Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today’s readings from the Holy Scriptures remind us that we all should refrain and abstain from sinning once again, and we should keep ourselves from doing all the things that will place us all under the dominion of sin once again. For we all have been liberated from sin and from the punishments for our sins, because our Lord Himself have come to save us and by His saving works we have been brought into a new life.

To be under the dominion of sin was like how it was once when we were subjected to the consequences of our sins, the effects of which we still feel even unto this very day. For the consequence of sin is primarily death, the separation we experience from the Lord of all life, that is none other than the Lord our God. By our disobedience and rebellion against His will and His ways, we fell into disgrace and into the abyss of sin.

And while we mankind we created perfect, good and without blemish, and while we would have enjoyed an eternity of grace, blessings, joy and happiness living together with our God in the bliss of Eden, but because of sin, we tasted the first taste of suffering, and of death. Death becomes an integral part of our life, and death claims the life of all the mortal beings like us.

And once, we see no hope beyond death, for death is intended as the punishment for our sinfulness, the consequences we are to suffer, and just as we came from dust, our physical bodies shall not last and return to the dust, and death and hell would claim our souls for eternity. There was once no hope out of this despair, against the darkness that awaits us after the end of our earthly existence.

Yet, God who loves us has given us the new, lasting and eternal hope in Jesus Christ, His Son. Through Him we have the path out of our predicament, the sufferings we are to bear for our sins have been paid in full by the sacrifice of His Blood on the cross, and by sharing and partaking of His Body and Blood, we receive the salvation and life which He had promised us.

This means that we have been freed from the bonds and the tyranny which sin and the devil have imposed on us. We are truly free if we hold tight in the Lord and His promises, and as long as we keep our faith in Him and trust in Him fully. But we can easily fall back into the dominion of sin, if we lapse and fail to hold back our desires and fail to resist the temptations of the evil one, who is constantly trying to pull us back into damnation through sin.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today, through the Gospel passage we heard together, our Lord Jesus Christ wants to remind us that each one of us whom He had brought out of the darkness have become God’s children by adoption through Christ, who is the Son of God and by assuming the form of Man, we too have become the children of God.

And because all of us are God’s children, He who is the Lord and Master over all of creation would entrust us with the care over creation, all the things in this world, and also with the care for one another, from one to his fellow men around him or her. It is by this that we have been appointed as stewards by our Lord, and it is truly up to us, and the choice is fully ours, whether we are to be good and responsible stewards, or whether our choice is to be terrible and wicked stewards.

It is in our human tendency for us to be lazy, slothful and selfish, thinking only about ourselves before anything else. This is why we often end up as the bad and wicked steward, who think that he could have it easy and laid back and rest, while the master is away from the house. In the same way therefore, because we think that God has given us so many opportunities and chances, then we can take it easy and slack, or sin and the Lord will tolerate those sins.

But all of us should know that the coming of the Lord will be truly sudden and unexpected, and if we are caught unprepared, the consequences will be truly fatal. Just as the wicked and lazy servant, our inaction will be our undoing. Shall we take heed of this so that we will not fall into eternal damnation just because we have failed to do something in order to help those who have been entrusted to us.

Let us all make the effort to love each other, guide one another and bring all of us closer to the Lord, by our efforts and actions, by caring for those who have fallen into sin and encourage them to return to the light, and also all those suffering from hunger and poverty, let us all help them in whatever way we can. May Almighty God bless us on our endeavours and keep us His stewards faithful to Him at all times. Amen.