Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we today as we listened to the words of the Lord contained in the Scriptures, all of us are reminded of God’s great love by which He has established and renewed His Covenant with us, again and again, from the beginning of time, and which He has constantly remembered, and last of all, He renewed it for all of us through none other than His Son, Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Through Jesus Christ, all of us have received the assurance of God’s love and grace, the promise of eternal life and true joy with Him, and all these have been shown to us through the New and Eternal Covenant which He has established through His Passion, suffering and death on the Cross, and ultimately through His glorious Resurrection.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Book of Genesis in which the story of the moment when God established His Covenant with Abram, His faithful servant. Abram was called from the land of Ur to follow the Lord to the land of Canaan, which the Lord had promised to give to Abram and his descendants. Abram at that time while he was a really wealthy man, and yet he had no legitimate descendant to be his heir and successor, and yet such a promise from God might seem to be rather far-fetched, surreal and unrealistic. Yet, Abram trusted in the Lord and obeyed His call, leaving everything behind in his homeland and journeyed to wherever God wanted him to go. Thus, with the righteousness, obedience and virtues that Abram had shown, God blessed him and chose him to be the one with whom He would establish His Covenant with.

Thus, God reassured Abram of everything that He has promised, and as was common, He changed Abram’s name to that of Abraham, the name that we are all surely more familiar with. Abraham was the progenitor of many nations, the father of numerous peoples, and was especially the father of the nation of the Israelites, whom God would choose and call to be His first beloved nation and people. God was always faithful to His Covenant, guiding and leading those whom He had called and chosen, and as we all know, God kept faithfully guiding those same people despite their stubbornness and disobedience. He led them all out of the land of their misery and sufferings in Egypt, bringing them all the way to the land of Canaan, just as He has promised Abraham.

God remained faithful to His Covenant even when His people continued to disobey Him as just mentioned. If we read through the Old Testament and are familiar with the history of the Israelites, then surely we are all familiar with how those people of God had constantly rebelled against Him, turned their backs against His Law and His ways, and chose to follow instead the path of the pagan gods and idols, betraying the Covenant which the Lord had established and renewed with them again and again. God did chastise and punish those who have disobeyed against Him, but He did so out of love and compassion, as a loving Father Who truly cares for His wayward children, wanting to discipline and help them so that they all may grow ever better in their attitudes and righteousness in life.

In our Gospel passage today, we then heard of the example of one such disobedient and stubborn attitude that God’s people has shown, in how the Jewish people treated the Lord Jesus, the One Who had been sent into our midst, Son of God Himself, incarnate in the flesh, so that by His revelation and truth, He might lead us all towards God and His salvation. Yet, those people, the Jewish people, descendants of the remnants of the Israelites, whom the Lord first ministered to, refused to believe in the words that God’s Saviour and Son has spoken to them. The Lord Himself has spoken such truth and wisdom that no one who heard them could have not believed in Him, and performed such miracles and wonders just as the prophets and messengers of God had spoken in the past, and yet, some of the people accused Him of colluding even with the prince of demons in doing so.

They refused to believe in the Lord and as we heard in today’s Gospel, they even accused Him of having a demon in Him just because they refused to believe in what He had presented to them. They refused to believe that the Lord was greater even than Abraham, their forefather, and claimed that just because they were the children and descendants of Abraham, then they knew it better than the Lord Himself and His truth. Why is that so? That is because of their ego and pride, which was a common attitude at the time, especially among the Jewish elites, namely the Pharisees and the Sadducees among them, who considered themselves better and superior to all those who have not believed in the same way as they have believed.

Yet, God still cared for them and patiently reached out to them nonetheless. And as a sign of things to come, as we are now about to enter into the most solemn celebrations of the Holy Week of the Lord’s Passion, suffering and death, therefore we heard how these confrontations and disagreements made it such that even the Lord had to hide Himself and not to show Himself in public places. Symbolically during this period of time this week and next week, also known as the Passiontide, the images and statues in the churches are covered and veiled, so that not only we can focus more on the important events of the Lord’s Passion during the Holy Week, but this also symbolically represented the Lord being in hiding during this period.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore do whatever we can so that we may grow ever closer to the Lord this time, and make best use of whatever opportunities and help that we have been given, so that we may grow ever stronger in our faith and commitment to God. As we approach ever closer to the momentous events we are going to commemorate during the upcoming Holy Week, let us all come ever closer to the Lord, doing whatever we can so that by our actions, words and contributions in life, we can continue to glorify the Lord by our lives. Let us all continue our Lenten journey faithfully, and remind ourselves ever of God’s love and His commitment to the Covenant which He has made with us. Let us all seek God’s mercy and love, and renew our desire to love Him once more with all of our heart and might. May God bless us always, in all of what we do, now and forevermore. Amen.