11th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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Monday, 15 June 2020 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Matthew 5 : 38-42

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “You have heard, that it was said : An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you this : do not oppose evil with evil; if someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn and offer the other. If someone sues you in court for your shirt, give him your coat as well.”

“If someone forces you to go one mile, go two miles with him. Give when asked, and do not turn your back on anyone who wants to borrow from you.”

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Monday, 15 June 2020 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 5 : 2-3, 5-6, 7

O YHVH, listen to my words and hear my complaint, give heed to my sighs, my King and my God.

You are not a God Who delights in wickedness; evil has no place in You. The arrogant cannot stand before You. You hate all who do evil.

You destroy all who speak falsehood, who thirst for blood and live on lies; all of them YHVH detests.

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Monday, 15 June 2020 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

1 Kings 21 : 1-16

Now Naboth, a man from Jezreel, owned a vineyard just beside the palace of Ahab, king of Samaria. Ahab asked Naboth, “Give me your vineyard which is near my house that I may use it for a vegetable garden. I will give you a better vineyard in exchange. Or, if you prefer, I will pay you its price.”

But Naboth said to Ahab, “YHVH forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers.” So Ahab went home angry and sad because of what Naboth had told him, that he would not give him the inheritance of his fathers. So he lay down on his bed with his face turned toward the wall and refused to eat.”

His wife Jezebel came to him and said, “Why are you so angry that you refuse to eat?” He answered, “I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite and asked him to sell me his vineyard or to exchange it for another one in exchange; but he answered : I will not give you my vineyard.”

His wife Jezebel said to him, “Are you not king of Israel? Get up and eat and be joyful, for I will give you the vineyard of Naboth of Jezreel.” So Jezebel wrote letters using Ahab’s name and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters to the elders and important persons living near Naboth. This is what she wrote in the letters : “Declare a fast and put Naboth on trial. Get two scoundrels to accuse him in this way : ‘You have cursed God and the king.’ Then take him out and stone him to death.”

The people, the elders and the important persons who lived in his city did as Jezebel had instructed them in the letters she sent to them. They declared a fast and put Naboth on trial. The two worthless fellows came in and sat facing him, accusing Naboth before the people, “Naboth cursed God and the king!” So the people took him outside the city and stoned him to death. They then sent word to Jezebel that Naboth had been stoned and was dead.

As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, she told Ahab, “Now take possession of the vineyard of Naboth, the man of Jezreel who refused to sell it to you, for Naboth is now dead.” As soon as Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, he went down to the vineyard of Naboth and took possession of it.

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Sunday, 14 June 2020 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today all of us celebrate the great Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, also commonly known as the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, which takes place traditionally on the Thursday after the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, or in some places, to avail the celebration to more people, on the Sunday after the Trinity Sunday. And this celebration is a very important one for us, as besides the Holy Trinity, the Doctrine of the Real and Holy Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist is one of the key core tenets of our Christian faith.

Unlike the Trinitarian nature of Our God, which is acknowledged and the fundamental part of the faith for most of those who believed in God, the Real Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist has not been accepted and was rejected by quite a few segments of the people who believed in God. However, this clearly did not show the sentiment and the belief of the Church fathers and all the early Christians, all of whom believed in the true, real and living Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist.

What does this mean, brothers and sisters in Christ? It means that the bread and wine we offer at the celebration of the Holy Mass, and which the priest blesses and offers to God at the Consecration truly become the very Body and Blood of the Lord Himself, the very substance and essence of the Lord, although they may still appear to us in the form of bread and wine. This process is called Transubstantiation, in which ‘Trans’ meaning ‘change’ and ‘Substantiate’ meaning ‘substance or essence’.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the word ‘Transubstantiation’ means ‘the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of His Blood. This change is brought about in the Eucharistic Prayer through the efficacy of the word of Christ and by the action of the Holy Spirit.’ From the Catechism we can see how the Church clearly teaches to us what the Eucharist means to us all.

This means that the very matter of the bread and the wine themselves have been changed, transformed and altered into the very substance, essence and reality of the Most Precious Body, and the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the same Christ Who has offered Himself on the Cross at Calvary as a worthy Sacrifice, in atonement for our sins. In this bread and wine transformed into the Most Holy and Precious Body and Blood of the Lord, the Eucharist that we partake, we share in the same sacrifice of the Lord that day on the Cross.

That is why the Mass is more appropriately known as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, as the priest celebrant acts ‘in persona Christi’ or in the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by the authority that He Himself has given to His Apostles, and as the Mass itself is the entire same Sacrifice that the Lord had undergone, as He brought His Cross up to Calvary, be crucified and died up there for us mankind, the whole Mass represents us all living through that very same supreme Act of God’s love in saving us.

As the celebrant speaks the words of Consecration, by the power of God through the Holy Spirit, the bread and wine became the Most Precious Body and Blood of the Lord, and as the celebrant says, in the same words that the Lord Jesus had spoken on the Last Supper, ‘This is My Body, which has been given up for you’, and ‘This is the Chalice of My Blood, the Blood of the New and Eternal Covenant, which has been poured for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins’ and elevate the Sacred Specie, it was the same offering that Christ made on the Cross, offering Himself in His Body, Soul and Divinity for our salvation.

Therefore, in the Holy Communion, we receive not just mere bread and/or wine, and not just merely ‘symbol’ of the Body and the Blood of the Lord as what some have otherwise believed and convinced themselves, but in truth and reality, the Most Holy Body and Blood of our Lord Himself, in the Flesh and Blood. We may see them as the appearance of bread and wine, the taste of bread and wine, the smell of bread and wine, but in reality, the essence of it all have been transformed completely into something beyond our human capability of understanding, the Mystery of our Faith.

We believe in the Lord and in the mystery of the Transubstantiation, this most important doctrine of the Church from the very beginning and which was codified and formalised at the Fourth Council of the Lateran in the early thirteenth century, and which our brethren in the Eastern Orthodox Church also formalised on their Synod of Jerusalem five centuries later, believing that God Himself has given His own Precious and Holy Body and Blood for us to partake, to eat and drink as real food and drink, and not as something imaginary or merely symbolic, just as He highlighted it to the people in His discourse on the Bread of Life.

The Lord Jesus referred to Himself as the Bread of Life, as the True Bread from Heaven far superior to the heavenly bread manna that had been miraculously given by God to the ancestors of the Jewish people, the Israelites during their forty years journey to the Promised Land. He referred to that occasion, comparing how their ancestors died, but those who receive this new Bread of Life, that is Christ Himself, they would have eternal life through Him.

When the Lord referred to Himself as the Bread of Life, He thus also mentioned to the people that unless they eat of His Body and drink of His Blood then they would have no life and no part in Him. He also specifically mentioned that His Body is real Food, while His Blood is real Drink. He did not say that He was giving them a symbol to have or to celebrate with, but instead, doubled down on His own statement of the truth, to the point that many of His own followers left Him after this particular moment, which is ironically very similar to how some of our brethren in faith chose to abandon this same truth about the Real Presence in the Eucharist.

To those of His disciples that remained, to His Twelve Apostles, the Lord gave the power and authority on the Last Supper when He instituted the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. His commandment to them to ‘do this in the memory of Me’ is a very important mission, which the Apostles had faithfully carried out and which they passed on to all of their successors, the bishops and the priests of the Church, who have been ordained and received the same power and authority of the Lord to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

By the sharing and partaking of the Body and Blood of the Lord therefore we have this Holy and Sacred Communion in the Church, which then makes up the Body of Christ. For in sharing the same Body and Blood of the Lord, we have been united through Christ and made one as a people blessed by God and brought together our common partaking of the Bread of Life, Christ our Saviour, becoming the Mystical Body of Christ, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

And from the earliest days of the Church we have very firm proofs and extensive evidences of the Real Presence from the Church fathers and leaders themselves, such as St. Ignatius of Antioch, the second Bishop of Antioch and St. Peter’s successor there, who said that ‘I desire the Bread of God, the Heavenly Bread, the Flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God… and I desire the Drink of God, namely His Blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life.’ clearly echoing the Lord’s own words that His Body and Blood were real Food and real Drink.

St. Justin the Martyr and the other early Church fathers and saints also concurred with this truth, speaking of ‘not as common bread and common drink do we receive these, but in like manner as Jesus Christ Our Saviour, having been made Flesh by the Word of God, had both Flesh and Blood for our salvation… the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word… is the Flesh and Blood of that Jesus Who was made Flesh.’ And they also warned against heretics specifically mentioning how those heretics denied that the bread and the wine were truly the Body and Blood of the Lord.

St. Ambrose of Milan, one of the Four Original Doctors of the Church and one of the most pre-eminent Church fathers of the Western Christendom also spoke firmly and strongly on this matter, saying that, ‘For that Sacrament which you receive is made what it is by the word of Christ. But if the word of Elijah had such power as to bring down fire from heaven, shall not the Word of Christ have power to change the nature of the elements?’ against all those who doubted that the bread and wine could have changed in either essence or Presence into the Real Presence of the Lord.

For God, everything is possible, and everything can be done, even turning the matter and essence, the reality of the bread and wine into that of His own Precious Body and Blood, to be given to us and to be partaken worthily for our salvation. And at the Last Supper, which St. Ambrose of Milan and St. Paul the Apostle earlier on mentioned, the Lord said, ‘This is My Body…’ and ‘This is the Chalice of My Blood’, as His own Real, Unchanging, Most Holy and Precious Body and Blood, not an imitation, not a symbol, not a representation, not even a spiritual union, but the exact same, real, complete and bloodied Sacrifice of Our Lord on the Cross at Calvary.

It was a famous occurrence of a doubter of this truth which eventually led to the institution of this great celebration of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. The famous Eucharistic Miracle of Bolsena in what is today Italy marked one among the many other great miracles of the Eucharist that from time to time reminded us of this sacred truth and reality of the Real Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist. At that occasion, according to tradition, a priest was celebrating the Eucharist while doubting the Real Presence. Immediately upon Consecration, the bread and wine changed into real Body and Blood of the Lord, with drops of Holy Blood dripping onto the corporal used to contain the Sacred Species.

With the affirmation of these miracles, including earlier miracles at Lanciano and other places, where occurrences of ‘Bleeding Body of Christ in the Eucharistic Host’ happened, the Pope instituted the Feast of Corpus Christi to celebrate and to put ever greater emphasis on this core aspect of our faith and core belief in the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist, in the Doctrine of Transubstantiation, where the bread and wine in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass are transformed, completely and fully, into the essence, matter and reality of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Our Lord.

Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, having deepened our understanding of the rich history of this one of the most important tenets of our faith, how are we then going to truly celebrate this Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Our Lord? It is not enough that we just celebrate today with a reverent and solemn celebration of the Holy Mass. In fact, all of us need to have a great change in the way we treat the Eucharist and how we have to return the respect and adoration we are to give to the Lord being truly present in the Eucharist.

A prominent person who did not believe in the Real Presence once said that, if we have truly believed in the Lord truly and really being present in the Eucharist, then in the presence of the Lord, he would have bowed down, prostrated and humbled himself in great adoration and worship. Unfortunately, this was not seen among many of us Christians. Many of us treated the Lord’s Real Presence as if He was just merely a bread to be eaten, or worse still, as a burden because we treat going to Mass as a heavy burden of obligation for us to fulfil.

How many of us have received the Lord with faith and worthily receive His Body and Blood into our own bodies, into our hearts and into our very own beings? There is a great need for us to restore the reverence and proper worship and adoration we ought to give to the Lord, His Real Presence in the Eucharist, and it has to begin with us and from us. We must have a great and profound change on how we view the Holy Mass, to make it the most important part of our lives and to centre ourselves and our existence on the Lord.

And having received the Lord Himself unto us, as St. Paul said in his Epistle to the Church and the faithful in Corinth, we have become the Temples of the Holy Spirit, the very Temple of God present in the flesh, in our very own bodies. Here we have the very best and perfect Temples of His Presence, more perfect and better than the Temples built by Solomon and king Herod. But are we then treating our bodies and our beings as worthy dwelling place of Our Lord? Or have we instead defiled them with our disobedience, wickedness and sins?

Today therefore, on this Solemnity of Corpus Christi, let us all renew the zeal and faith which all of us must have in the Real Presence in the Eucharist, the Lord’s own Most Holy Body and Blood which He has given us all for our salvation through the hands of His bishops and priests. Let us strive to be worthy to receive His Most Holy Body and Blood into ourselves, and be grateful for the loving Sacrifice He has gone through for us, by living a most virtuous and exemplary Christian life from now on.

O Sacrament most Holy, o Sacrament Divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine! O Christ, the Bread of Life, given freely as real Food for our salvation, Your Most Holy Body and Blood, flowing down from the Cross in atonement for our sins, have mercy on us sinners, and by our worthy partaking in this most Sacred Communion, unite us all as the One Body of Christ, the Church, and lead us all into eternal life. Amen.

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Sunday, 14 June 2020 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 6 : 51-58

Jesus said to His disciples and to the people, “I am the Living Bread from heaven; whoever eats of this Bread will live forever. The Bread I shall give is My Flesh, and I will give it for the life of the world.”

The Jews were arguing among themselves, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?” So Jesus replied, “Truly, I say to you, if you do not eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you have no life in you. The one who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood lives eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

“My Flesh is really food, and My Blood is truly drink. Those who eat My Flesh and drink My Blood, live in Me, and I in them. Just as the Father, Who is Life, sent Me, and I have life from the Father, so whoever eats Me will have life from Me. This is the Bread from heaven; not like that of your ancestors, who ate and later died. Those who eat this Bread will live forever.”

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Sunday, 14 June 2020 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 Corinthians 10 : 16-17

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a communion with the Blood of Christ? And the bread that we break, is it not a communion with the Body of Christ?

The bread is one, and so we, though many, form one body, sharing the one bread.

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Sunday, 14 June 2020 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 147 : 12-13, 14-15, 19-20

Exalt YHVH, o Jerusalem; praise your God, o Zion! For He strengthens the bars of your gates and blesses your children within you.

He grants peace on your borders and feeds you with the finest grain. He sends His command to the earth and swiftly runs His word.

It is He, Who tells Jacob His words; His laws and decrees, to Israel. This, He has not done for other nations, so His laws remain unknown to them. Alleluia!

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Sunday, 14 June 2020 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Deuteronomy 8 : 2-3, 14b-16a

Remember how YHVH, your God, brought you through the desert for forty years. He humbled you, to test you and know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. He made you experience want, He made you experience hunger, but He gave you manna to eat which neither you nor your fathers had known, to show you that one does not live on bread alone, but also by everything that comes from the mouth of God.

Do not forget YHVH, your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of slavery. It is He Who has led you across this great and terrible desert, full of fiery serpents and scorpions, an arid land where there is no water. But for you He made water gush forth from the hardest rock. And He fed you in the desert with manna which your fathers did not know.

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Saturday, 22 June 2019 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Paulinus of Nola, Bishop, St. John Fisher, Bishop and Martyr, and St. Thomas More, Martyr (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops) or Red (Martyrs)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of the Scripture speaking to us all about the need for us to trust not in our own human power, abilities, greatness or achievements, but rather, in the power and providence of God. Many of us have not trusted enough in God and prefer rather to take matter into our own hands, being concerned and worried about our daily living and focusing on all the wrong things.

In our first reading today we listened to the Epistle that St. Paul wrote to the Church and to the faithful in Corinth, that if one were to boast, it would be best for that person not to boast of his own greatness or power, but rather, of the greatness and glory of God. St. Paul himself gave an example, through his own tireless ministry and hard work among the people he did not glorify himself or his own achievements, in the many miracles he performed and in the many things he accomplished, but he continued to glorify and praise God.

Of course, St. Paul also mentioned the temptations and difficulties he faced, the temptations of pride and greed in his heart. After all, he was still just a human being, prone to being tempted by all these wicked and negative feelings, emotions and desires just as we are. But he did not let those things to become obstacles in the way of his faith. On the contrary, he remained firmly convinced and strongly dedicated in his faith in God.

He trusted the Lord rather than his own power, for in the end, none of the means of this world, be it power, money, prestige, fame, glory or whatever it is that we mankind often seek and desire in this world, could have gained him anything that is true and lasting. In our Gospel passage today, this was exactly what the Lord mentioned to His disciples, when He revealed the folly of those who worry and are concerned about their daily needs and wants, be it for things to eat or for things to wear.

And today we celebrate the feast of a few saints, whose lives have been exemplary and filled with great examples of dedication and commitment to God. They are St. Paulinus of Nola, St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More. All of them put their trust in God and believed firmly in the providence and the power of God rather than in their own human power and capabilities. St. Paulinus of Nola was a bishop and one of the influential leaders of the Church in the final days of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, while St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More are the two saints and martyrs of the English Reformation and persecution.

St. Paulinus of Nola was remembered for his dedication to the Lord and for his renunciation of wealth and worldly glory for asceticism and simple living, having been born as a senatorial class member and a privileged noble. He was once an influential governor of the province in Northern Italy and a trusted confidant of the Roman Emperor, before an occasion when after he has been baptised as a Christian and losing his child, he chose to withdraw from the world.

Eventually he became a bishop and served the faithful in the region of Nola, dedicating himself for over twenty years to the flock he had been entrusted with, spending his money, time, energy and effort for the good of the faithful and the Church there. St. Paulinus of Nola truly showed us all what it means to be a faithful Christian, trusting completely in God and doing everything to glorify God and not himself.

And today we also then celebrate the feast of two martyr saints of the English Reformation, the famous St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher. St. Thomas More was the Chancellor and right-hand man to King Henry VIII, the one who unilaterally initiated the English Reformation due to his insistence to remarry another woman despite still being legally and lawfully married to his Queen, and thus separating the English Church from the Universal Church.

St. John Fisher meanwhile was one of the influential leaders of the Church in the Kingdom of England, as the Bishop of Rochester and a close confidant of King Henry VIII’s father. He was also the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and tutor to King Henry VIII. It was widely told that King Henry VIII’s highly acclaimed treatise ‘Assertio Septem Sacramentorum’ or the ‘Defence of the Seven Sacraments’ against the heresies of Protestantism was actually written by St. John Fisher.

Both St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher were strong opponents of the King’s efforts to remarry another woman according to his desires, and worked very hard to resolve the issue and preventing the rupture in Christendom due to the king’s continued insistence to follow his will. And when the King decided to break away the relationship and Communion with the Universal Church of Rome, the two men remained steadfast in their dedication to the true Church.

Despite the challenges, the persuasions, the coercions and pressures for them to abandon their steadfastness to their faith and to obey instead the demands of the King, amidst the promises that they would continue to enjoy the favour of the King and all sorts of good things and worldly goodness they had thus enjoyed then and more, should they abandon their opposition to the King. But they remained firm in their faith, and as such, died as holy martyrs of the faith.

Through all the examples shown by these great saints, surely all of us should be inspired to live as better Christians, more and more devoted to the Lord, and putting Him above all else in our lives. Let us all not worry about worldly things and concerns, things that are not permanent and things that cannot bring real happiness to us in the first place. Let us turn to God from now on, inspired by the good examples of His holy servants, our holy predecessors from now on. Amen.

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Saturday, 22 June 2019 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Paulinus of Nola, Bishop, St. John Fisher, Bishop and Martyr, and St. Thomas More, Martyr (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops) or Red (Martyrs)

Matthew 6 : 24-34

At that time, Jesus said to the people, “No one can serve two masters, for he will either hate one and love the other; or he will be loyal to the first and look down on the second. You cannot, at the same time, serve God and money.”

Therefore, I tell you, not to be worried about food and drink for yourself, or about clothes for your body. Is not life more important than food; and is not the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow, they do not harvest, and do not store food in barns; and yet, your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more worthy than they are?”

“Can any of you add a day to your life by worrying about it? Why are you so worried about your clothes? Look at how the flowers in the fields grow. They do not toil or spin. But I tell you, that not even Solomon, in all his glory, was clothed like one of these. If God so clothes the grass in the field, which blooms today and is to be burnt in an oven tomorrow, how much more will He clothe you? What little faith you have!”

“Do not worry, and say : What are we going to eat? What are we going to drink? or : What shall we wear? The pagans busy themselves with such things; but your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. Set your heart, first, on the kingdom and righteousness of God; and all these things will also be given to you. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”