13th Week of Ordinary Time

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Tuesday, 3 July 2018 : Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, one of the Twelve Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ, also known as St. Thomas Didymus or St. Thomas the Twin. St. Thomas was well remembered in the Gospels as the Apostle who doubted the Lord Jesus on more than one occasion. The first time was when the Lord Jesus wanted to go to Jerusalem again after the chief priests and the Pharisees had sought out to arrest Him, and St. Thomas sarcastically remarked that indeed, the Apostles and disciples should all follow the Lord Jesus, to their own deaths.

And then, on the more well-remembered occasion, as we heard in our Gospel passage today, St. Thomas refused to believe that the Lord Jesus had appeared to them after He has risen from the dead. He adamantly and stubbornly said that unless he was able to tangibly prove that the Lord did indeed exist in the flesh and body, then he would not believe in Him.

When the Lord Jesus appeared in person before St. Thomas and the other disciples, showing the truth of His resurrection from the dead, and even challenging him to do what he had said he would do, that is to put his fingers into the wounds made by the nails on His hands and feet, St. Thomas was dumbfounded, and on his knees, acknowledged with faith, that it was indeed the Lord risen from the dead, his Lord and Master.

Today, all of us reflect on this stubbornness and lack of faith which St. Thomas had exhibited in his life. Now, we ought to look at our own lives, and evaluate whether we have also followed in the examples shown by St. Thomas in his lack of faith, doubt and refusal to believe in the Lord’s truth. Have we also doubted the Lord and His love, or complained that God has not been there for us?

This is something that many of us commonly said, when we were disappointed or even angry at God, for we often wrongly thought that God refused to listen to our prayers, or that He did not listen to our prayers. Then we ended up even doubting whether God was really present. We failed to realise that, first of all, our prayers are not means for us to demand that God must do something for us. Instead, prayer is truly a way for us to know what is God’s will for us.

Let us now take a look at the first reading passage we heard today, from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Church and the faithful in Ephesus. In that passage, we heard about the comparison which St. Paul made between our body and physical existence with the Temple and House of God. In another occasion in his Epistle, St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, reminding them that they are the Temple of the Holy Spirit.

And hence, all of us are the Temples of God’s Holy Presence, especially because we have received the Lord Himself, in His Body and Blood, His Real Presence through the Eucharist. And God is always present in us, for all of us are created by God, and God is present in His Spirit inside each and every one of us. The Lord Jesus once walked physically with His disciples on this world, but now that after He had ascended into heaven, we can no longer see Him physically, but many of us did not realise that He is still always present, with us and within us. That is why we also end up like how St. Thomas was initially.

And why is that so? That is because in our daily lives, we are often so busy with our various preoccupations, and all sorts of noises coming from the world, from our career, from our relationships and merrymaking, from our pursuits of wealth, power, influence, fame and all sorts of other worldly enjoyments. We are simply too distracted and too preoccupied with all the noises of the world, that we were not able to recognise the Lord speaking deep within our hearts.

Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, it is up to us whether we want to remain in this state, or whether we want to follow in the footsteps of St. Thomas the Apostle, who went on his knees, and acknowledged that the Lord was there, his God, Master and Saviour, with all of his hearts, despite the long time it took for him to recognise that fact. The same applies to us as well, brethren, as it may also take us a long time before we recognise this truth, but eventually, we must strive towards this state of faith.

In the end, St. Thomas would go on to preach the Good News and wholeheartedly devoted himself to the cause of the Lord. There was no longer doubt that was once filling his heart and mind. He went on to many places, especially to India, where he preached the faith and converted quite a number among the local populace, who were known thenceforth as ‘St. Thomas Christians’, descendants of which are still present today in parts of India, holding faithfully to the truth in God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us ought to follow in the footsteps of St. Thomas, in the journey of faith, and the dedication which he had, that he persevered through all the challenges and the oppositions, to accept martyrdom while defending his faith in God. We have seen how he was transformed from someone who doubted and lacked faith into a true servant of God. The same should also happen to us all.

Let us all therefore seek the Lord from now on, with all of our hearts, devoting our time, effort and attention to serve Him. And we should hence open our hearts and minds to the Lord, by quieting ourselves down and spending more time with God through prayer. Let us do this, brothers and sisters, deepening our relationship with Our God, that we may truly, indeed, be able to follow in the footsteps of the Holy Apostles, in our ever increasing devotion and love to God and to our fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord. May God be with us all, and bless us all in our endeavours. Amen.

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Tuesday, 3 July 2018 : Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

John 20 : 24-29

At that time, Thomas, the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with the other Eleven when Jesus came. The other disciples told Him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he replied, “Until I have seen in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in His side, I will not believe.”

Eight days later, the disciples were again inside the house and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you!” Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see My hands; stretch out your hand, and put it into My side. Do not continue in your unbelief, but believe!”

Thomas said, “You are my Lord and my God.” Jesus replied, “You believe because you see Me, do you not? Happy are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

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Tuesday, 3 July 2018 : Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Psalm 116 : 1, 2

Alleluia! Praise YHVH, all you nations; all you peoples, praise Him.

How great is His love for us! His faithfulness lasts forever.

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Tuesday, 3 July 2018 : Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Ephesians 2 : 19-22

Now, you are no longer strangers or guests, but fellow citizens of the holy people : you are of the household of God. You are the house, whose foundations are the Apostles and prophets, and whose cornerstone is Christ Jesus.

In Him, the whole structure is joined together, and rises, to be a holy Temple, in the Lord. In Him, you, too, are being built, to become the spiritual Sanctuary of God.

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Monday, 2 July 2018 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, we heard how God reminded Israel, through His prophet Amos, of how He has blessed His people and helped them throughout the ages, protecting them from their enemies and guiding them through their difficult years. Yet, they disobeyed Him and did all sorts of things that are sinful and abhorrent to Him. It is no surprise that God was angry at His people.

After all, they have abandoned Him to worship pagan idols and gods, all of which have no role whatsoever in the history and life of the Israelites, unlike what God had done so generously for them. Instead, they refused to follow His laws and obey His commandments, and they prefer to walk in their own ways and listen to the desires of their own hearts and minds.

They committed all sorts of wicked things and sinful acts before the Lord, and they ended up falling deeper and deeper into the darkness of sin. But in the end, God still loved them and cared for them. Despite His anger against their sins and wickedness, He still loved them for He created them to be His children. And that was why, He sent them prophets and messengers, like the prophet Amos, to remind them of His love, and to call them to repent and turn away from their sins.

And to this end, in order to save His people, He sent all of us, the ultimate deliverer and Saviour, in Jesus Christ, His Son, Whom He sent into this world, to bring forth the truth and the Good News of His salvation to all of us. In the Gospel passage today, we heard the Lord Jesus teaching and working among the people, and a teacher of the Law came to Him and said that he would follow Him wherever He went.

This is what the Lord Jesus also wants from us, that each and every one of us come fo follow Him and walk in His ways. But as He also mentioned in the Gospel passage to the disciple who hesitated because he wanted to bury his father first, He called them to a life of total commitment and obedience to the will of God. And this is what each and every one of us as Christians should also be doing in our own lives.

What does this mean, brothers and sisters in Christ? It means that all of us as Christians must truly be Christ-centric in our lives, in our every actions and deeds, so that Christ is always at the centre and is the focus of our lives. For the people of Israel in the past, God was not at the centre of their lives, and that is why, they easily forgot about God and the love which He had shown them, for so many years.

And it means that as Christians, all of us must be wholly oriented towards the Lord, in every aspects of our lives, so that we may truly have Him as the direction for our lives, and we may be internally oriented towards Him, in our every actions and deeds, in our every words and in every moments we interact with one another. This is very important for each one of us as Christians.

Let us keep this in mind, as we carry on with our lives. Let us all draw closer to God, and do our best, in whatever way we can, in order to serve the Lord with greater zeal and with greater purpose, abandoning our past sinfulness and wickedness, and seek the Lord with a contrite heart, desiring His love, mercy and forgiveness. May the Lord bless us all and remain with us throughout this journey. Amen.

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Monday, 2 July 2018 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Matthew 8 : 18-22

At that time, when Jesus saw the crowd pressing around Him, He gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. A teacher of the Law approached Him; and said, “Master, I will follow You wherever You go.”

Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Another disciple said to Him, “Lord, let me go and bury my father first.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their dead.”

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Monday, 2 July 2018 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 49 : 16bc-17, 18-19, 20-21, 22-23

What right have you to mouth My laws, or to talk about My covenant? You hate My commands and cast My words behind you.

You join a thief when you meet one; you keep company with adulterers. You have a mouth of evil and a deceitful tongue.

You speak ill of your brother, and slander your own mother’s son. Because I was silent while you did these things, you thought I was like you. But now I rebuke you and make this charge against you.

Give this a thought, you, who forget God; lest I tear you to pieces with no one to help you. Those who give with thanks offerings honour Me, but the one who walks blamelessly, I will show him the salvation of God.

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Monday, 2 July 2018 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Amos 2 : 6-10, 13-16

YHVH says this, “Because Israel has sinned, not once but three times; and even more, I will not relent; They sell the just for money and the needy for a pair of sandals; they tread on the head of the poor and trample them upon the dust of the earth, while they silence the right of the afflicted; a man and his father go to the same woman to profane My Holy Name; they stretch out upon garments taken in pledge, beside every altar; they take the wine of those they swindle and are drunk in the House of their God.”

“It was I Who destroyed the Amorites before them, whose height was like the height of the cedar; a people as sturdy as an oak. I destroyed their fruit above and their roots below. It was I Who brought you up from the land of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness to take possession of the land of the Amorites.”

“Behold, I will crush you to the ground, as a cart does when it is full of sheaves. The swift shall be unable to flee and the strong man shall lose his strength. The warrior shall not save himself nor the bowman stand his ground. The swift of foot shall not escape nor the horseman save himself. Even the most stout-hearted among the warriors shall flee away naked on that day,” says YHVH.

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Sunday, 1 July 2018 : Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday, we listened to the Scriptures telling us first of all from the Book of Wisdom, on how God was all good, and had every good intentions, including when He created us mankind. He did not intend for us to be created and then perish or be destroyed. Yet, how come is it that, then something like hell and eternal damnation exist?

Hell and eternal damnation in it did not come from God, and it was not because God wanted to punish or condemn us that many of us mankind ended up falling into hell. Rather, hell, in truth, is the state of total and complete separation from the love and grace of God. Hell is the product of our own sins and disobedience, which caused us to be separated from God. And in time, when we continue to sin and refuse to turn away from those sins, we fall into hell.

Hell is the product of constant and conscious rejection of God’s generous mercy, which He continuously offers us, without end, to the moment when we draw our last breath and meet death at the end of our earthly journey. That is when we will meet our particular judgment, every single one of us, who will be judged to go to heaven, or to purgatory, or to hell based on what our lives had been before God.

For those who have disobeyed the Lord, and refused His love and mercy, an eternity in hell is likely to be the fate awaiting the souls condemned to it. The Lord did not want to make us to suffer that fate, but our own pride, ego, greed, all of the obstacles and temptations that made us fall, caused us to sin, and when the sins were repeated and grew in number, our own folly led us into hell.

Those who are righteous shall enter into heaven, by God’s judgement, while those who are still burdened by some taints of sin will go to purgatory, where by the teachings of our faith we believe that the souls of the virtuous will be purified from the taints of their sins, and will then be worthy, in good time, to rejoice and be reunited fully with God for eternity.

Ultimately, after we have discussed about what is to happen after we encounter death, all of us have to realise that while our earthly lives and existence are limited and temporary in nature, but our souls are eternal. Naturally, we want ourselves to be blessed by God and enjoy forever the gift and the grace which God had prepared for all of those who remain faithful to Him.

However, we have been hindered because of our sins, as mentioned earlier. Sin is a terrible corruption of our heart, mind, soul and indeed, the whole being, which is a sickness that is slowly eating up on us. Normally, sin would have brought us down and would have destroyed us, but, fortunately, all of us have a great hope, which has been revealed to us, in Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour.

In the Gospel passage today, two people came to the Lord, seeking for help and assistance, seeing that nothing else could have helped them. One was the woman who had a terrible haemorrhage or bleeding issue, and the other was Jairus, the synagogue official, whose daughter was very sick and dying. Both of them came to the Lord with faith, knowing that He could cure whatever affliction they asked Him to cure.

Now, how many of us actually act in the same manner as the two of them? How many of us actually go out of our way seeking the Lord to be healed from our afflictions? How many of us humbled ourselves, recognising ourselves as sinners and as those who have fallen into sin and cast out from the grace of God? Many of us were not able to do so, because we were too proud in our hearts and too enclosed in our minds to admit that we need God and His help.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, God alone is our help and our source of salvation. He alone has the power and ability to heal us from the sickness of our soul, that is our sins. And He wanted us to be healed, just as He said, that He came into this world, looking for those who are in need of healing and conversion. But sadly, the fact is that, many of those whom the Lord has come for, rejected Him and scorned Him, as they would rather seek solace in worldly comfort rather than seeking God’s ways and truth.

As St. Paul had said in his Epistle to the Church and the faithful in the city of Corinth, the Lord had made Himself poor so that through that poverty, we may have a share in His richness. And how did He do that? It is through none other and nothing less than the ultimate sacrifice He bore for our sake, by His crucifixion, death and later on, resurrection. He has emptied Himself so completely and surrendered everything so completely, because of His infinite and great love for us.

Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, are we willing to embrace God’s love and accept the generous offer of mercy and forgiveness which He has extended freely to us? Through the cross, the Lord has given us all a new hope, the hope of healing from sin and all the wickedness and obstacles that had prevented us thus far, from reaching out to the Lord and His salvation.

May the Lord awaken in our hearts, the spirit of humility and the desire to love Him, so that each and every one of us may come to be drawn by His everlasting mercy, compassion and tender love. May He continue to guide us in our journey, so that all of us will eventually find our way to His salvation, and receive from Him the crown of everlasting glory, having been healed from the corruption of our sins. May God bless us all, and all of our endeavours, now and always. Amen.

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Sunday, 1 July 2018 : Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Mark 5 : 21-43

At that time, Jesus then crossed to the other side of the lake; and while He was still on the shore, a large crowd gathered around Him. Jairus, an official of the synagogue, came up and, seeing Jesus, threw himself at His feet; and begged Him earnestly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay Your hands on her, so that she may get well and live.”

Jesus went with him, and many people followed, pressing around Him. Among the crowd was a woman who had suffered from bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a lot at the hands of many doctors and had spent everything she had, but instead of getting better, she was worse. Because she had heard about Jesus, this woman came up behind Him and touched His cloak, thinking, “If I just touch His clothing, I shall get well.”

Her flow of blood dried up at once, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her complaint. But Jesus was conscious that healing power had gone out from Him, so He turned around in the crowd, and asked, “Who touched My clothes?” His disciples answered, “You see how the people are crowding around You. Why do You ask who touched You?”

But He kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, aware of what had happened, came forward, trembling and afraid. She knelt before Him, and told Him the whole truth. Then Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be free of this illness.”

While Jesus was still speaking, some people arrived from the official’s house to inform him, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Master any further?” But Jesus ignored what they said, and told the official, “Do not fear, just believe.” And He allowed no one to follow Him except Peter, James and John, the brother of James.

When they arrived at the house, Jesus saw a great commotion, with people weeping and wailing loudly. Jesus entered, and said to them, “Why all this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but asleep.” They laughed at Him. So Jesus sent them outside, and went with the child’s father and mother and His companions into the room, where the child lay.

Taking her by the hand, He said to her, “Talitha kumi!” which means, “Little girl, get up!” The girl got up at once and began to walk around. (She was twelve years old.) The parents were amazed, greatly amazed. Jesus strictly ordered them not to let anyone know about it; and He told them to give her something to eat.

Alternative reading (shorter version)

Mark 5 : 21-24, 35b-43

At that time, Jesus then crossed to the other side of the lake; and while He was still on the shore, a large crowd gathered around Him. Jairus, an official of the synagogue, came up and, seeing Jesus, threw himself at His feet; and begged Him earnestly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay Your hands on her, so that she may get well and live.”

Jesus went with him, and many people followed, pressing around Him. Some people arrived from the official’s house to inform him, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Master any further?” But Jesus ignored what they said, and told the official, “Do not fear, just believe.” And He allowed no one to follow Him except Peter, James and John, the brother of James.

When they arrived at the house, Jesus saw a great commotion, with people weeping and wailing loudly. Jesus entered, and said to them, “Why all this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but asleep.” They laughed at Him. So Jesus sent them outside, and went with the child’s father and mother and His companions into the room, where the child lay.

Taking her by the hand, He said to her, “Talitha kumi!” which means, “Little girl, get up!” The girl got up at once and began to walk around. (She was twelve years old.) The parents were amazed, greatly amazed. Jesus strictly ordered them not to let anyone know about it; and He told them to give her something to eat.