12th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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Sunday, 21 June 2015 : Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, Religious (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, we heard about how Jesus with His power and authority, commanded even the wind and the waves in the storm to settle down and cease, showing His power as the Messiah and the Lord of all Creations. And He showed it to His disciples who were fearful and afraid, fearing for their lives even as the storm battered on the ship and it almost sank.

Jesus rebuked them for their lack of faith, and He mentioned to them that they should not have been afraid, had they had even the smallest amount of faith and trust in God. This reading, and all the other readings and the psalm today all sounded in tandem upon a central theme, that is the Lord as our Master and our God, who loves us and protects us from harm’s way, and rescues us from trouble.

And He leads us all as the member of His Body, the Church, in a great journey through life and through this world, in order for us to traverse it safely to our destination, that is eternal life and joy which only the Lord our God could provide. And this is symbolised by that journey that Jesus and His disciples took as they traverse the lake in a storm, and Jesus calming down that storm for them.

There are indeed plenty of symbolisms in today’s readings, particularly that of the action of Jesus on that boat that day. The Church of God, the Body of Christ, is often represented as a large ship or boat, and truly, this same interpretation applies in this case too. Jesus and His disciples represents the Church, of which Jesus, who is their Master, is like the captain of the ship, while the disciples represent us all, who are the members of the Church.

For the Body of Christ, the Church of God represents not just the buildings and the assets of the Church, but the true assets of the Church lies in its members and their unity to one another. And Jesus is the Head of the Church that is His Body, in Him we are all united as one people, and He leads us in this journey filled with difficulties and challenges, the opposition and attacks by Satan against us.

For the stormy seas, the winds and the waves represent the challenges that will surely come our way if we remain true to our faith and remain in the Church of God. Satan, who has dominion over this world, is certainly not going to let us go and escape his clutches just like that. He who had made our forefathers to fall into sin and rebel against God will do the same to us as well.

And the disciples’ reactions when they saw the storm was about to sink their ship were truly reminiscent of our own reactions as well. They feared, so we also fear too, when we encounter difficulties, when we are tempted and challenged by Satan and his forces. And this happens when we do not have faith in God or little trust in Him. We are afraid and fearful because we think that in this battle and tribulation, we are alone.

And a natural reaction is for us to abandon the ship and jump into the water. Translating this to reality means that we abandon the Church, we abandon the Lord and all of His ways, succumbing to our fear. Do you know that it is much safer to remain with the ship even though it seems that the ship is about to sink? It is better than to jump out and face myriads of uncertainties and danger outside of the ship.

The Church of God is a haven of protection from the forces of evil, and if we are faithful and remain true to the Lord through His Church, and if we anchor ourselves steadily on Him, then we will not be shaken and no forces of evil can destroy us, for the Lord is with us, and as the Head of the Church, He will steer us through all the dangers and difficulties to our eternal reward.

We should not fear evil, for God Himself showed that He has authority over all things, and by subduing the storm and the waves, He showed that even Satan and all of his might had to submit to the power and authority of God, who is the Master of all. Therefore, there is really no need for us to be afraid of him and his darkness, for God who reigns over all will ensure our safety. Do not fear those who cannot harm our eternal soul.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, therefore, from today on, can we commit ourselves anew to the Lord, and trust in Him more? God is our Leader and our Shepherd, and as long as we have Him, we should not be shaken. Yes, there will be challenges and difficulties, but these are after all part and parcel of being one of the faithful ones of the Lord. For the world and Satan who ruled over it, had rejected the Lord in the first place, and therefore they will reject us and persecute us too.

May Almighty God give us strength to walk faithfully in His ways and not to be swayed by the forces of this world. May He give us courage to maintain ourselves and composure in the face of the storms of this world. May we not be discouraged or be frightened by what Satan has employed in order to deter us and make us panic, but let us all remain firmly in our true devotion and faith to the Lord our God. May God be with us all. Amen.

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Sunday, 21 June 2015 : Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, Religious (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Mark 4 : 35-41

At that time, on the same day, when evening had come, Jesus said to His disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” So they left the crowd, and took Him away in the boat He had been sitting in, and other boats set out with Him.

Then a storm gathered and it began to blow a gale. The waves spilled over into the boat, so that it was soon filled with water. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.

They woke Him up, and said, “Master, do You not care if we drown?” And rising up, Jesus rebuked the wind, and ordered the sea, “Quiet now! Be still!” The wind dropped, and there was a great calm. Then Jesus said to them, “Why are you so frightened? Do you still have no faith?”

But they were terrified, and they said to one another, “Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey Him!”

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Sunday, 21 June 2015 : Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, Religious (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

2 Corinthians 5 : 14-17

Indeed the love of Christ holds us and we realise that if He died for all, all have died. He died for all so that those who live may live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again for them.

And so from now on, we do not regard anyone from a human point of view; and even if we once knew Christ personally, we should now regard Him in another way. For that same reason, the one who is in Christ is a new creature. For him the old things have passed away; a new world has come.

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Sunday, 21 June 2015 : Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, Religious (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 106 : 23-24, 25-26, 28-29, 30-31

Those who went to the sea in ships, merchants on the mighty waters, saw the marvels of the Lord, His wonderful deeds in the deep.

For He spoke and stirred up a storm whipping up the waves of the sea. Flung upward and plunged to the depths, they lost courage in the ordeal.

Then they cried to the Lord in anguish, and He rescued them from their distress. He stilled the storm to a gentle breeze and hushed the billows to silent waves.

How glad they were! He brought them safe and sound to the port where they were bound. Let them thank the Lord for His love and wondrous deeds for humans.

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Sunday, 21 June 2015 : Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, Religious (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Job 38 : 1, 8-11

Then YHVH answered Job out of the storm : “Who shut the sea behind closed doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling clothes; when I set its limits with doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘You will not go beyond those bounds; here is where your proud waves must halt?'”

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Sunday, 22 June 2014 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today is the day of Corpus Christi, or also known as the Solemnity of the Most Precious and Holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we receive regularly into ourselves through the Holy Eucharist, by consuming the bread and wine which had been changed completely into that of the essence of our Lord Himself.

Today we celebrate this great reality of our faith, which is indeed the central tenet and focus of our faith in God. For we believe in God who out of His great and infinite love for us, dedicated for us none other than His own Son, Jesus Christ, that through Him and His giving of Himself, we mankind who suffer from the consequences of our sins, may be free.

It is essential and most imperative that we all believe in the gift of our Lord’s own flesh and blood, which He had repeatedly uttered to His disciples, and which He offered on the Last Supper and through the cross of suffering. And it is also imperative that we believe, as instituted on the Last Supper by Jesus Himself, He had passed down the same authority He had, unto the disciples, so that all of us the faithful may also receive the same Body and Blood that nourishes and saves.

There are many those who deny this fundamental truth of our faith, because they were misguided and misled by the lies and the powers of the evil one. He tricked them into thinking that among many others, how the Lord Jesus could not have possibly offered Himself again and again every time we celebrate the Eucharist in the Mass, and yet others said that the Mass and the Eucharist are merely memorials of what happened on the Last Supper. All these are lies, brethren, the lies of the devil designed to trap us and fool us.

First of all, the Lord did not repeat again and again His ultimate sacrifice on the cross every time the priests celebrate the Holy Mass and change the bread and wine into the Precious Body and Blood of our Lord. He did not die again and again for our sake every time we have the Mass and every time the memorial of His death is read in the Eucharistic Prayer.

Those who deny the Real Presence of our Lord in the Eucharist have the exact same arguments, but they lack a fundamental and most important piece, that is, each and every Mass said by the priest, the offering of the bread and wine, are all mystically and perfectly united to the one, singular and ultimate act of love which Christ had done on the cross for us.

Yes, brethren, the Mass which our priests, bishops and all those ordained celebrate validly and with the fullness of faith are all part of that same sacrifice which Jesus made on the cross that day, on the hill of Golgotha, suffering all of our sins and wickedness so that we may live and be saved from ultimate and eternal death in sin.

That is why, as Jesus Himself had given the authority to His Apostles, and from them our priests today, the Eucharist that we celebrate in the Mass, in the form of bread and wine, are truly transformed completely in form and substance into the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Upon the words of consecration by the priest, ‘This is My Body… and this is My Blood…’ The bread is no longer bread but the Body of our Lord, and the wine is no longer wine but the Blood of our Lord.

This is the truth that many conveniently had forgotten or had chosen to forget, thinking that in relying on their human wisdom and intellect they know it better than the Lord Himself and those whom He had appointed to be His ministers. Indeed, scientifically and in a passing glance, it is hard to believe that the plain bread of the communion host and the wine in the chalice had turned into the Real Presence of our Lord, but they do, and they were transformed completely and without doubt.

God gave the ancestors of Israel, food and drink to consume while they were journeying in the desert for forty years. He gave them even food from heaven, the honey-like manna, whom they ate regularly each day of their journey. However, they do not live and die, because these bread, heavenly as they were, they were not the living bread, of which there is only one, that is Jesus Christ, the Living Bread that brings life.

The Bread of life gave of Himself that we may live, and the Wine of salvation gave of Himself so that we may be cleansed of our sins and corruptions that separated us away from God our Father. This is the truth about our faith, and the reality that we all need to reflect on, and always keep in mind. Jesus did not joke or lie when He said that those who receive His Body and Blood will live eternally, for those who receive these, such as us, has been given the grace of having the Lord Himself present within us through our reception of the Holy Eucharist.

In our world today, and even in the Church, it is sad how so many people had lapsed in their reverence for the Real Presence in the Eucharist. While this may be contributed by different factors and reasons, the lack of reverence and understanding of the faith and the Lord’s intentions, but the drop in our respect and adoration for the Real Presence in the recent years and decades had been truly unacceptable.

Why, brothers and sisters? Because the Real Presence in the Body and Blood of our Lord in the Communion we receive is the concrete and real proof of the love of God for us. That He cared so much for us and devoted Himself so greatly for our sake, that He gave us no less than His own Son, to be our Saviour, and through the giving of His own Body and Blood, He made us His own and at the same time, we make Him ours as well.

And note the term Communion that we use, when we receive the Lord in the Eucharist into ourselves. This is because through the reception of the Body and Blood of our Lord, we are made one Body and one Spirit in Christ, that is all of us who believe and who worthily receive Him into ourselves, we have been united as one Body, by the common presence of the Lord in each and all of us.

The Holy Communion is not something to be taken lightly, brothers and sisters in Christ. Just recently we know that certain so and so tried to push for the restoration of Communion to the divorced and many other cases of improper behaviour of the faith. Yet, these people, who are still fighting for their cause, even those high in position within our Church, have truly misunderstood and lacked the knowledge of the importance of the Real Presence to us.

We cannot be a people lacking in love and grace indeed, but we must be caring and at the same time, we have to highlight the importance of this tenet of the transubstantiation, that is the real conversion of the bread and wine into the essence of our Lord, as something not just a memorial or an enactment, but as part of that same sacrifice on Golgotha, which the Lord had done out of His love for us, so that we may be saved.

From now on, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us take the Eucharist seriously, and let us begin to return the proper exaltation and adoration that we have to give to our Lord, in the Real Presence. Let us believe in Him and put our trust in Him, so that we may not be lost, but be saved in His infinite mercy and love. Let us help to remind one another, that because it is the Lord and really the Lord who we receive into ourselves, that we make ourselves worthy of Him as we receive Him, lest we suffer the terrible consequences of our lack of repentance and adoration.

May God in the Most Holy Eucharist, who gave us His own Body and Blood so that we may live, strengthen our faith by dwelling within us, and also turn those who had committed sin and things wicked in His eyes, that they may always long for Him and strive to repent from their sinfulness, and once again be reunited to us as one Body and one Spirit in Christ. Amen.

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Sunday, 22 June 2014 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 6 : 51-58

Jesus said, “I am the Living Bread which has come 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 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 which came 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, 22 June 2014 : 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, 22 June 2014 : 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 the Lord, 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, 22 June 2014 : 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 man lives not on bread alone, but that all that proceeds from the mouth of God is life for man.

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.