Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we all listened to the words from the Sacred Scriptures, we are reminded again of the salvation and great grace that we have received from God through His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Our Saviour and Redeemer. For through Him, all of us have been shown the sure and direct path towards eternal life and true joy with God, by all that He had done in offering Himself with the perfect sacrifice and offering of His own Most Precious Body and Blood, as the Paschal Lamb offered on the Altar of His Cross. And as Christians, this is the core tenet of our faith, our belief in the Lord’s ultimate sacrifice and love for all of us sinners, that He has willingly embraced each one of us and loved us all despite us having sinned against Him, disobeyed Him and betrayed Him.

In our first reading today, taken from the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which the author, likely St. Luke the Evangelist, wrote to the Jewish community of his time, both to the Jewish converts to the Christian faith and also those who have not yet believed in Christ, we heard of the continuation of the testimony about the truth and reality of the identity of the Messiah or the Saviour of the world, in Jesus Christ, the Divine Word of God and Son of God Incarnate in the flesh, having become the Son of Man. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews spoke of the great power, dominion and sovereignty which God has given to His Son, born into this world through His mother, the ever Blessed Virgin Mary.

It was also mentioned how no power, no dominion or greatness can surpass the great things that have been entrusted to this same Man, the Saviour of the world, the Son of God made Man, in Whom all of us Christians believe in and put our trust into. In Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, God has revealed the fullness of His love and grace, made whole and complete, tangible, real and approachable to us through Christ, and by Whose suffering and death, in uniting His humanity to ours, made us all to also share and partake in His glorious Resurrection, overcoming forever the power and dominion of sin and death, fulfilling what God has promised to our ancestors since the very beginning, that Satan and all the wickedness of sin will eventually be defeated.

And this testimony is to highlight to the Jewish people how the One that their leaders had chosen to reject and persecute, oppress and handed over to the Romans to be crucified, was truly the Saviour of the world, and not the False Messiah unlike what those Jewish leaders tried to spread falsely among the people, including the attempt to give a false story regarding the Lord’s Resurrection by saying that the Lord’s disciples had stolen His Body and hid Him. It is also therefore a reminder for all of us Who it is that we truly believe in and put our faith and trust in, Whom we worship, honour and glorify by our lives, in each and every moments we have been given.

Then, in our Gospel passage today taken from the Gospel according to St. Mark the Evangelist, we heard of the moment when the Lord Jesus was teaching in the synagogue, proclaiming the truth of God to everyone listening to Him, and we heard how it was described that the Lord spoke with power and authority, with great wisdom unlike those leaders and other teachers who were there. This fact, accompanied by what happened afterwards, as the Lord cast out demons from a man who had been possessed, and such demons proclaiming the truth about this Man, truly the Holy One of God, the Son of God incarnate, are proofs for the people then and for all of us that the historical Jesus Christ is truly the Messiah, the Incarnate Word and Son of God.

For no one can have authority over the evil spirits unless given by God, and even if some of them wanted to prove otherwise or even insinuate that the Lord had done it by colluding with the evil spirits like some of the Pharisees and the leaders of the people did, all those false and baseless accusations cannot stand against the truth and wisdom of God, and even the evil spirits cannot lie about this fact, for even they are bound by their obedience to God and their submission to Him, their true Lord, Master and Creator. Even in their rebellion against Him, they could not speak untruths about Him, and the most that they did, was trying to sow discord using this truth by revealing this fact to the people, in trying to turn some of them against the Lord.

That was why the Lord told those evil spirits to remain quiet, and those evil spirits obeyed Him. All these again highlighted that our faith in Jesus Christ is important, and what we have heard today through the Sacred Scriptures are crucial reminders for us to understand more about Who it is that we are proclaiming about, the One Who has saved us all from certain destruction by His suffering and death on the Cross. Through His suffering, Christ our Lord has revealed the fullness of God’s love and compassionate mercy towards us, and He has shown us that He is truly the One through Whom and only Whom we can have hope in, for in no other Name or power or means that we can be saved from the multitudes of our sins.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore do our best in each and every moments of our lives so that we may truly be empowered to do what we should do as Christians, as God’s holy and beloved people to be the courageous and ever devoted missionaries and servants of God and His cause in our world today. Let us all no longer be hesitant but be more committed than ever to walk ever more faithfully in God’s Holy Presence, now and always. May God be with us all and may He continue to bless our every good works and efforts, all for His greater glory. Amen.