Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we all heard how Jesus our Lord exhorted His disciples to follow the way of the Lord, that is to follow all of His teachings and all that He had revealed about God, the Creator and Master of all, if they are truly faithful to Him. If we truly love God, then certainly, we would have dedicated ourselves to His ways and in all of our actions we should indeed be much like Him.

And Jesus mentioned that those who belong to Him and those who are faithful to Him will do His commandments, the Law of God, that is essentially, as He had often explained, Love. The Law of God, the commandments of God, all are essentially about two things as Jesus explained, that is the love we ought to have for God, our Lord, Father and Master, as well as the love that we all should have towards one another.

Therefore, this is the focus of our life and what we all should aspire to, that is to practice our faith with real and genuine sincerity, in all of our every words, deeds and actions without exception. But as we heard in the readings, there are difficulties and challenges awaiting us. Externally, as the world and its ways as we know are diametrically opposite to that of the way of our Lord, and therefore, temptations and challenges will surely come our way.

And then challenges also comes from within as well, from the example of what we heard in the first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles. The Jews have arguments and conflicts with the non-Jews or the Gentiles, both of which groups had embraced the faith and believed in Jesus. The Jews contended that to be truly faithful, then everyone, including the Gentiles have to observe the entirety of the laws of Moses, the set of very expansive and exhaustive laws, rules and regulations, that governed many things in the lifestyle and customs of the Jews.

It is not only that this set of laws, which apparently numbered about six hundred and thirteen in all, if not more, that has brought a great burden to the others, and even to the Jews themselves who were in fact often not able to fulfill the entirety of its requirement, but also because, while the practices and customs were held by the Romans and Greeks to be strange and foreign, to the point of being barbaric and unsightly, but as long as they remained with the Jews, they might ignore it.

However, if the Gentiles who have accepted Jesus as their Saviour and believed in the truth had to also embrace the fullness of such a draconian and burdensome set of laws, which the Jews themselves were unable to fulfill completely, then it would result in great difficulty for the Gentiles themselves. For the Romans and the Greeks despised and looked at the Jewish customs with suspicion and also loathed the practice of circumcision that they did.

Therefore, what the Apostles had suggested for the whole Church to do indeed was the obvious choice, that instead of being bound and set rigid by the set of laws mostly made by men, although its core was divine, being the Law which God first revealed through Moses, but the purpose of the Law and our obedience to it should be so that we may be true disciples and followers of our Lord, not just in externals and appearances, but instead more importantly, in our inner beings.

That means instead of being fussy over the circumcision of the externals, we must seek the circumcision of the internals, that means, to purge our hearts of all sorts of malice and wickedness, and all sorts of impurities, of impure thoughts and intentions, impure emotions and dark thoughts, and anything that would bring us astray from the righteous path of the Lord.

If we have true faith in God, we will surely love Him and all those around us, our brothers and sisters in the same Lord, our Father. And therefore, let us all reflect on our own actions so far in life. Have we been truly faithful by practicing our faith in our own actions and deeds? Have every word that leaves our mouth show that we truly are the people that belongs to the Lord?

May Almighty God be with us and guide us all from now on, so that in all things we do, we may bring greater glory to Him who had been with us, loved us and cared for us all the days of our life. God bless us all and all of our endeavours. Amen.