Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 96 : 1-2, 5-6, 9
YHVH reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the distant islands be glad. Clouds and darkness surround Him; justice and right, are His throne.
The mountains melt like wax before YHVH, the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim His justice, all peoples see His glory.
For You are the Master of the universe, exalted far above all gods.
Liturgical Colour : White
Daniel 7 : 9-10, 13-14
I looked and saw the following : Some thrones were set in place and One of Great Age took His seat. His robe was white, as snow, His hair, white as washed wool. His throne was flames of fire with wheels of blazing fire. A river of fire sprang forth and flowed before Him. Thousands upon thousands served Him and a countless multitude stood before Him.
Those in the tribunal took their seats and opened the book. I continued watching the nocturnal vision : One like a Son of Man came on the clouds of heaven. He faced the One of Great Age and was brought into His presence. Dominion, honour and kingship were given Him, and all the peoples and nations of every language served Him. His dominion is eternal and shall never pass away; His kingdom will never be destroyed.
Alternative reading
2 Peter 1 : 16-19
Indeed, what we taught you about the power, and the return of Christ Jesus our Lord, was not drawn from myths or formulated theories. We, ourselves, were eyewitnesses of His majesty, when He received glory and honour from God, the Father, when, from the magnificent glory, this most extraordinary word came upon Him : “This is My beloved Son, this is My Chosen One.”
We, ourselves, heard this voice from heaven, when we were with Him on the holy mountain. Therefore, we believe most firmly in the message of the prophets, which you should consider rightly, as a lamp shining in a dark place, until the break of day, when the Morning Star shines in your hearts.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate the feast of the Dedication of one of the four Major Papal Basilicas in Rome, namely that of the Basilica of St. Mary Major, or Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, the principal Marian shrine and church in the whole Christendom, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Protector of Rome, in the icon Salus Populi Romani venerated by many of the faithful.
The icon of Our Blessed Mother and the related celebration of Our Lady of the Snows have long history since the early days of Christendom, as the current Basilica of St. Mary Major is one of the oldest extant churches in the world, being established and built just right after the end of Christian persecutions of its early centuries, by the support of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great and his successors.
It was told that a Roman patrician or noble named John and his wife asked for the intercession of the Blessed Mother Mary, as they were without child and wanted to make a donation of their resources and properties to the Church. They wanted to donate their properties in her honour and build a church dedicated to her, the Mother of God. And therefore, it was told that at the height of summer, which is on this date, the fifth of August, snow miraculously fell on the site on which now the Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major now stands.
Ever since then, this great Basilica, the House of God and shrine to His Mother Mary has become a great place of refuge and as a focus of pilgrimage and devotions attracting the faithful from all over Christendom, far and beyond. And on this day, through the Scripture passages, all of us are also called to reflect on the love which God has often shown His people, and which He has shown us especially through the same love His mother Mary has for us, her beloved children.
In our first reading today, we heard of the account from the Book of Numbers telling us of the great complaints of the Israelites who grumbled against God and against His servant Moses, as they craved the food and things they used to eat and have in the land of Egypt, even as slaves to the Egyptians and their Pharaoh. And even though God has given them the miraculous manna, the bread from heaven itself to eat, they complained and grumbled on the ‘tastelessness’ of the manna.
What we have heard in that passage essentially told us of the greed and wicked desires, the cravings in mankind’s hearts, which made them to be so ungrateful and so lacking of gratitude for God’s generosity and love for each and every one of them. God has loved His people so generously and faithfully that He not only freed them from the hands of the Egyptians and crushed the armies of the Pharaoh sent to chase after them, but He also performed many miracles and fed them through the dry and lifeless desert for so many years without cease.
In the Gospel today, we heard a similar story of God feeding His people with love, and this time, it is the famous feeding of the five thousand men and countless other women and children by the Lord Jesus, Who miraculously turned five loaves of bread and two fishes into the amount of food sufficient to feed the entirety of the people until they were all satisfied and with twelve baskets of leftovers in the end.
In all of these, we see how God so loved His people that He cared for them, had pity on them when they were hungry and suffering, and not just in one occasion, but many occasions throughout history. And He was ever patient despite of our own impatience and rebelliousness. Even despite all that the Israelites complained against Him and all of their wickedness, God still fed them with manna and also large birds and crystal clear water throughout their forty years of journey in the desert.
And God gave us all the most wonderful gift in His Son, Jesus Christ, His own Begotten Son, by Whom all of us have been brought into reconciliation with Him and salvation through His suffering and death on the Cross. And Christ has also given us His love through His own mother Mary, whom He has entrusted to us as our own mother, and all of us have also been entrusted to her as her own children.
Therefore today, as we rejoice in the anniversary of the Dedication of the great Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome, let us all recall the wonderful love that God has given us, through His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ and also through His mother Mary, our greatest intercessor and protector. Let us all ask Mary for her intercession before the throne of her beloved Son in heaven, that we may be forgiven our sins and be brought ever closer to salvation in Him.
May the Lord continue to bless us and guide our path in this journey of life, and may He strengthen our courage and resolve to live ever more faithfully in His presence, day after day, from now on, to glorify God at all times by our words, actions and deeds. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major)
Matthew 14 : 13-21
At that time, when Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist, He set out by boat for a secluded place, to be alone. But the people heard of it, and they followed Him on foot from their towns. When Jesus went ashore, He saw the crowd gathered there, and He had compassion on them. And He healed their sick.
Late in the afternoon, His disciples came to Him and said, “We are in a lonely place and it is now late. You should send these people away, so that they can go to the villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” But Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat.” They answered, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fishes.” Jesus said to them, “Bring them here to Me.”
Then He made everyone sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves and the two fishes, raised His eyes to heaven, pronounced the blessing, broke the loaves, and handed them to the disciples to distribute to the people. And they all ate, and everyone had enough; then the disciples gathered up the leftovers, filling twelve baskets. About five thousand men had eaten there, besides women and children.
Alternative reading
Matthew 14 : 22-36
At that time, immediately, Jesus obliged His disciples to get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side, while He sent the crowd away. And having sent the people away, He went up the mountain by Himself, to pray. At nightfall, He was there alone.
Meanwhile, the boat was very far from land, dangerously rocked by the waves, for the wind was against it. At daybreak, Jesus came to them, walking on the sea. When they saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified, thinking that it was a ghost. And they cried out in fear. But at once, Jesus said to them, “Courage! Do not be afraid. It is Me!”
Peter answered, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” Jesus said to him, “Come!” And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water to go to Jesus. But seeing the strong wind, he was afraid, and began to sink; and he cried out, “Lord, save me!”
Jesus immediately stretched out His hand and took hold of him, saying, “Man of little faith, why did you doubt?” As they got into the boat, the wind dropped. Then those in the boat bowed down before Jesus, saying, “Truly, You are the Son of God!”
They came ashore at Gennesaret. The local people recognised Jesus and spread the news throughout the region. So they brought to Him all the sick people, begging Him to let them touch just the hem of His cloak. All who touched it became perfectly well.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major)
Psalm 80 : 12-13, 14-15, 16-17
But My people did not listen; Israel did not obey. So I gave them over to their stubbornness and they followed their own counsels.
If only My people would listen, if only Israel would walk in My ways, I would quickly subdue their adversaries and turn My hand against their enemies.
Those who hate YHVH would cringe before Him, and their panic would last forever. I would feed you with the finest wheat and satisfy you with honey from the rock.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major)
Numbers 11 : 4b-15
The Israelites wept and said, “Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish we ate without cost in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and garlic. Now our appetite is gone; there is nothing to look at, nothing but manna.”
Now the manna was like coriander seed and had the appearance of bedellium. The people went about gathering it up and then ground it between millstones or pounded it in a mortar. They boiled it in a pot and made cakes with it which tasted like cakes made with oil. As soon as dew fell at night in the camp, the manna came with it.
Moses heard the people crying, family by family at the entrance to their tent and YHVH became very angry. This displeased Moses. Then Moses said to YHVH, “Why have You treated Your servant so badly? Is it because You do not love me that You burdened me with this people? Did I conceive all these people and did I give them birth?”
“And now You want me to carry them in my bosom as a nurse carries an infant, to the land You promised on oath to their fathers? Where would I get meat for all these people, when they cry to me saying :’Give us meat that we may eat?'”
“I cannot, myself alone, carry all these people; the burden is too heavy for me. Kill me rather than treat me like this, I beg of You, if You look kindly on me, and let me not see Your anger.”
Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday all of us are brought, through the Sacred Scripture passages we have heard, to reflect on our own respective lives, and what pursuits and attention we have given to the various desires we have in life all these while. The Scripture passages today have a very clear direction and meaning, that is to remind us of our own mortality, smallness, imperfections and powerlessness precisely because of our mortality.
In the first reading today, taken from the Book of Ecclesiastes or Qoheleth, we heard about the author mentioned about the many meaninglessness in life, in the gaining of knowledge, in the toiling and hard labour in work and efforts for sustenance and perhaps for income and money, among many others. It is meaningless not because those things themselves are meaningless, but rather, we have to understand that the author focused on the impulsive and often overly addictive pursuits for these things among us mankind.
These are the things that are presented very well and clearly by the Lord Jesus in our Gospel passage today, in which He spoke of the parable of the rich man and his wealth to His disciples and to the people who were gathered before Him. It stemmed from a question and request from a man who wanted the Lord to persuade and to advice his brother to share with him the family inheritance, a common issue that often face the members of our many families.
From what we have briefly heard being described in the Gospel passage, we can assume quite well that the man was having a dispute with regards to the family inheritance and possessions with his brother. This is something that we must have heard a lot of times, in families and communities all around us, and even perhaps in our own families, how the members of the family bicker, disagree and even fight against one another disputing and seeking, desiring and wanting a part of the family possessions, wealth and other things.
Thus, the Lord made it clear to the people, making use of the opportunity as a teachable lesson both for the man who asked Him to advice his brother, as well as the rest of the people and His disciples that seeking, desiring and wanting the worldly possessions and goods, wealth and other forms of worldly satisfaction is truly not worth what we may think they are, just as the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes mentioned earlier.
In the parable the Lord told the people, we heard of a rich man who was very proud of his achievements and wealth, his many granaries and riches stored in those granaries, and how he planned and thought a lot on how he could enlarge the granaries he had so that he could store even more of the grains harvested from his vast tracts of rich and fertile farmlands. He has planned in his mind how he wanted to gain even more riches and enjoy the many more years of living with all those riches.
And the Lord through that parable showed His people how futile their searches and many ambitions for power, worldly glory, wealth, fame and glamour are, as the rich man was destined to die that very night, and none of his numerous wealth and plentiful stored riches could have saved him from the inevitable. No one can escape death, and death is a certainty that we mankind have to face, and when we die, nothing that we gain for ourselves in this world, all the worldly treasures and goods will be brought with us through death.
Unfortunately, brothers and sisters in Christ, this is exactly what many of us have been doing wrongly all these while. We have put our focus, effort and attention so much on trying to gather for ourselves all these worldly goods, glories and achievements that we become intoxicated and addicted to them, and in our endless pursuits for these things, we end up forgetting why we live in this world and the reason for our existence all these while.
In our second reading passage today, St. Paul in his Epistle to the Church and the faithful people of God in the city of Colossae, he spoke of what each and every one of us as Christians are called to do in our lives, and that is to seek for greater things in Christ, and not to seek the false treasures and the futile pursuits for worldly glory in this world. He exhorted the people of God to follow the Lord faithfully, and to reject all sorts of immorality, sin and the many temptations being present in this world.
That is why today, all of us having heard and listened to the words of the Scripture passages that strongly urged and reminded us to seek the true treasures of our life, we are now called to reflect on how we have lived our lives thus far and how much progress we have actually made in trying to find this true treasure of our life. Have we been acting like that rich man who cared for nothing but for the greater glorification of himself and for the greater wealth of his own?
On this day we are called to reflect on how futile is the pursuit of wealth, glory, fame, worldly pleasures and all sorts of excesses of this world. And as I mentioned earlier in this discourse, we must be careful and not misunderstand that we must abandon everything that is worldly and all sorts of worldly possessions, wealth or anything related to this world. We must understand that we do still need to have these things, but it is just that we cannot be overly obsessed and preoccupied with them as what many of us often do.
While we live in this world, we should be smart and make good use of whatever resources and blessings that God has given each and every one of us. However, we must not allow these things to overcome us and rule over us instead. We make use of them and not they make use of us instead. Unfortunately, it is our weak human nature and predisposition to desire and greed that often brought us to fall into sin.
We are easily tempted by the many worldly glory, temptations, pleasures and all the things that cause us to forget about God and our true treasure in life. We seek for glory and happiness in this world that do not truly last, and often we are not able to overcome our attachment, and as a result, we fail to notice how we should go forward in life seeking true happiness and joy, and instead, are trapped in the endless cycles of desire.
We have to strive to look beyond the meaninglessness of our endless pursuits of power, glory, fame and all those things that often prevent us from finding our true treasure, which is nothing less than God, our true treasure and destination, the only One Who is capable of granting us true happiness and joy that is beyond anything else that this world can give us. For no matter how wonderful, joyful or great all the treasures of this world can be, and how good they may seem to be, they will not last.
In fact, much sufferings present in this world are caused by our own desire for all these things, and how our conflicting desires with one another cause us to bicker, to fight, and to exploit those who are weaker than us, so that we can gain for ourselves more of what we desire and want. And we can never be truly happy since whatever we do to gain all those desires, we will have inadvertently or even consciously caused unhappiness or suffering all around us.
As the Scripture says, ‘What does it gain for us to gain the entire world and yet lose our soul?’, we are reminded today that we must resist the temptations of false pleasures and happiness in this world. Satan, our great enemy knows this very well, and he is doing whatever he can in order to tempt us and to bring us to our downfall, by showing us all sorts of false pleasures in life that seem to be better, more enjoyable and more wonderful than the path leading towards God and His salvation.
Are we able then to make good use of whatever blessings and worldly goodness God has given us, but without being overcome by our desires and greed? Are we able to grow deeper in our relationship with God, and in our love for Him so that despite all those temptations and challenges we will have to face, we will always remain steadfast in faith and stay faithful in all things?
May the Lord guide us all and may He empower each and every one of us to live faithfully in His presence from now on, if we have not done so. May He continue to love us and bless all of our good works, that we may come to seek the true treasure and happiness in our lives, that lies in God alone, in being with Him and enjoying forever the glorious inheritance and blissful life He has promised us all. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Luke 12 : 13-21
At that time, someone in the crowd spoke to Jesus, “Master, tell my brother to share with me the family inheritance.” He replied, “My friend, who has appointed Me as your Judge or your Attorney?” Then Jesus said to the people, “Be on your guard and avoid every kind of greed, for even though you have many possessions, it is not that which gives you life.”
And Jesus continued, “There was a rich man, and his land had produced a good harvest. He thought, ‘What shall I do, for I am short of room to store my harvest? Alright, I know what I shall do : I will pull down my barns and I will build bigger ones, to store all this grain, which is my wealth. Then I will say to myself : My friend, you have a lot of good things put by for many years. Rest, eat, drink and enjoy yourself.'”
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be taken from you. Tell Me, who shall get all you have put aside?’ This is the lot of the one who stores up riches for himself and is not wealthy in the eyes of God.”
Liturgical Colour : Green
Colossians 3 : 1-5, 9-11
So then, if you are risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on earthly things. For you have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, Who is your life, reveals Himself, you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
Therefore, put to death what is earthly in your life, that is immorality, impurity, inordinate passions, wicked desires and greed, which is a way of worshipping idols. Do not lie to one another. You have been stripped of the old self and its way of thinking; to put on the new, which is being renewed, and is to reach perfect knowledge, and the likeness of its Creator. There is no room for distinction between Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, foreigner, slave or free, but Christ is all, and in all.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 89 : 3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and 17
You turn humans back to dust, saying, “Return, o mortals!” A thousand years in Your sight are like a day that has passed, or like a watch in the night.
You sow them in their time, a dawn they peep out. In the morning they blossom, but the flower fades and withers in the evening.
So make us know the shortness of our life, that we may gain wisdom of heart. How long will You be angry, o YHVH? Have mercy on Your servant.
Fill us at daybreak with Your goodness, that we may be glad all our days. May the sweetness of YHVH be upon us; may He prosper the work of our hands.
Alternative Psalm
Psalm 94 : 1-2, 6-9
Come, let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful sound to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before Him giving thanks, with music and songs of praise.
Come and worship; let us bow down, kneel before the Lord, our Maker. He is our God, and we His people; the flock He leads and pastures. Would that today you heard His voice!
Do not be stubborn, as at Meribah, in the desert, on that day at Massah, when your ancestors challenged Me, and they put Me to the test.
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 