18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

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Tuesday, 3 August 2021 : 18th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Numbers 12 : 1-13

Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married and they said, “Has YHVH only spoken through Moses? Has He not also spoken through us?” And YHVH heard.

Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than any man on the face of the earth. Yet suddenly YHVH said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, “Come out, all three of you, to the Tent of Meeting.” The three of them came out.

YHVH came down in the pillar of cloud and, standing at the door of the Tent, called Aaron and Miriam. They both went out and He said, “Listen carefully to what I say, ‘If there is a prophet among you, I reveal Myself to him in a vision and I speak to him in a dream. It is not so for My servant, Moses, My trusted steward in all My household.'”

“‘To Him I speak face to face, openly, and not in riddles, and he sees the presence of YHVH. Why then did you not fear to speak against My servant, against Moses?'” YHVH became angry with them and He departed. The cloud moved away from above the Tent and Miriam was there white as snow with leprosy. Aaron turned towards Miriam and he saw that she was leprous.

And he said to Moses, “My lord, I beg you, do not charge us with this sin that we have foolishly committed. Let her not be like the stillborn whose flesh is half-eaten when it comes from its mother’s womb.”

Then Moses cried to YHVH, “Heal her, o God, I beg of You.”

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Monday, 2 August 2021 : 18th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Eusebius of Vercelli, Bishop, and St. Peter Julian Eymard, Priest (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops and Priests)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we listened again to the love and kindness of God in providing for the needs of His people, as we heard the stories of God feeding and providing for them in the desert during their Exodus as described in our first reading today, and then the similar story in the well-known miracle of the feeding of the five thousand men and more by mere five loaves of bread and two fishes by the Lord Jesus, Who multiplied the food for them.

In that first reading passage today, we heard how the people were so ungrateful about the love and attention which the Lord had given them. They were complaining that they could not have the cucumber, leeks, garlic and other things that they used to eat in Egypt, a land that was fertile and bountiful, with all available produces, even when they were enslaved by the Egyptians and the Pharaoh. They were complaining that what they had was just the manna, which they detested.

In truth, the manna itself tasted quite fine, but the people were biased against it, despite the truth that it had been an immense honour and grace for all of them to even have any food at all throughout their journey throughout the desert. Instead of being appreciative of how the Lord had sent them manna, and not only just manna, but even flocks of birds daily to supplement their diet, as well as bountiful amount of water in the midst of the dry and lifeless desert, they chose to complain and refuse to obey the Lord.

They gave in to the temptations of their desires, their desire for good and pleasant life, a decadent and free life without restraint, which led them to wander off from the path that the Lord had shown them. They fell into sinful ways, and committed those sins against God. Moses himself, as the leader of the Israelites, was under great pressure all the time, as we can clearly see his distress as we heard in our first reading passage today.

And yet, the Lord was still ever patient with His people, providing for them ceaselessly and guiding them throughout their forty years of journey, even as He chastised and punished them for their sins, excesses and disobedience. God still loved His people very much, and this was why He showed love and compassion to them, and by feeding them as a very tangible and visible proof of this love, providing them with their essential physical and bodily needs.

As therefore we then heard in our Gospel passage today, how the Lord miraculously fed a multitude of five thousand men and many thousands of other women and children, with just five loaves of bread and two fishes, a story that many of us are surely very familiar with. God cared for all of them as they were hungry and were in need of sustenance after following Him and listening to His teachings for many days.

Through all of these, we are reminded that we are truly fortunate to have been beloved by God, Who wants to love us and care for us. Indeed, if it had not been for His love, we would have been crushed, destroyed and thrown into hellfire for our disobedience and sins. That the Lord still patiently tries, even to this day, in calling us to return to Him, sending countless prophets and messengers, and ultimately His own beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus to come and save us, are the ultimate proofs and signs of His everlasting love.

Therefore, all of us should be grateful for the Lord, and strive to do whatever we can to follow Him and obey His Law and commandments, which we can do by following the inspiring examples of the saints whose memories we recall and venerate today, namely St. Eusebius of Vercelli and St. Peter Julian Eymard. St. Eusebius of Vercelli was the bishop of Vercelli and a ardent defender of the true faith against the falsehoods of heresies which were plenty at his time. Meanwhile, St. Peter Julian Eymard was a holy and devoted priest well renowned for his piety and devotion to the Lord.

St. Eusebius of Vercelli was dedicated to his flock and endeavoured to keep them safe and faithful throughout the various challenges facing them, and he dedicated his time and effort to care for the spiritual needs of the people, living among them and showing true and genuine love for them. He endured trials and difficulties when persecutions and troubles come for the faithful, especially from those who believed in the heresies and followed the tenets of the heretics, and led to the persecution of those who remained true to the true faith. He endured exile and humiliations throughout his ministry, but those things did not deter him from his best for the sake of the Lord and His people.

St. Eusebius of Vercelli worked hard to reconcile the various divided factions of the Church, reaching out to the many people who had been feuding and been separated from one another due to misunderstandings and lack of guidance in faith. He visited many communities, and many were touched by his efforts, which brought the Lord to His people and helped many to turn away from their wrong paths and to be reconciled with their loving God and Father. His dedication and faith are things that we should be inspired to follow.

St. Peter Julian Eymard meanwhile was a faithful and dedicated priest whose devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and to Mary, the Mother of God inspired many to follow his examples, as he popularised the Forty Hours devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and established several congregations dedicated to the ministry of the Lord among the people of God. Many followed in his footsteps and committed themselves to the Lord in the same manner, abandoning their previous, sinful ways of life and embracing the path that St. Peter Julian Eymard has shown them. St. Peter Julian Eymard should be our inspiration in how we lived our own lives with faith.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore follow in the footsteps of our holy predecessors, and be worthy in all of our dealings and deeds, and do our best in all things, to glorify the Lord and His Name at all times. May God be with us all and may He bless us and all of our good endeavours, now and always, forevermore. Amen.

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Monday, 2 August 2021 : 18th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Eusebius of Vercelli, Bishop, and St. Peter Julian Eymard, Priest (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops and Priests)

Matthew 14 : 13-21

At that time, when Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist, He set out by boat for a secluded place, to be alone. But the people heard of it, and they followed Him on foot from their towns. When Jesus went ashore, He saw the crowd gathered there, and He had compassion on them. And He healed their sick.

Late in the afternoon, His disciples came to Him and said, “We are in a lonely place and it is now late. You should send these people away, so that they can go to the villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” But Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat.” They answered, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fishes.” Jesus said to them, “Bring them here to Me.”

Then He made everyone sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves and the two fishes, raised His eyes to heaven, pronounced the blessing, broke the loaves, and handed them to the disciples to distribute to the people. And they all ate, and everyone had enough; then the disciples gathered up the leftovers, filling twelve baskets. About five thousand men had eaten there, besides women and children.

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Monday, 2 August 2021 : 18th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Eusebius of Vercelli, Bishop, and St. Peter Julian Eymard, Priest (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops and Priests)

Psalm 80 : 12-13, 14-15, 16-17

But My people did not listen; Israel did not obey. So I gave them over to their stubbornness and they followed their own counsels.

If only My people would listen, if only Israel would walk in My ways, I would quickly subdue their adversaries and turn My hand against their enemies.

Those who hate YHVH would cringe before Him, and their panic would last forever. I would feed you with the finest wheat and satisfy you with honey from the rock.

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Monday, 2 August 2021 : 18th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Eusebius of Vercelli, Bishop, and St. Peter Julian Eymard, Priest (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops and Priests)

Numbers 11 : 4b-15

The Israelites wept and said, “Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish we ate without cost in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and garlic. Now our appetite is gone; there is nothing to look at, nothing but manna.”

Now the manna was like coriander seed and had the appearance of bedellium. The people went about gathering it up and then ground it between millstones or pounded it in a mortar. They boiled it in a pot and made cakes with it which tasted like cakes made with oil. As soon as dew fell at night in the camp, the manna came with it.

Moses heard the people crying, family by family at the entrance to their tent and YHVH became very angry. This displeased Moses. Then Moses said to YHVH, “Why have You treated Your servant so badly? Is it because You do not love me that You burdened me with this people? Did I conceive all these people and did I give them birth?”

“And now You want me to carry them in my bosom as a nurse carries an infant, to the land You promised on oath to their fathers? Where would I get meat for all these people, when they cry to me saying :’Give us meat that we may eat?'”

“I cannot, myself alone, carry all these people; the burden is too heavy for me. Kill me rather than treat me like this, I beg of You, if You look kindly on me, and let me not see Your anger.”

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Sunday, 1 August 2021 : Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday we listened to the words of the Lord speaking to us about the love which God has shown to all of us, His generosity and compassion towards each and every one of us that He had revealed and delivered. From the very beginning God had always loved us and cared for us, and we really ought to be thankful for everything that He had done for us, as without Him and His love for us, we should have been cast to oblivion and fall into damnation, for all the terrible things and deeds we have done.

I refer to the sins our forefathers have committed, in abandoning the Lord and in refusing to believe in Him throughout history ever since the days of Adam and Eve, when mankind first fell into sin. They had refused to follow the Lord and instead chose to listen to the devil and his lies, his false promises and allowed themselves to fall into the temptations of human desires and wants, as we heard in our first reading today with the story of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. In that story, we heard how the people of Israel ungratefully rebelled against the Lord and complained against Him for having freed them from the Egyptians.

At that time, despite having themselves seen God’s power and might repeatedly, again and again as God rained down plague after plague on the Egyptians and their Pharaoh, and saved them from the whole might of the Egyptian armies and their chariots, opening the sea before their very own eyes, the people of Israel still refused to believe in God, and still disobeyed Him and doubted Him. Again and again, God had proven His steadfastness and commitment to His people, and yet the people still complained and grumbled, saying that God was leading them to their deaths in the desert from hunger.

They had such little faith in the Lord, but the Lord still loved them all in the end. He Himself showed this as proof, as He sent to the whole nation, every day’s providence and supply, in the form of the manna, the bread from heaven, which appeared every morning without fail except on every Sabbath day. That was how the Lord provided for the people and made them to have enough each and every day for the entire forty years that they were journeying through the desert towards the Promised Land.

And not just that, He also sent them flocks of birds every evening for them to complement their food, and provided crystal clear and good tasting water to drink from the rocks, that the whole multitudes of the Israelites, God’s people, could survive throughout their journey in the desert without the need to worry about their sustenance and survival. For God has always taken care of them and took care of them all the time that they had no need to be worried at all, every single moments of their lives. Those things we have heard and which our predecessors had witnessed in the past were proofs of God’s love for us all.

In our Gospel passage today, we heard about the Lord Who spoke to His people after He had performed the wondrous miracle of the feeding of the five thousand people, in which the large number of people assembled before the Lord all were satisfied and filled with food after they were hungry for many days, having followed the Lord and hearing His teachings. He took the few loaves of bread and little fishes present, gave thanks and blessed the food, and miraculously, out of the little food available, a vast multitudes of supply came about, feeding everyone and made them fully satisfied with plenty of leftovers.

Having heard of all these stories of the Scriptures on how God provided for the need of His people, we are actually reminded that God provides and He is always caring towards us, ever knowing what we truly need in life, be it for sustenance or for guidance and help. God is always ever there, with us and journeying with us. We are all never alone, no matter what. But we must not allow ourselves to be overcome by despair and our human desires, by the temptations of worldly pleasures among other things.

That is why we have to trust in the Lord and to grow in love towards Him, He Who has given Himself so completely towards us, that by giving Himself to us, we may all be saved and gathered together from all the ends of the Earth, and find justification in God. This is what the Lord Himself referred to in our Gospel passage today, as He referred to Himself as the Bread of Life, far greater than the manna that the people of Israel once consumed during the entirety of their Exodus journey. Far greater also than the bread and fishes that the people at the time of Jesus consumed and ate until they were all full.

For the Lord Himself provided all of us with not any form of worldly sustenance, or even any provisions in the manner of the manna of the time of the Exodus. Instead, He did what was unthinkable, and seemingly impossible, that is to give us His own Most Precious Body and Blood, to be shared, shattered and broken for us all. When He spoke to the assembled multitudes as recorded in our Gospel passage today, He gave a premonition and advance revelation of what He would do for the sake of all of us, God’s beloved people.

For it was by His later suffering, rejection, torture, pain and eventually death on the Cross that the Lord had given to us His own Body and Blood, as the sacrificial offering on the Altar of the Cross, and which we then share with one another, as we partake in the Eucharist. The Eucharist, the Most Holy Eucharist, that we celebrate in the Holy Mass, is this very gift of Our Lord, as the Bread of Life, giving us all His own Body and Blood as spiritual and real sustenance.

All of us who have been blessed to receive this gift of the Bread of Life, the Communion in the Eucharist, are those who have received the assurance from the Lord that they will share in the eternal life that has been promised, as long as we partake faithfully in this sharing of the Body of Christ. Through our conscious love for God and for one another, for our fellow brothers and sisters in the same Lord, we have been called to follow the Lord wholeheartedly.

Are we able and willing to trust the Lord in all things, to give everything to Him, and focus our attention on Him from now on? Let us all be thankful for how beloved and cared we have been by God, all these while, and how He has always watched over us without cease. God Who has given us even His own beloved Son, and offering His own Most Precious Body and Blood for our sake is truly a most wonderful and magnificent Lord and Master. Let us all commit ourselves to the Lord and to His will and commandments, doing our very best in our every moments in life to be exemplary in all things so that we may inspire many others to follow the Lord as well.

May the Lord be with us always, and may He strengthen each and every one of us in faith, that we may be ever more courageous in embracing our Lord with ever greater love and devotion. May we all walk in God’s path and strive for His greater glory, now and always, forevermore. Amen.

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Sunday, 1 August 2021 : Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

John 6 : 24-35

At that time, when the people saw that neither Jesus nor His disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found Him on the other side of the lake, they asked Him, “Master, when did You come here?”

Jesus answered, “Truly, I say to you, you look for Me, not because of the signs which you have seen, but because you ate bread and were satisfied. Work then, not for perishable food, but for the lasting food which gives eternal life. The Son of Man will give it to you, for He is the One on Whom the Father has put His mark.”

Then the Jews asked Him, “What shall we do? What are the works that God wants us to do?” And Jesus answered them, “The work God wants is this : that you believe in the One Whom God has sent.” They then said, “Show us miraculous signs, that we may see and believe You. What sign do You perform? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert; as Scripture says : They were given bread from heaven to eat.”

Jesus then said to them, “Truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven. My Father gives you the True Bread from heaven. The Bread God gives is the One Who comes from heaven and gives life to the world.” And they said to Him, “Give us this Bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the Bread of Life; whoever comes to Me shall never be hungry, and whoever believes in Me shall never be thirsty.”

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Sunday, 1 August 2021 : Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Ephesians 4 : 17, 20-24

I say to you, then, and with insistence I advise you, in the Lord : do not imitate the pagans, who live an aimless kind of life. But it is not for this, that you have followed Christ. For, I suppose, that you have heard of Him, and received His teaching, which is seen in Jesus Himself. You must give up your former way of living, the old self, whose deceitful desires bring self-destruction.

Renew yourselves, spiritually, from inside, and put on the new self, or self, according to God, that is created in true righteousness and holiness.

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Sunday, 1 August 2021 : Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 77 : 3 and 4bc, 23-24, 25 and 54

Mysteries which we have heard and known, which our ancestors have told us. We will announce them to the coming generation : the glorious deeds of the Lord, His might and the wonders He has done.

Yet, He commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven; He rained down manna upon them, and fed them with the heavenly grain.

They ate and had more than their fill of the bread of Angels. He brought them to His holy land, to the mountain His right hand had won.

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Sunday, 1 August 2021 : Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Exodus 16 : 2-4, 12-15

In the desert the whole community of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron and said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of YHVH in Egypt when we sat down to caldrons of meat and ate all the bread we wanted, whereas you have brought us to this desert to let the whole assembly die of starvation!”

YHVH then said to Moses, “Now I am going to rain down bread from heaven for you. Each day the people are to gather what is needed for that day. In this way I will test them to see if they will follow My teaching or not.”

“I have heard the complaints of Israel. Speak to them and say : Between the two evenings you will eat meat, and in the morning you will have bread to your heart’s content; then you shall know that I am YHVH, your God!”

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp. And in the morning, dew had fallen around the camp. When the dew lifted, there was on the surface of the desert a thin crust like hoarfrost. The people of Israel upon seeing it said to one another, “What is it?” for they did not know what it was. Moses told them, “It is the bread that YHVH has given you to eat.”