Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of God in the Scriptures speaking to us regarding the salvation which God has given to all of His people, the Covenant which He has made with all of us mankind, through which He restored us all from the state of disgrace and sin, into a renewed existence in grace and beloved by God.

God has brought Noah and his family, who alone were faithful among the many wicked and unrepentant sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, safely through the Great Flood that destroyed everything in the world, and through the Ark, brought them all into a new life on a renewed earth. And God made a new Covenant with Noah and his family, with him and all of his descendants, that include all of us living here today.

The Covenant that God has made is a Covenant of love, the promise of love between God and His beloved people, in which the two parties involved entered into a most solemn and honourable agreement and binding decision, to be committed to each other, to be devoted and to love each other with sincerity and genuine desire. And God loved His people as He has always done, not desiring their destruction but salvation and liberation from sin.

And because a Covenant is contracted between two parties and is binding between them, therefore, if God Himself has entered into the agreement with us all, and willingly committed Himself to us, then we mankind, who are also part of this same Covenant, must therefore also love God in the same manner, and commit ourselves to a loving relationship with Him. If we love God, then we must be willing to walk in His ways, and change our way of life to do what He has taught and shown us to do.

And God renewed His Covenant as we have heard in our Gospel passage today, through none other than Jesus Christ, His own beloved Son, sent into the world for this very purpose, that is to renew the Covenant He had once made with His people, with a new and everlasting Covenant that surpasses every previous Covenants, sealed with nothing less than the pure sacrifice and the Most Precious Blood of Christ, flowing down from the cross.

Yet, are we able to love Him as He has loved us so dearly? Many of us have not been able to commit ourselves in the same manner as our Lord as loved and devoted Himself to us. He has loved us so totally, so as to give everything for our sake. Many of us love instead the many tempting things in the world, not even giving our attention and time for God. We look for things such as worldly glory, fame, prestige, wealth and power.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as long as we are distracted by all of these temptations, we will not be able to give ourselves totally and wholly to God, and we will always end up failing and falling into sin again and again. We need to make the conscious effort to resist those temptations to sin. Otherwise, we will easily be swayed by the devil and all those who have always been trying to tempt us, day after day, at every moments.

Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Peter Damian, a holy and devout servant of God who should become our inspiration in life. St. Peter Damian was a renowned Benedictine monk who eventually rose to the rank of Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, as one of the closest confidants of the Pope, for his vigorous reforms and commitment to the renewal of the Church at the time, in which corrupt practices were rampant.

St. Peter Damian dedicated much of his life to the eradication of the wicked practices and sins present within the Church, both among the clergy and the laity at the time, when the Church members and officials were deeply embroiled in scandals pertaining their worldly ambitions and ways. St. Peter Damian led the effort to eradicate all of these excesses and wicked practices, helping the Pope at the time to steer the Church through the difficult times.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are called to follow the examples and the commitment shown by St. Peter Damian in living an upright life dedicated to God. We are called to abandon our past attachments to sin, and repent from our past disobediences. Indeed, this is not something that can be easily done, but unless we make the conscious effort to do so, we can see how the devil’s wickedness have once again struck at our Church, both among the clergy and the laity alike.

We have seen all sorts of scandals involving the clergy as well as those counted among the laity, and how all of these are causing hurts and difficulties to the efforts of the Church to bring more souls to the salvation in God. Let us therefore begin from ourselves, the effort to purify our lives and to bring about a renewal of the Covenant of love that God has made with us, through Christ, His Son, our Lord and Saviour.

Let us all turn once again wholeheartedly towards the Lord, loving Him and placing Him at the very centre of our lives. Let us all seek to walk faithfully in His ways, and do our best to obey Him from now on. May the Lord our loving God continue to love us and bless us, each and every days of our lives. Amen.