22nd Week

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Saturday, 7 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we heard and be reaffirmed today, of the love our God has for all of us. That the Lord in His love, has given all of Himself through His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. He gave to us an outpouring of His love, and in His strong desire to bring us and reunite us back to Himself, He had sent us prophets and messengers to deliver His will to the people and to guide them to return to Him.

In the same way, through Moses His servant, He had revealed to His children about Himself, how He cares very much for their wellbeing, and showed them His love even when they constantly rebelled against His love, worshipping other gods instead of Him. He even gave them a set of law, the Law He gave to His people through Moses, as a guide for them in their lives that they will always remain ever faithful and ever loving, and stay in the grace of God at all times.

Yet, despite this, the people of God did not remain faithful, and they still rebelled constantly against the Lord, defying His laws and commandment, shutting out prophets and murdering them for showing the truth about their sinful ways, and for nagging them to return to God their Father who loves them. But the Lord did not give up on them, and continued to show His love without end, even when His children often did not love Him back.

The Lord in His anger and wrath could easily have wiped us out because of our rebelliousness, our sins, and our stubbornness, but He kept His faith in all of us, and willing for us to repent our sinful ways and return to the Lord. That was why, He gave His all and become one of us through Jesus, incarnate of the Blessed Virgin His mother, and through that, become a source of hope and salvation for all mankind.

Christ came into this world as the Messiah, the awaited Saviour, but He is also a prophet and a teacher, who explained the true meaning and intention of the Law and rules that God had given mankind through Moses and His other prophets and messengers. He showed that the Law does not exist to lord over the people of God, and neither should it become a yoke to burden the people.

The Pharisees did obey the Law, indeed, they appeared to be pious and obedient people of the Law. However most of them, and the teachers of the Law obeyed the Law in a perverted manner, in a twisted version of their own ‘Law’. Their love for the Law is superficial, and they enslaved themselves and the people they led without having the Lord at the centre of their lives.

That is why, brothers and sisters, today we are reminded of the need to truly love God and give of our whole self to Him, just as He had loved us and gave us His entire being to us, and He was not even shy to shed His own Body and Blood that we may live. Let us not love our Lord and God only superficially as the Pharisees had once done.

Yes, we need to obey rules and laws, but we must not be enslaved to them. Rather, let us make use of the Law of God as a way for us to better control and coordinate ourselves that we will be able to stay true to the Lord and remain firmly in God’s love and favour, that we will not fall into the temptations of the evil one. God bless us all. Amen.

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Saturday, 7 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Luke 6 : 1-5

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the corn fields, and His disciples began to pick heads of grain, crushing them in their hands for food. Some of the Pharisees asked them, “Why do you do what is forbidden on the Sabbath?”

Then Jesus spoke up and asked them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his men were hungry? He entered the house of God, took and ate the bread of the offering, and even gave some to his men, though only priests are allowed to eat that bread.”

And Jesus added, “The Son of Man is Lord and rules over the sabbath.”

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Saturday, 7 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Psalm 53 : 3-4, 6 and 8

By Your Name, o God, save me; You, the Valiant, uphold my cause. Hear my prayer, o God; listen to the words of my mouth.

See, God is my helper; the Lord upholds my life. Freely will I offer sacrifice to You and praise Your Name, o Lord, for it is good.

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Saturday, 7 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Colossians 1 : 21-23

You yourselves were once estranged and opposed to God because of your evil deeds, but now God has reconciled you in the human body of His Son through His death, so that you may be without fault, holy and blameless before Him.

Only stand firm, upon the foundation of your faith, and be steadfast in hope. Keep in mind the Gospel you have heard, which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which, I, Paul, became a minister.

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Friday, 6 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are truly reminded as ever always, that Christ our Lord lies at the very centre of our lives, and that He is what truly matters for us, while other things are often unnecessary and illusory in nature. Nonetheless, we often forget this fact and relegate Christ into a corner rather than embracing and appreciating the central role Christ plays in each of our own lives.

Everything that we have, our lives, our faith, and our very existence owed greatly to the Lord, through whom indeed we were created, given life, and then a new life through salvation of the cross. For Christ is the Word of God, through whom the Lord our Creator had created all of creation including all of us, whom He had given life through the breath of His Mouth.

And even when we had gone astray from Him and be estranged from Him like that of a child estranged from the father, He willed for us to be reconciled to Himself, by the outpouring of His love, through the numerous help He sent us along our journey in this world, through countless messengers and prophets who carried His desire and love for us, the desire to be reunited with us, His lost children.

That even when we had rejected Him by turning a deaf ear to the heedings of His prophets, and even tortured and slaughtered them in cold blood, He did not give up, but in His great and infinite love, He allowed Himself to give the ultimate manifestation of His love, that is to be incarnate through a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary His mother, to be our Saviour, through which He gathered all people to Himself.

Such great is His love for us, that He even readied Himself to suffer for us, to die for us, all that we who deserved death, will not die an agonising and eternal death, separated from God who loves us. That we may live through His death on the cross which saves, and through His glorious resurrection, through which He brought unto Himself those who had died in Him.

He dedicated Himself so much for us, that He became flesh like us, and through that mystical incarnation of the divine into man, God is united to us in an everlasting bond of love. Yes, brethren, just as Jesus in the Gospel today imagined Himself as the bridegroom in the midst of His beloved, so indeed He is our bridegroom, the divine bridegroom by God made man.

He rebuked the Pharisees not because it is wrong to fast or observe the laws, but precisely because they did not truly love God, and did not have God in their hearts, that God is not at the centre of their lives as He wanted from them. Instead, they allowed their pride, arrogance, selfishness, and human nature to take over them and corrupt them.

They fast for the sake of fasting, and to show the people their great piety, which is indeed evident, but truly empty. Many of them had missed entirely the point of doing things in accordance to the rules of the Lord, and did them not out of love for God, but out of love for themselves and their ‘greatness’ and ‘superior piety and faith’.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today, the lessons we had heard and taken into ourselves are truly beneficial for us. Let us make the best use out of them, in order to be able to dedicate ourselves and devote ourselves more to the Lord our God, that no matter whatever we are doing, we always do it for the Lord, and keep Him always at the very centre of our lives, each and every one of us. God bless us all. Amen.

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Friday, 6 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 5 : 33-39

Some people asked Jesus, “The disciples of John fast often and say long prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. Why is it that Your disciples eat and drink?” Then Jesus said to them, “You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them. But later the bridegroom will be taken from them, and they will fast in those days.”

Jesus also told them this parable : “No one tears a piece from a new coat to put it on an old one; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece taken from the new will not match the old. No one puts new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed as well. But new wine must be put into fresh skins. Yet no one who has tasted old wine is eager to drink new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”

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Friday, 6 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 99 : 2, 3, 4, 5

Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs.

Know that the Lord is God; He created us and we are His people, the sheep of His fold.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving, His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and bless His Name.

For the Lord is good; His love lasts forever and His faithfulness through all generations.

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Friday, 6 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Colossians 1 : 15-20

He is the image of the unseen God, and for all creation He is the firstborn, for in Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible : thrones, rules, authorities, powers… All was made through Him and for Him.

He is before all and all things hold together in Him. And He is the head of the body, that is the Church, for He is the first, the first raised from the dead that He may be the first in everything, for God was pleased to let fullness dwell in Him.

Through Him God willed to reconcile all things to Himself, and through Him, through His blood shed on the cross, God established peace, on earth as in heaven.

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Thursday, 5 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we listened to the story of the calling of Simon Peter and his companions, the sons of Zebedee, fishermen of Galilee, to become the fishers of mankind. They have been called from their boats, from the Sea of Galilee, to be a part of the grand plan of salvation.

As fishermen at sea, Simon and the other fishermen merely did their daily routine of catching fishes, but then as the fishers of mankind, they broke out of their previous life, and went through trials and tribulations, going to different parts of the world, fishing ‘mankind’ and bring them to God. The world is now their fishing ground, and not just the Lake of Galilee anymore, where they used to work as fishermen.

They had been given greater and nobler purpose in their lives, that is to bring souls they had caught to God. How did they catch them then? No, not by fishing net as they had done to the fishes of Lake Galilee. They did that by being witnesses of Christ, of His death and His glorious resurrection. They preached the Good News to people who had not yet witnessed or heard about Christ before.

In that way they had spread the nets, yes, the nets of the kingdom of God, that all those who are not yet worthy of the kingdom of God, can be brought together in love, and put on the right track towards salvation in God. The Apostles went through much hardships and difficulties as they tried to bring the Lord to mankind, suffering rejection, persecution, and mockery in the process.

Yet the Apostles are not superhuman, brethren, as they are also humans like us. They suffered from doubt, fear, anxiety, and uncertainty especially when Jesus was still among them, and they were indeed scattered when jesus was taken from them by betrayal of Judas, scattered like sheep without a shepherd to guide them.

What is important is that the Apostles did not abandon their calling, the same calling God had called them for when He called Simon Peter and the sons of Zebedee from the Lake, and also for the other disciples. They kept their faith and believed in the Lord when He returned to them after the resurrection. They were empowered with the Holy Spirit, the Advocate on the day of the Pentecost.

They faced oppositions from the Pharisees and the chief priests, as well as the Roman authorities, when they went on to spread the Good News of the Lord. It is indeed as if the Apostles, the fishers of mankind, faced terrible waves and storms in their journey to ‘catch’ mankind to salvation in God. They persevered despite the heavy stormy conditions and saved many in the process.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, how is this then relevant to us who live in this world today, two thousand years after Jesus called His disciples? It is precisely because the work of the Apostles as the fishers of men dis not just stop with them or with their death. The Apostles had appointed their successors to lead the Church of God, and they are truly our priests and bishops of today.

Yes, brethren, they are the successors of the original fishers of men, and their duty is no less heavy as compared to that of the Apostle’s. They also have to work hard to ‘catch’ mankind and bring them into the kingdom of God, just as the Apostles had once done. However, brethren, in fact, we should, in our own small ways, be fishers of men too. Yes, fishers of men, that is to bring the people to God.

How do we do that? It is by showing God to mankind, the living God through our words, deeds, and actions, that the Lord and His everlasting love will be made manifest in this world, through us. The same is also done by our priests and bishops, as the Apostles too had done themselves once. In doing that, we cast out wide the nets of the kingdom, and fish out many men.

Do not be disheartened brothers and sisters, if we think that we cannot do much. Indeed, even one man can make much a difference in our world, and save many. If we start with small things, even eventually this can have large impact, just as we can see in wave ripples, where even small wave can have huge impact on the water, as the waves built upon each other in strength.

The Lord had asked Simon Peter to go and put his net into the deep, and there he found many fish, so many that the ship almost sank. This is also known in Latin as Duc in Altum, ‘to put into the deep’. Again, through this, the Lord challenges all of us, to not just remain in our comfort zone, that is ‘near the shore’, and instead set out to the deep. As fishermen all know, the further out they go into the sea, the more fish they will be able to catch. Thus, we too ought to follow the lead and cast our ‘net’ into the deep, that means giving out of ourselves in ever greater ways, in full and complete dedication and love for our fellow brethren.

Therefore, let us also take the opportunity given to all of us, to be like the Apostles of Christ, to reach out to our fellow brethren who have yet to know Christ, that we can play each of our own parts in the Church of God, with our Pope, the successor of St. Peter the Apostle, chief of the apostles, and the bishops as leaders, together working as the fishers of mankind, for the sake of the salvation of all in Christ. God bless us all. Amen.

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Thursday, 5 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 5 : 1-11

One day, as Jesus stood by the Lake of Gennesaret, with a crowd gathered around Him listening to the word of God, He caught sight of two boats, left at the water’s edge by fishermen, now washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to pull out a little from the shore. There He sat and continued to teach the crowd.

When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon replied, “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing. But if You say so, I will lower the nets.” This they did, and caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. They signalled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They came, and they filled both boats almost to the point of sinking.

Upon seeing this, Simon Peter fell at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Leave me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and his companions were amazed at the catch they had made, and so were Simon’s partners, James and John, Zebedee’s sons.

Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid. You will catch people from now on.” So they brought their boats to land and followed Him, leaving everything.