Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we all listened to the words of the Sacred Scriptures, we are reminded that we should be truly sincere and genuine in our faith in the Lord, and not merely paying lip service for Him. In all the things that we say and do, we should continue to do our best to be fully attuned to God in everything that we say, do and act, so that by our every words, actions and deeds we will always showcase our Christian faith in all sincerity and all those whom we encounter can realise and know what we truly believe in, through what they had experienced and witnessed in our actions, way of life and attitudes, in how we interact with them and in even the smallest things we carry out in life.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Romans in which the Apostle spoke about the anguish and the struggles that he had been facing because of the issues that he had faced from the Jewish people, the members of the Jewish diaspora in the various places that he visited and ministered at, as well as the Jewish authorities, the Sanhedrin, the members of the Jewish High Council that were often at odds and in opposition towards him and the other missionaries. And that was why he felt conflicted and anguished because it was to the Jewish people that the word of God and His salvation was first announced and shown, and yet, many of them were the ones who refused to listen and believe in what they have heard and received.

And worse still, the persecutions that they had faced made it difficult for the Apostles and the missionaries to continue with their works and efforts to proclaim the Good News. Nonetheless, all those things did not discourage St. Paul and his fellow missionaries, and being confident of the strength, guidance and providence from God, Who has never left them in their hour of greatest need and distress. God has always strengthened them and encouraged them to continue doing good works for His sake, and He always provided them help through various means, causing them and their works to be ultimately successful even through the many challenges that they had to face in their path. That was how despite those difficulties, the Church kept on growing and flourishing over the years.

Then, from our Gospel passage today, we heard from the Gospel according to St. Luke the Evangelist in which we heard of how the Lord was watched carefully as He was having a meal at the house of one of the leading Pharisees, with a person suffering from the disease of dropsy being there on the Day of the Sabbath, a day when any kind of work was forbidden according to the Law, no doubt and quite likely was put there to test the Lord and to see how He would respond, knowing from His past history how He had been facing lots of difficulties and obstacles by the Pharisees, the teachers of the Law and all those who questioned and doubted His teaching authority and all of His miraculous works. And yet, He still patiently engaged them and tried His best to show and teach them the truth that God wanted them all to know and realise.

The Lord highlighted the fact as He healed the man who was suffering from dropsy on the Sabbath, that the overly strict and rigid interpretation of the Law of God by the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law completely missed the point and purpose of the Law of God and why God had given those Law and commandments to His people in the first place. He used the comparison to how when harm came to the sheep and ox belonging to any one of them, they would go and rescue those if they truly understood the Law, to show that forbidding anyone from doing any actions on the Sabbath, even good, lawful and worthy actions is in truth failing to understand the spirit and the true purpose and meaning of the Law that God has given to each one of us.

The Law of God was never meant to restrict us or to make us suffer or our lives to be difficult and troubled. And as the Lord Himself mentioned in another occasion in the Gospels, the Law of the Sabbath is made for the sake of mankind, and not the other way round, that the Son of Man is ultimately the Lord of the Sabbath, and not the Sabbath and the extraordinarily rigid laws and practices as enforced by the Pharisees which lorded over the people, restricting them and made them to have difficulties in living their lives with faith. The Law of God was given by Him to all of us, His beloved people so that He may teach us all how to love Him and how to live our lives according to what He has revealed to us, and He wants us all to learn how to focus our attention on HIm and be truly righteous and worthy in all things.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore continue to be faithful to God in all things and not be like those Pharisees and those who were proud and haughty in their way of living their faith such that they ended up hardening their hearts and minds against the Lord and His truth. Instead, we should always ever be humble and be willing to listen to the Lord, by being open-minded and considerate at all times, knowing that the Lord can speak to us through various means and methods, and even through the people we encounter in our daily lives, and sometimes even through the people we least expect. We must not harden our hearts and think that we know it better than others or that we are more worthy or holy than those whom we may disagree with in the matter of the faith.

Instead, we should be more humble in our attitudes and in our outlook in life. We should embrace what the Lord has shown and taught us, and be more exemplary in our lives and actions, in doing what God has truly wanted us to do, and not merely observing the Law of God for appearances and external piety only, but truly embodying our faith with great vigour and sincerity, in living our every days and every moments in life with genuine faith and obedience to God. We should not think that we are better than others around us, or worse still by acting judgmental and in being arrogant and haughty in our attitudes, all of which are not what the Lord had taught us to do. As genuine Christians, as beloved people of God, we should always be centred on God and not be self-centred and self righteous in all things.

May the Lord continue to strengthen us all and provide us with the courage and the determination to continue living our faith genuinely and confidently at all times. May He give us all the wisdom and the strength to carry on through the various challenges and opportunities that we encounter in our path so that hopefully through His strength and empowerment, we may truly be able to show forth the sincerity and truth of our faith to all those we encounter in life, becoming the faithful bearers of our Christian faith in all things. May God bless our every efforts and endeavours, our good works and efforts, now and always. Amen.