Saints

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Friday, 17 February 2023 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of the Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

Psalm 32 : 10-11, 12-13, 14-15

The Lord frustrates the plans of the nations and brings to nothing the peoples’ designs. But His plan stands forever, and His heart’s design through all generations.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord – the people He has chosen for His inheritance. The Lord looks down from heaven and sees the whole race of mortals.

From where He sits He watches all those who dwell on the earth – He Who fashions every heart observes all their deeds.

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Friday, 17 February 2023 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of the Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

Genesis 11 : 1-9

The whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved from east, they found a plain in the country of Shinar where they settled. They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them in fire.” They used brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. They said also, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top reaching heaven; so that we may become a great people and not be scattered over the face of the earth!”

YHVH came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of man were building, and YHVH said, “They are one people and they have one language. If they carry this through, nothing they decide to do from now on will be impossible. Come! Let Us go down and confuse their language so that they will no longer understand each other.”

So YHVH scattered them over all the earth and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because there YHVH confused the language of the whole earth and from there YHVH scattered them over the whole face of the earth.

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Tuesday, 14 February 2023 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cyril, Monk and St. Methodius, Bishop, Patron Saints of Europe (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we are all reminded both of the dangers and the threats of sin and evil present all around us, and at the same time we are also reassured through what we have heard in the Scripture passages today, of the guidance, help and providence which God has given us, just as the examples highlighted of the past, our predecessors should inspire and strengthen our faith and resolve to follow the Lord wholeheartedly and faithfully, entrusting ourselves completely and wholeheartedly to the cause of the Lord, and to be ever righteous, good and worthy of Him in all of our lives.

In our first reading today, we heard of the well-known story of the time when God sent a Great Flood to wipe out almost the entire race of mankind and other living things, due to the great wickedness of many of them who refused to believe in Him, and their continued disobedience and rebellion against the Lord and His Law. All of these great wickedness had come into the world due to the disobedience of man against God’s will and commandments, and then as we have just heard earlier in yesterday’s readings, on the murder of Abel by Cain, his own brother, the temptations of pride, ego, worldly sins and wickedness, all of these had led mankind further and further down the path towards evil and damnation.

As we heard in that passage from the Book of Genesis today, God was determined to save the only ones among the people who were still righteous and obedient to the will of the Lord, namely Noah and his family. That was how Noah was instructed by God to construct the immense Ark by which he would save not only his own family but also the living things all over the world, which God had chosen to spare amidst the destruction that He would bring to cleanse the world from all the wickedness, sins and evils. God showed how He treasured those whom He loves and cares for, those who are faithful to Him, while those who refused to obey Him and continued to live in sin, will suffer the just consequences for their wickedness.

We heard how the Ark saved Noah and his family amidst all the destruction of the Great Flood. The other people laughed at Noah when he built the Ark and refused to listen to his warnings and heedings, and hence, no one else save from Noah and his family were saved from the Flood. The whole world was covered with the wrath of God’s Flood, and was cleansed from all the wickedness that had afflicted it throughout. Noah was saved in the Ark, and when the Flood receded, we heard how God promised Noah and his descendants, that is all of us, that He would never again destroy the world and us with the water, with the rainbow as the sign of this promise. That is the story how rainbow appears after the rain, as reminders to both God and us of what had happened once.

This does not mean however that sin has no more consequences afterwards. Sin is still afflicting us, and through disobedience and sin, many more people since the days of Noah would fall into sin, right up to the present day. The Lord however did not give up on us and continued to love us and care for us, as He sent us His promised salvation in Jesus Christ, His own beloved and begotten Son, Who gave Himself to us, walking in our midst and reaching out to us, encouraging and strengthening us with the concrete show of God’s love and compassionate mercy. Through Him, we have seen yet again the proof of God’s ever enduring and persistent love for all of us. He has shown us His love as mentioned the Gospel passage today, by His feeding of the multitudes and many thousands of people.

At the same time, He also warned His disciples of the ‘yeast of the Pharisees’ and the ‘yeast of Herod’, which were actually reminders to them and also all of us to be ever vigilant against the temptations and allures of sin which are always present all around us. If we are not careful, we may end up falling into the same pride, ego and ambitions which became the downfall of many of the Pharisees, who refused to believe in the Lord because they hardened their hearts and minds, and remained in their stubborn refusal to believe. Meanwhile, the ‘yeast of Herod’ is a reminder for all of us not to allow the vices of worldly pleasures, the corruption of the sins of the flesh to mislead and corrupt us down the wrong path in life. We have to resist those temptations to sin and remain virtuous, good and worthy of God all the time, remembering all the good things and the love that God has lavished on us.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, hence today let us all discern our path in life very carefully, minding the examples shown to us from the time of Noah and the Great Flood, to the sins of the Pharisees and Herod which the Lord warned His disciples against, and all the loving actions that God had done for us. Let us all also heed upon the good examples set by our holy predecessors, namely the great saints and brothers, St. Cyril and St. Methodius, the Patron Saints of Europe and great missionaries of the Christian faith, renowned for their great commitment to the spreading and proclamation of the Good News of God amidst the Slavic peoples, who were still mostly pagan back then, and by whose works, many of them eventually turned to the Christian faith and embracing the Lord as their Saviour and God.

They spent a lot of time and effort to evangelise in various places, and at the same time also developing the alphabets for the Slavic peoples that will eventually be known as the Glagolitic and the Cyrillic alphabets, and they also spent a lot of energy in reaching out to many people, both the rulers and the commoners alike, in introducing God and His truth to all of them. God has truly done His many great and wonderful works amongst His people through St. Cyril and St. Methodius. He has led them all to do His great deeds, and He has strengthened us all through their great inspiration and actions as our great role models. Can we all follow the Lord faithfully in the same way that St. Cyril and St. Methodius had done, brothers and sisters?

Let us all hence draw ever closer to the Lord, and let us continue to dedicate our time, our lives, actions and efforts to glorify the Lord by our lives, by our every words, actions and works in every time and in every opportunities provided to us. Let us all continue to follow the Lord wholeheartedly, distancing ourselves from sin and from the temptations to sin and to disobey the Lord, reminding ourselves and one another each time, to continue to walk the path of God’s righteousness and love, at all times. May God be with us always, and may He bless us in our every good works and endeavours. Amen.

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Tuesday, 14 February 2023 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cyril, Monk and St. Methodius, Bishop, Patron Saints of Europe (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Mark 8 : 14-21

At that time, the disciples had forgotten to bring more bread, and had only one loaf with the in the boat. Then Jesus warned them, “Keep your eyes open, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” And they said of one another, “He saw that we have no bread.”

Aware of this, Jesus asked them, “Why are you talking about the loaves you are short of? Do you not see or understand? Are your minds closed? Have your eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear? And do you not remember when I broke the five loaves among five thousand? How many baskets full of letfovers did you collect?”

They answered, “Twelve.” “And having distributed seven loaves to the four thousand, how many wicker baskets of leftovers did you collect?” They answered, “Seven.” Then Jesus said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

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Tuesday, 14 February 2023 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cyril, Monk and St. Methodius, Bishop, Patron Saints of Europe (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 28 : 1a and 2, 3ac-4, 3b and 9-10

Give the Lord, o sons of God, give the Lord the glory due His Name; worship the Lord in great liturgy.

The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the Lord thunders over vast waters. How powerful is the voice of the Lord, how splendorous is the voice of the Lord.

The God of glory thunders, the Lord strips the forests bare, and in His Temple all cry, “Glory!” Over the flood the Lord was sitting; the Lord is King and He reigns forever.

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Tuesday, 14 February 2023 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cyril, Monk and St. Methodius, Bishop, Patron Saints of Europe (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Genesis 6 : 5-8 and Genesis 7 : 1-5, 10

YHVH saw how great was the wickedness of man on the earth and that evil was always the only thought of his heart. YHVH regretted having created man on the earth and His heart grieved. He said, “I will destroy man whom I created and blot him out from the face of the earth, as well as the beasts, creeping creatures and birds, for I am sorry I made them.” But Noah was pleasing to God.

YHVH said to Noah, “Go into the Ark, you and all your household, for I see that you are just in this generation. Of all the clean animals, you are to take with you seven of each kind, male and female, and a pair of unclean animals, a male and a female. In the same way for the birds of the air, take seven and seven, male and female, to keep their kind alive over all the earth, for in seven days I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. I will blot out from the face of the earth all the living creatures I have created.”

Noah did all as YHVH had commanded. And after seven days the waters of the flood were over the earth.

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Friday, 10 February 2023 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Scholastica (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we listened to the words of the Scriptures, we are all reminded through the Scriptures to put our faith and trust in God and His truth, and not in the falsehoods and wickedness of Satan. God loves each and every one of us, and He has created us out of His pure and most enduring love for us. Meanwhile, Satan, as well as all of his wicked allies and forces, all were aiming only at our eventual downfall and destruction, snatching us away from God Who truly loves each and every one of us. They have always been busy at work in trying to subvert the messages of God’s truth and to tempt us so that we fall into the slippery path towards damnation and evil. We heard how Satan tricked our ancestors and made his false promises and spoke lies to tempt us to sin by disobeying God and His commandments.

In our first reading today, we heard of the continuation of the past few days’ account from the moment of the Creation of the world and the Universe, and specifically today we focused on the very moment that Satan came before Adam and Eve, tempting both of them with the very tempting allure of worldly power and glory, of knowledge, wisdom and understanding, to become even like God by knowing all things good and evil. Satan was in fact playing on our desires and wants, and in our moment of weakness, he struck where it caused us to lose our focus and faith in the Lord and His providence, that we chose to trust in the words of the great deceiver and enemy rather than to keep our faith and trust in the Lord. We chose to embrace the path of the world, the path of pride, ego and greed, and as a result, we fell into sin, just as Satan himself has fallen.

As a great and mighty, brilliant and amazing Angel and spirit that God had created, Lucifer, the original name and identity of Satan, was truly an amazing and great being, that showcased the marvels of God’s creations and wonders. However, this Angel was taken over by his vanity and pride, and began plotting rebellion and desires to take over the control over Heaven and all of God’s kingdom, to sit on God’s Throne and to rule over all. Hence, by his pride and ego, Satan had fallen, defeated and cast out of Heaven, and in his defeat, he sought to bring us down together with him and all of his fallen and defeated allies. Hence, he struck at us using the same things that had led to his downfall in the first place, the vices and wickedness of the world, the temptations to sin against God.

It is here also that we should notice the contrast and comparison we can make between our first and Gospel reading passages today. In the beginning, man and woman were made all good and perfect, and they had nothing lacking in them. They were naked and without anything to wear just like the other animals and plants of the field, and yet they were not embarrassed or ashamed. Yet, the moment they ate of the fruits of the Tree of knowledge of good and evil, they became aware of their nakedness and became embarrassed and panicked, seeking to hide themselves and their naked beings, and also hiding away from God. In the Gospel on the other hand, we heard of the Lord Jesus healing and opening the ears and loosening the tongue of a person who had been suffering from being deaf and mute.

Through this comparison, actually, we can see that because of sin, we have become ‘blinded’ and made to be unaware of God’s love and truth, as we allowed the veil and corruptions of sin to cover us and to prevent us from seeing the truth about God’s love and compassionate kindness towards each one of us. We became lacking in faith and trust in Him, and chose therefore to embrace the wickedness of our worldly desires and the many temptations all around us. Our ancestors, Adam and Eve became embarrassed and afraid of their nakedness and actions, because they were swallowed by their vanity and pride, and while they were once focused only on God, His love and kindness, they have become focused on their own selves and desires, turning inwards and away from God’s path.

Hence, the irony was that, while their eyes were indeed ‘opened’ by their newly gained knowledge about themselves, but sin had blinded them and made them to be unaware of the wickedness that they had done in disobeying God and in rebelling against Him. Yet, the Lord did not give up on us and continued to love us all most generously after all, and He gave us His own beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to deliver us from the hands of the devil, and from the tyranny of sin, evil and death. Through Him and His works, just as we heard in our Gospel passage today, He embodied and showed us all the perfect manifestation of God’s ever patient and enduring love for each and every one of us. He still loved us despite all of our stubborn attitudes and behaviours, because all of us are truly precious to Him.

Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, having heard from these readings from the Sacred Scriptures and reminded of how we mankind had often disobeyed the Lord, rejected His generous mercy and love, and continued to sin against Him, can we all spend some time to discern well our path forward in life? Can we all do whatever we can to resist those many temptations all around us, the temptations to sin and to do what is abhorrent and wicked in the sight of God? God is indeed ever patient and loving, but we should never take His love for granted, ever again. If we continue to walk down this path of sin and disobedience, eventually the time will come when we have no more way out of the predicament and our fate that is destruction and eternal damnation, and at that time, no amount of regret will ever console us or give us any hope, anymore. Let us all not wait until we regret for eternity in hellfire with Satan and his fellow fallen allies, and regret our rebelliousness.

Today we also celebrate the Feast of St. Scholastica, a renowned and great woman of God, a saint of the Church, who was the twin sister of St. Benedict of Nursia, another holy man of God. Her examples in commitment and love for God should indeed become source of hope and inspiration to each one of us in how we ourselves should live our lives with great faith. She was remembered for her great piety and personal holiness, as well as for her dedication to prayerful life and for her discipline in obeying the Law and commandments of God, through her obedience to the Rule of St. Benedict that her brother had established as the rule and norms for his community of the faithful. Through her examples and dedications, many others had become called and responded to God’s call, encouraging many more people to commit themselves ever more to the Lord, in their lives and in leading righteous lives, just as we all should as well.

May the Lord continue to watch over us and help us to journey ever closer to Him, and by heeding the good examples set by St. Scholastica and the innumerable other saints, holy men and women of God, that we may find our way to Him and His salvation. May God continue to bless us in everything that we say and do, and may He empower all of us to live ever more faithfully in His presence, now and always, and be good role models and inspirations to many others all around us. Amen.

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Friday, 10 February 2023 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Scholastica (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Mark 7 : 31-37

At that time, again Jesus set out : from the country of Tyre He passed through Sidon and, skirting the sea of Galilee, He came to the territory of Decapolis. There, a deaf man, who also had difficulty in speaking, was brought to Him. They asked Jesus to lay His hand upon him.

Jesus took him apart from the crowd, and put His fingers into the man’s ears, and touched his tongue with spittle. Then, looking up to heaven, He said with a deep sigh, “Ephphata!” that is, “Be opened!”

And immediately, his ears were opened, his tongue was loosened, and he began to speak clearly. Jesus ordered them not to tell anyone about it; but the more He insisted, the more they proclaimed it. The people were completely astonished and said, “He has done all things well; He makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.”

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Friday, 10 February 2023 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Scholastica (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 31 : 1-2, 5, 6, 7

Blessed is the one whose sin is forgiven, whose iniquity is wiped away. Blessed are those in whom YHVH sees no guilt and in whose spirit is found no deceit.

Then I made known to You my sin and uncovered before You my fault, saying to myself, “To YHVH I will now confess my wrong.” And You, You forgave my sin; You removed my guilt.

So let the faithful ones pray to You in time of distress; the overflowing waters will not reach them.

You are my Refuge; You protect me from distress and surround me with songs of deliverance.

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Friday, 10 February 2023 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Scholastica (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Genesis 3 : 1-8

Now the serpent was the most crafty of all the wild creatures that YHVH God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say : You must not eat from any tree in the garden?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden, but of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden God said : You must not eat, and you must not touch it or you will die.”

The serpent said to the woman, “You will not die, but God knows that the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” The woman saw that the fruit was good to eat, and pleasant to the eyes, and ideal for gaining knowledge. She took its fruit and ate it and gave some to her husband who was with her. He ate it.

Then their eyes were opened and both of them knew they were naked. So they sewed leaves of a fig tree together and made themselves loincloths. They heard the voice of YHVH God walking in the garden, in the cool of the day, and they, the man and his wife, hid from YHVH God among the trees of the garden.