy is he, that he goes and sells everything he has, in order to buy that field.”

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a trader, who is looking for fine pearls. Once he has found a pearl of exceptional quality, he goes away, sells everything he has and buys it.”

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Wednesday, 2 August 2023 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Eusebius of Vercelli, Bishop and St. Peter Julian Eymard, Priest (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops and Priests)

Psalm 98 : 5, 6, 7, 9

Extol YHVH, our God; worship at His footstool. Holy is He! And mighty!

Among His priests were Moses and Aaron; and Samuel, among those who called on His Name. They called to YHVH, and He answered them.

In the pillar of cloud He spoke to them; and they kept His statutes and the decrees He gave them.

Extol YHVH our God; worship at His holy mountain. Holy is YHVH our God!