17th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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Tuesday, 31 July 2018 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Priest (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Matthew 13 : 36-43

At that time, Jesus sent the crowds away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” Jesus answered them, “The One Who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world; the good seed are the people of the kingdom; the weeds are those who follow the evil one. The enemy who sows the weeds is the devil; the harvest is the end of time, and the workers are the Angels.”

“Just as the weeds are pulled up and burnt in the fire, so will it be at the end of time. The Son of Man will send His Angels, and they will weed out of His kingdom all that is scandalous and all who do evil. And these will be thrown into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the just will shine, like the sun, in the kingdom of their Father. If you have ears, then hear.”

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Tuesday, 31 July 2018 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Priest (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 78 : 8, 9, 11, 13

Do not remember against us the sins of our fathers. Let Your compassion hurry to us, for we have been brought very low.

Help us, God, our Saviour, for the glory of Your Name; forgive us for the sake of Your Name.

Listen to the groans of the prisoners; by the strength of Your arm, deliver those doomed to die.

Then we, Your people, the flock of Your pasture, will thank You forever. We will recount Your praise from generation to generation.

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Tuesday, 31 July 2018 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Priest (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Jeremiah 14 : 17-22

This you will say to them : Let my eyes shed tears night and day without ceasing! For a great wound has the virgin daughter of my people been wounded, a most grievous wound. If I go into the country, I see those slain by the sword. If I enter the city I see the ravages of famine. For the prophet and the priest did not understand what was happening in the land.

Have You then rejected Judah forever? Do You abhor Zion? Why have You wounded us and left us with no hope of recovery? We hoped for salvation but received nothing good; we waited for healing, but terror came! YHVH, we know our wickedness and that of our ancestors, and the times we have sinned against You.

For Your Name’s sake do not despise us; do not dishonour the throne of Your glory. Remember us. Do not break Your Covenant with us! Among the worthless idols of the nations, are there any who can bring rain, or make the skies send showers? Only in You, YHVH our God, do we hope, for it is You Who do all this.

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Monday, 30 July 2018 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we listened to the word of God in the Scriptures, first beginning with the anger which God had shown His people, those living in the kingdom of Judah, for their refusal to listen to Him and their hardened hearts and minds, which could not allow them to love their God. They had instead persecuted the prophets and killed them, and continued to live in their sinful state.

God was angry with His people because despite all the good things and love He had done to them, they had turned away from Him, abandoned Him and forgot about Him, and threw away all of His laws and commandments. And despite all the miraculous deeds and powers He had shown them, they had instead chosen to put their trust in idols made from wood, stone and gold.

But the Lord did not give up on His people, for He still loved them dearly, each and every one of them. And that is why He sent us all Jesus, His own beloved Son, to be the One through Whom He would bring about salvation to all of His people. And in the Gospel today, all of us heard Him speaking to the people and to His disciples, about the kingdom of heaven, which has come into this world.

The Lord used the parable of the mustard seed to teach the people about the coming of God’s kingdom, telling them what they need to do in order to be faithful and to be committed to God’s ways. He used the mustard seed to show them the example of what the coming of the kingdom of God means to the people who are willing to embrace God and His kingdom.

The mustard seed is a very small seed, one that is insignificant and often overlooked. However, as the Lord mentioned and as those who have grown mustard greens before, we will realise just how wrong our perception can be, as mustard seed when grown into a full-fledged plant, is a large and bountiful tree filled with many branches and leaves. It is a wonderful and often overlooked transformation that accompanied a mustard seed’s growth.

Then the Lord Jesus also told the story of a person who placed three measures of flour and mixed them together with some yeast. The yeast is a crucial component in this process, as without yeast, the flour and mixture will just remain as it is. But with the yeast, as all those who have used them to make bread should know, the flour and mixture will rise as the yeast use the flour material and produce gases as it ferments the bread mixture.

And that is how the ordinary flour and yeast mixture are transformed into wonderful, delicious and nourishing leavened bread. Without yeast and the right conditions, this would never have happened. And the same applies to the mustard seed, as without proper care and the right conditions, the mustard seed as with other plants, would never have grown healthy and strong into a full-fledged plant.

What is the significance of these things to us, brothers and sisters in Christ? If we look back at the despicable and shameful deeds of the people of God in the first reading passage today, and comparing that to the time of the Lord Jesus, when many of the people listened to Him and became His followers, experiencing profound and even total change in their respective lives, therefore, we can see how the same applies to us as well.

This means that each and every one of us must take in and make the word of God, the revelations of God’s truth, all of His laws, commandments and teachings as preserved and taught to us through the Church, as the centre of our lives. And that is how we can grow in our faith and in our dedication to God. Our lives will surely experience change and transformation by God performing His work in us and through us.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we also celebrate the feast of St. Peter Chrysologus, a renowned orator and teacher of the faith, who was also a great bishop and committed servant of God. St. Peter Chrysologus was known as such, as ‘Chrysologus’, the Golden-Worded due to his great charism in his homilies, through which he explained in great clarity and detail the meaning and importance of the Word of God to the people.

Many people at that time adhered to various versions of the teachings of faith, even those which were deemed as heresies and improper. But St. Peter Chrysologus patiently and devoutly taught the true teachings of the faith through his carefully and wisely worded homilies and preachings, by which many of the people came to repentance because they listened to him and came to regret their sinful lives.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, if this has happened before to our predecessors, surely we can also do the same with our own lives. We must not wait any longer, for if we continue to wait and continue to disobey God through sin, we may end up finding that it is too late for us, and we may end up in eternal damnation and suffering in hell. What is at stake for us, is nothing less than the fate of our eternal soul.

Therefore, let us all, from now on, put God as the priority and the focus of our life and our existence, and do our very best to serve Him, resisting the temptation to sin and always listening to His will. Let us all deepen our spirituality and prayerful relationship with God, that each and every one of us may draw ever closer to God, our loving Father. May God bless us all. Amen.

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Monday, 30 July 2018 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Matthew 13 : 31-35

At that time, Jesus offered His disciples another parable : “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is smaller than all other seeds, but once it is fully grown, it is bigger than any garden plant; like a tree, the birds come and rest in its branches.”

He told them another parable, “The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast than a woman took, and hid in three measures of flour, until the whole mass of dough began to rise.” Jesus taught all these things to the crowds by means of parables; He did not say anything to them without using a parable. This fulfilled what was spoken by the Prophet : ‘I will speak in parables. I will proclaim things kept secret since the beginning of the world.’

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Monday, 30 July 2018 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Deuteronomy 32 : 18-19, 20, 21

They have disowned the Rock Who fathered them; they have forgotten the God Who gave them birth. The Lord saw this, and in His anger rejected His sons and daughters.

He said, “I will hide My face from them and see what will become of them. They are so perverse, so unfaithful!”

“They made Me jealous with their false gods and angered Me with their idols. I will, therefore, make them envious of a foolish people, I will provoke them to anger with an empty-headed nation.”

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Monday, 30 July 2018 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Jeremiah 13 : 1-11

This is what YHVH said to me : “Go! Buy yourself a linen belt and put it around your waist; do not put it in water.” So I bought the belt as YHVH ordered and put it around my waist. The word of YHVH came to me a second time, “Take the belt you bought, the one you put around your waist, and go to the torrent Perah; hide it there in a hole in the rock.”

I went and hid it as YHVH instructed me. After many days YHVH said to me, “Go to the torrent Perah and get the belt I ordered you to hide there.” I went to the torrent and dug up the belt but it was ruined and good for nothing; and YHVH said to me, “In this way I will destroy the pride and great glory of Judah, this wicked people who refuse to heed what I say, this stubborn people who go after other gods to serve and worship them. And they shall become like this belt which is now good for nothing.”

“For just as a belt is to be bound around a man’s waist so was the people of Israel and Judah bound to Me – it is YHVH Who speaks – to be My people, My glory and My honour; but they would not listen.”

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Sunday, 29 July 2018 : Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday, we listened to the word of God in the Scriptures, from the Old and New Testament, and from the Gospel passage, all forming a common theme of God feeding His people through wondrous deeds, by which He, through the prophets and His own Son, gave them food to eat, and then, how this sharing of meal and food are very symbolic to all of us as Christians.

In the first reading today, we heard from the Book of Kings of the moment when a man brought a food offering to the man of God, Elisha, the prophet God had appointed over His people. Elisha told the man to give the bread to the people, of which there were more than a hundred of them gathered. Evidently, there were not enough bread for the man immediately said that he could not have given the bread to all the people gathered there.

But the prophet Elisha told the man to trust in the word of God, and follow what He had asked him to do through the prophet. For God would indeed provide for His people, and true enough, all of the people had enough to eat from the few pieces of bread, and sharing the bread, they had even leftovers to be gathered. This miraculous event would happen again during the time of Jesus, the famous feeding of the five thousand men mentioned in our Gospel passage today.

At that time, there were five thousand men and many more uncounted women and children who were gathered at the plain where the Lord was teaching and preaching the truth of God. They had been following Him for several days, coming from nearby and even farther away towns and cities, not carrying much if any provisions or food with them. Naturally, they would also go hungry and the Lord had pity on them.

Thus, the Lord called for food to be distributed among the people, but there were only five loaves of bread and two fishes were present, brought by a young boy. The disciples doubted, and St. Andrew asked, just as the man in the story of the prophet Elisha, if there was enough bread and food to feed the huge multitudes of the people. But the Lord reassured them, and told them to do as He said. He made them all to sit down to be ready to feed from the bread and the fishes given from His hands.

The Lord blessed the bread and the fishes, and took the bread, and broke them, and giving them to His disciples, to be distributed to the people. From there, all of the people ate until they were all fully satisfied, and yet, still twelve full baskets of bread could be gathered in the end. This was indeed another seemingly impossible feat, similar to what the prophet Elisha had performed. But God’s grace was truly with His people, and God Himself, through His Son, Jesus, performed that before the people.

Then, if we read on to our second reading today, taken from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Church and the faithful in the city of Ephesus, what we have heard from the story of the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the food that was blessed by God, all of us can see a new significance and importance to what we have just heard. In fact, this is part of the central tenet of our faith and what it means for us to be Christians, as members of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

In that Epistle, St. Paul wrote about the faithful being part of one Body and having faith in one God. This is what it means for all of us Christians to belong to the Church of God, as St. Paul further elaborated in his Epistle to the Corinthians, mentioning that ‘you are Christ’s Body, and you are individually members of this Body.’ He was referring to the Church, the united body of the faithful, which together forms the Body of Christ, with Christ Himself as the Head.

All of us are united in this same Body, the Church of God, having received the same Spirit, and united by our common identity, that is the sharing of the Most Precious and Holy Body, and Blood of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, in the Eucharist. The word Holy Communion itself refers to this sharing of the same Body and Blood of Christ, which we receive at the celebration of the Holy Mass. Only those who have been baptised as faithful and devout members of the Church can receive Holy Communion.

This is not a statement of exclusivity, but rather a reiteration of the fact that all of us who have received Holy Communion and are in the good standing of faith and in a state of grace, worthy of continuing to receive the Eucharist, are united with each other, as members of God’s Holy Church, sharing in the broken Body of Christ. And in order to fully appreciate the significance of this fact, we must link what we have heard from our first reading and Gospel passages today, with the institution of the Eucharist itself.

At the Last Supper, the Lord broke the bread and shared the bread with His disciples, and did the same with the wine, which He passed to His disciples to drink. And He said that the bread is His Body, and the wine is His Blood. At that time, the disciples have yet to understand the full meaning of these words that Christ said to them. But after the events that transpired the next day, which we celebrate every year on Good Friday, the crucifixion itself, the whole truth of the Eucharist has been made available to all of us.

For the Lord crucified on Calvary, on His cross, is the fulfilment of the breaking of the bread and the institution of the Eucharist which He had done at the Last Supper. By laying down His life and being lifted up on the cross, He offered Himself, in His Body and Blood, the bread and wine offered, both at the Last Supper and at every celebration of the Holy Mass, to God the Father, Who accepted the perfect offering of His Son, and all of us who receive this same Body and Blood of Our Lord, now becomes one Body in Him.

By partaking the Body and Blood of Our Lord, we take the Lord into ourselves, and we become united in body and spirit with Him. And it is through this union that we have united ourselves as one Church through Christ, with all of our fellow brothers and sisters in faith. And now, if we have not taken this union, that is this Holy Communion we have as good and righteous members of the Church seriously, perhaps, this is the time that we begin to do so.

What does this mean? It means that whenever we commit a grave sin, we have sundered ourselves from this union with God, and hence the Church has ruled that based on Scriptural truth and tradition of the Apostles and the Church fathers, we have to go to confession before we are to receive the Eucharist, or else, we commit an even greater sin, of ignorance of the true nature of the Eucharist, that is Our Lord Himself, present in Body and Blood.

And if the Lord Himself has come to us and is willing to enter into our lives, then should we not take our faith much more seriously from now on? Shall we not turn ourselves wholeheartedly to the Lord, Who has loved us so much, that He feeds us with not just bread as He had done with the people of Elisha’s time and the people of the time of Jesus? But with the Bread of Life Himself, the Lord Who nourishes us by His own sacrifice on the cross?

Shall we turn to Him with regret for our sins and wickedness in life, if we have done Him injustice and wrong, disobeyed His laws and precepts, and committed sins that were grave enough to separate us from this Communion which we have with our fellow brethren in the one Church of God? Shall we from now on, truly believe in all of our hearts, minds and in all of our whole beings, that we shall have complete and absolute faith in God and in His Real Presence in the Eucharist?

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all seek to preserve this unity, this sanctity present in the Church. And how do we do so? It is by living our faith with genuine dedication and commitment, every single days of our life. If we see any of our brethren falling away from the way of faith, let us all help and pray for them, that they may return to the true faith, and we ourselves have to be exemplary in our lives, or else, how can we convince others to be faithful to God?

Let us all renew our commitment to God, and let us all live our lives with greater realisation of our existence as members of God’s holy Church, united with Him and with one another, fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. May the Lord be our strength, and may He continue to guide us and empower us, daily, that despite the challenges and the temptations to sin, we will always strive to be ever worthy of God, and of this holiness we are called to be as members of God’s one Body, one Church. Amen.

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Sunday, 29 July 2018 : Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

John 6 : 1-15

At that time, Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, near Tiberias, and large crowds followed Him, because of the miraculous signs they saw, when He healed the sick. So He went up into the hills and sat down there with His disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.

Then lifting up His eyes, Jesus saw the crowds that were coming to Him, and said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread so that these people may eat?” He said this to test Philip, for He Himself knew what He was going to do. Philip answered Him, “Two hundred silver coins would not buy enough bread for each of them to have a piece.”

Then one of Jesus’ disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass there, so the people, about five thousand men, sat down. Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were seated. He did the same with the fish, and gave them as much as they wanted.

And when they had eaten enough, He told His disciples, “Gather up the pieces left over, that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with bread, that is, with pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.

When the people saw the miracle which Jesus had performed, they said, “This is really the Prophet, the One Who is to come into the world.” Jesus realised that they would come and take Him by force to make Him King; so He fled to the hills by Himself.

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Sunday, 29 July 2018 : Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Ephesians 4 : 1-6

Therefore, I, the prisoner of Christ, invite you, to live the vocation you have received. Be humble, kind, patient and bear with one another in love. Make every effort to keep among you, the unity of spirit, through bonds of peace. Let there be one body, and one Spirit, just as one hope is the goal of your calling by God. One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God, the Father of all, Who is above all, and works through all, and is in all.