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Wednesday, 24 March 2021 : 5th Week of Lent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today all of us are reminded of the bravery and the courage with which the friends of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego stood by their faith before the great king of the Babylonians, the lord of many nations and the one who led the conquest of Judah and Jerusalem, destroying the city and the Temple of God, and how this can then be related and compared with what we heard in our Gospel passage today with regards to the Lord and His confrontation with the Jewish people.

In the first reading today, we heard of the moment when Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to bow down to the great golden statue built by king Nebuchadnezzar in his own image, as they held fast to their obedience and faith in God, and would not betray Him for the likeness of any idols or false gods. Even when faced with the full wrath of the king and the certain threat of suffering and death, all of them held firmly to their faith and did not give up their faith.

They were thus punished by the king of Babylon, to suffer and perish in the great furnace prepared for all those who dared to defy the command of the king. And as the king was furious with the refusal of the three friends of Daniel, and with their adamant and resolute stance against the worship of the idolatrous golden statue, he made the furnace to be much hotter, and threw the men into it. Yet, by divine providence and grace, they were unharmed. God protected them and sent His Angel to watch over them.

These three faithful men were among the people who had been brought off to exile in Babylon, as a people without a country, without land and honour left, humiliated and humbled. Their own original names were Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, as the names they were known by were actually forced upon them as the names the Babylonians imposed on them, as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. This symbolised the situation that they endured, bereft of their own homeland and even name, enslaved and oppressed.

Then we move on to our Gospel reading in which we heard the argument and confrontation between the Lord and the Jewish people in Judea, the latter referring to those who held and supported the hardline views of the Pharisees and therefore opposed the Lord Jesus and His works and ministry. The people argued that they were not enslaved and were free as they were the children of Abraham, when the Lord told them that if they were to believe in His words and accept His truth, then they would be free.

The people who refused to believe in Jesus hardened their hearts and stubbornly declined to listen to reason, and therefore they were actually enslaved. Yes, brothers and sisters in Christ, they were enslaved, and not free, because they were controlled by their desires, ego and pride, their refusal to admit that they could be wrong and mistaken, as they heard the truth from the Lord.

They continued to resist the truth even after having witnessed all that the Lord had done, and even after they had heard the great wisdom in His teachings and revelations, and the authority with which He has taught the people. This can be indeed contrasted with the attitudes of the three friends of Daniel. While the former, the people of the time of Jesus were free, but their hearts were in fact enslaved by sin, and the latter, the friends of Daniel, while they were enslaved in body, yet in their hearts and minds, they were truly free, by God’s grace.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, having heard all of these, therefore we are all called to reflect on our own lives and actions. Have we been truly free, brothers and sisters? Are we still enslaved by sin, by our ego, pride, desire and all sorts of worldly concerns and temptations, while we may be free in body? This is why as we continue to progress through this season of Lent, we are all called to do self-introspection, reflect and ponder on what we can do to be more faithful and to be righteous in life.

There will be plenty of challenges and trials facing us, brothers and sisters in Christ, but we must not be afraid, for just as the Lord took care and protected the three men, the friends of Daniel from even the worst of persecutions, the Lord will also stand by our side, that even when we suffer, we will not be alone, and we will walk through and survive even the most challenging trials, by God’s grace, guidance and help. May the Lord be with us all, and may He strengthen us all that we may ever persevere in faith, at all times. Amen.

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Wednesday, 24 March 2021 : 5th Week of Lent (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

John 8 : 31-42

At that time, Jesus went on to say to the Jews who believed in Him, “You will be My true disciples, if you keep My word. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered Him, “We are the descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves of anyone. What do you mean by saying : You will be free?”

Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave. But the slave does not stay in the house forever; the son stays forever. So, if the Son makes you free, you will be really free. I know that you are the descendants of Abraham; yet you want to kill Me because My word finds no place in you. For My part, I speak of what I have seen in My Father’s presence, but you do what you have learnt from your father.”

They answered Him, “Our father is Abraham.” Then Jesus said, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do as Abraham did. But now you want to kill Me, the One Who tells you the truth – the truth that I have learnt from God. That is not what Abraham did; what you are doing are the works of your father.”

The Jews said to Him, “We are not illegitimate children; we have one Father, God.” Jesus replied, “If God were your Father you would love Me, for I came forth from God, and I am here. And I did not come by My own decision, but it was He Himself Who sent Me.”

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Wednesday, 24 March 2021 : 5th Week of Lent (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Daniel 3 : 52, 53, 54, 55, 56

Blessed are You, Lord, God of our fathers, be praised and exalted forever. Blessed is Your holy and glorious Name, celebrated and exalted forever.

Blessed are You in the Temple of Your sacred glory, Your praises are sung forever.

Blessed are You on the throne of Your kingdom, honoured and glorified forever.

Blessed are You Who fathom the depths, who are enthroned on the Cherubim, praised and exalted forever.

Blessed are You in the firmament of heaven, praised and glorified forever.

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Wednesday, 24 March 2021 : 5th Week of Lent (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Daniel 3 : 14-20, 91-92, 95

King Nebuchadnezzar questioned Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden statue I have set up? If you hear now the sound of horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes and other instruments, will you fall down and worship the statue I made? If you will not, you know the punishment : you will immediately be thrown into a burning furnace. And then what god can deliver you out of my hands?”

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego answered, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we need not defend ourselves before you on this matter. If you order us to be thrown into the furnace, the God we serve will rescue us. But even if He will not, we would like you to know, o king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden statue you have set up.”

Nebuchadnezzar’s face reddened with fury as he looked at Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. He ordered the furnace to heated seven times hotter than usual and commanded some of his strongest soldiers to bind Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and throw them into the burning furnace.

Then king Nebuchadnezzar suddenly rose up in great amazement and asked his counsellors, “Did we not throw three men bound into the fire?” They answered, “Certainly.” The king said, “But I can see four men walking about freely through the fire, without suffering any harm; and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.”

Nebuchadnezzar exclaimed, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, Who sent His Angel to free His servants, who, trusting in Him, disobeyed the king’s order; and preferred to give their bodies to the fire rather than serve and worship any other god but their God.”

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Tuesday, 23 March 2021 : 5th Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Turibius de Mogrovejo, Bishop (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of the Scripture, hearing how the people of Israel rebelled against God and disobeyed Him when they grumbled and complained against Him as they journeyed through the desert from Egypt. They complained that they had a better life in Egypt even though over there they were slaves and were treated badly.

They did all these even though the Lord had in fact treated them very kindly, patiently answering their pleas and requests, giving them daily the bread from heaven itself, and also other food and plenty of water to drink in their journey through the desert. The Lord took good care of His people and patiently cared for them only to gain contempt, betrayal and disobedience, rebellion and wickedness in return.

The Lord then sent fiery serpents that were disastrous in their effects on the people, as many were bitten by those serpents and died. Those serpents killed many and the people begged the Lord for mercy, asking Moses to intercede for their sake. The Lord had pity on His people and showed them His clemency through instructing Moses to build a great bronze serpent standard, and lifting it up before the whole people that all those who had been bitten and saw the bronze serpent would be saved.

This is related to our Gospel passage today in which we heard of the Lord Jesus speaking plainly to the people and all gathered about what would happen to Him. Those Jews were the ones living in Judea and many of them supported the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law in opposition against Jesus. They doubted Him and refused to believe in Him, demanding to see miracles and signs from Him even when He had done all those wonders before them all.

And the Lord then revealed to all of them how He would be lifted up high above the Earth, a prelude to what He would endure during His Passion namely when He would be scourged, stripped and nailed to the Cross, and lifted up on the hill of Calvary, for all the same people to whom the Lord had spoken, to see the ultimate and greatest of all the signs of God’s wonders and love.

What is the significance of this, brothers and sisters? It is just like the lifting of the bronze serpent of Moses in the past through which the people were saved from the deadly sting of the serpents, thus, the Lord also had Himself lifted up so that all those who see Him, believe in Him and have faith in Him will be saved from certain death and destruction from the sting of sin.

This is therefore an important reminder for each and every one of us that we are all called to shun the temptations to sin, the allure and pull of its corruption, and all the things that have led us to our downfall, and the downfall of so many who came and went before us. As we approach the beginning of the Holy Week in less than a week’s time, we are all called to reflect deeply of the Lord’s Passion, all that He had done, out of His great love for us.

It is thanks to Him, His enduring love and great patience that each and every one of us still have hope, the hope of entering into a new and blessed existence free from sin, and one that is no longer corrupted by those wicked and evil taints of the world. The Lord has willingly taken up His Cross, bearing our many sins and their consequences and punishments, all because of His love for us. If not for Him, we should have been lost to despair and the darkness.

That is why we should appreciate the love of God and everything that He had done for us, and we must not take the opportunities that He has given us for granted, or else, we may find it that we are too late to realise how fortunate we are to have been beloved by God and to have received so many good opportunities from Him. We need turn towards the Lord, look at Him crucified and remember the love by which He selflessly took up that sacrifice in order to save all of us.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we can also be inspired by the good examples set by St. Turibius de Mogrovejo, one of our holy predecessors. St. Turibius de Mogrovejo was a great and renowned Archbishop, who was once also the confessor and trusted advisor of the King of Spain. He was credited with the conversion of numerous people, many of whom he personally preached to and worked with. He dedicated himself wholeheartedly to the improvement of the life of his flock, and committed himself to care for them.

St. Turibius de Mogrovejo travelled extensively throughout his diocese and beyond, often on foot and baptising many, taking care of the spiritual needs of those whom he had encountered throughout his ministry. He established many chapels, convents, hospitals and schools for the benefit of many people, and many indeed were helped and touched by the actions of this saintly bishop that they became converts and believers.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all turn towards the Lord with a new heart and desire to follow Him, inspired by the good examples of the saints, particularly that of St. Turibius de Mogrovejo. May the Lord be our guide that we may journey successfully through life with faith, and focusing our attention from now on, to the Lord and His saving grace. Let us always remember all the sufferings and humiliations that Our Lord had to face in order to save us all, out of His enduring and ever-present love for us. May God bless us all, now and always. Amen.

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Tuesday, 23 March 2021 : 5th Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Turibius de Mogrovejo, Bishop (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

John 8 : 21-30

At that time, Jesus said to the Jews, “I am going away, and though you look for Me, you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.” The Jews wondered, “Why does He say that we cannot come where He is going? Will He kill Himself?”

But Jesus said, “You are from below and I am from above; you are of this world and I am not of this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. And you shall die in your sins, unless you believe that I am He.” They asked Him, “Who are You?”; and Jesus said, “Just what I have told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you and much to condemn; but the One Who sent Me is truthful and everything I learnt from Him; I proclaim to the world.”

They did not understand that Jesus was speaking to them about the Father. So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He and that I do nothing of Myself, but I say just what the Father taught Me. He Who sent Me is with Me and has not left Me alone; because I always do what pleases Him.”

As Jesus spoke like this, many believed in Him.

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Tuesday, 23 March 2021 : 5th Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Turibius de Mogrovejo, Bishop (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 101 : 2-3, 16-18, 19-21

O Lord, hear my prayer; let my cry for help come to You. Do not hide Your face from me when I am in trouble. Turn Your ear to me; make haste to answer me when I call.

O Lord, the nations will revere Your Name, and the kings of the earth Your glory, when the Lord will rebuild Zion and appear in all His splendour. For He will answer the prayer of the needy and will not despise their plea.

Let this be written for future ages, “The Lord will be praised by a people He will form.” From His holy height in heaven, the Lord has looked on the earth to hear the groaning of the prisoners, and free those condemned to death.

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Tuesday, 23 March 2021 : 5th Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Turibius de Mogrovejo, Bishop (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Numbers 21 : 4-9

From Mount Hor they set out by the Red Sea road to go around the land of Edom. The people were discouraged by the journey and began to complain against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is neither bread nor water here and we are disgusted with this tasteless manna.”

YHVH then sent fiery serpents against them. They bit the people and many of the Israelites died. Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, speaking against YHVH and against you. Plead with YHVH to take the serpents away.”

Moses pleaded for the people and YHVH said to him, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a standard; whoever has been bitten and then looks at it shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a standard. Whenever a man was bitten, he looked towards the bronze serpent and he lived.

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Monday, 22 March 2021 : 5th Week of Lent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we listened to the words of the Scripture, we are reminded of the dangers of sin and the need for us to resist the temptations to sin and to indulge in various human desires. We need to learn from what we have heard in our Scripture readings today so that we may become truly better Christians in all things, in words and deeds, as well as in our everyday living, becoming good examples for one another in faith.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Book of Daniel, the prophet of Israel in exile in Babylon who witnessed the unjust persecution and false accusation by two elders against Susanna, a faithful and righteous woman who was wrongly accused of adultery and sin against God when it was actually the two elders themselves who disobeyed the Lord and sinned because of their lust and their inability to hold that lust in check, leading to their downfall.

The two elders tried to abuse their position and power, the prestige and respect they had in the society of the Israelite exiles at the time to give them strong leverage over Susanna, who however refused to give in to their demands. It was quite obvious from what we have heard that the two men were quite set in following their desires and lust, and not only that they planned everything well, but from their threat to Susanna, they were in fact proud and filled with ego, thinking that they could not be persecuted for what they were about to do.

Not only that, but when they failed to get Susanna to bend to their will and do what they wanted, they were then dead set in trying to get her condemned to death, again using their position wrongly to gain for their own self-benefits. They almost succeeded in doing so if not for the Lord intervening through Daniel, as God awakened the Spirit in Daniel and gave him the wisdom and guidance to do what was right, and prevent the suffering and death of the innocent.

Through all of that, Daniel wisely managed to get the two elders to confess their own sins before the assembled public by making everyone to hear from their own mouths, their incoherent and inconsistent testimony, which meant that Susanna was saying the truth, and was innocent, while it was the two elders themselves who were at fault and should have been punished with whatever they had intended to punish Susanna with.

In the Gospel passage today, we then heard of the well-known story of the Lord Jesus forgiving the woman caught in the act of adultery, in which the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law wanted to test and see the Lord’s response to how they accused the woman caught in the act of adultery, hoping to catch Him off-guard and fumbling, and thus giving them the ground and evidence to either discredit Him or to persecute Him.

Had the Lord said that the woman should have been stoned to death as per the Jewish law, then the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law could have just benefitted by saying that the Lord was no different from them, or that He was just merely agreeing to what they themselves had taught, therefore discrediting Him in the eyes of others. On the other hand, had the Lord told them to release the woman, they could then charge Him on the accusation of siding with sinners and disobeying the Law.

Instead, as we know, the Lord wisely and carefully avoid all of those by simply saying that those who were without sin ought to cast the first stone, which had an almost immediate effect on the assembled people, making them aware of their own sins and disobedience against God, as was evident how the people began to leave one by one, starting from the eldest ones, as those were the ones who have lived the longest and were likely to have committed the most sins in their lives.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is what we have heard in our Scripture passages today, and we are reminded therefore that first of all, we are all sinners before God, and we are people who are easily tempted by the temptations to sin, in which today we had the emphasis on the sin of lust as showed by the two elders and also by the woman who was caught in the act of adultery. In comparing these two cases, the Lord wanted us to see that sin is truly dangerous and is something that can indeed bring us to our downfall if we are not careful.

Yes, as we heard, the desire to sin and our vulnerability to it, and if we succumb to those temptations, we will end up falling further and further into the trap of sin, as the two elders story had shown us. They committed more sins to protect themselves and doubled down on their mistakes just so that their earlier sins would not be discovered. Sin is something that we must be very careful with, and we cannot allow ourselves to be overcome by it.

But at the same time, through our Gospel, we are also reminded of the powerful healing from God, Who alone can heal us from our sins. And most importantly, because He loves each one of us dearly, He is truly willing to forgive all of us our sins, and be reconciled with us. He does not want to condemn us, and He does not desire our destruction, unless it is we ourselves who desire it, by continuing to live in sin and rejecting His most generous offers of mercy.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all turn towards the Lord today with a renewed faith and love for Him, and let us all listen to the Lord when He said that, ‘Go and sin no more’, that we may lead a virtuous life from now on, free from sin and evil, exemplary in our lives, our actions, words and deeds, in obedience to God from now on. May God be with us always throughout our journey of faith and life, and may He strengthen us with the courage to live ever more faithfully in each and every moments of our lives. Amen.

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Monday, 22 March 2021 : 5th Week of Lent (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

John 8 : 1-11

At that time, Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At daybreak He appeared in the Temple again. All the people came to Jesus, and He sat down and began to teach them. Then the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees brought in a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They made her stand in front of everyone.

“Master,” they said, “this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now the Law of Moses orders that such women be stoned to death; but You, what do You say?” They said this to test Jesus, in order to have some charge against Him. Jesus bent down and started writing on the ground with His finger. And as they continued to ask Him, He straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who has no sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And He bent down again, writing on the ground.

As a result of these words, they went away, one by one, starting with the elders, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before Him. Then Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go away and do not sin again.”