7th Week of Ordinary Time

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Friday, 24 February 2017 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of the Sacred Scriptures which have a profound impact on our lives, especially those with regards to the very fabric of our Christian families, that is the matter of marriage or holy matrimony. We have to realise that in this day and time, in our world today, the institution of marriage often comes under attack from many directions, from all those who were trying to destroy and desecrate its sanctity.

In the first reading today, from the Book of the prophet Sirach, we heard a very good advice regarding friendships and relationships between us and one another. In that passage, we heard about the importance of building up good and healthy relationship, to make real and faithful friends, and not just acquaintances, or worse still, friends for benefits. What does this mean, brothers and sisters in Christ?

It means that we must not be hasty to make relationships based on worldly qualifications alone. We must not be quick to establish relationships based on worldly pleasures and matters such as money and temptations of the flesh, lust and human desires. This is exactly the same in the matter of relationships and even marriage. People judged and made decisions based on appearances and on superficial matters, rather than truly understanding what a true relationship is about.

That is why, in many relationships, the foundations were weak and they were easily shaken. In many occasions, these relationships endured only through the good times, and when bad things and troubles come, the relationships foundered and broke apart. That is why in recent times, we had so much troubles with divorces and broken families, unfaithful husbands and wives, who committed adulterous relationships.

There were many people who build their lives and relationships on unsteady foundations of money, possessions, worldly things, lust, pleasure, earthly beauty and many others. As such once the worldly things that do not last forever disappear or are used up, it leads to a collapse in the marriage life and in the family structure. This is what had plagued many of our families in recent times, and which also troubled the Church as a whole.

For truly, families are the basic units of the Church and our faith, for it is through the instructions of our parents that we have first received our faith, listened to the teachings of the Church, which they themselves had received from their own parents. If this familial structure breaks down, then the faith of whole generations will also stumble and become shaky, and the whole Church will be affected.

It is a reality that in many of our families today, there is no place for God. God does not take a centre place in our families. That is why we have divorces and adulterous relationships. We put our trust in things of this world, and they are not good enough, and we in our greed seek for more worldly pleasures and this led us all into sin. That was what Jesus condemned in the Gospel today.

Jesus was very clear in His message in the Gospel today, that all those who have consciously without a valid reason, such as those written in the laws of the Church, broke the sanctity of the Sacrament of the Holy Matrimony, have committed great sin before God. And all the more, if the person remarries another person, or have any form of relationships with another person, then the sin committed is even greater.

Jesus was very clear in His words, that the union which God had made and blessed, cannot be undone by mankind, and no person has the authority and freedom to undo what God had decreed, the union between man and woman in the Holy Matrimony. But this is where instead of we just blaming the families and the people involved, we need to look deeper at the root cause of it all, as I have just mentioned earlier.

Is God in our daily lives? Do we allow Him to take charge of our lives? In our families, do we put God in a place of honour, and look up to Him at all times? Or have we rather allowed ourselves to be carried away by money, by lust, by our greed, and by all sorts of other things that have prevented us from truly having a functional, loving and holy family?

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all today pray for all couples of the faithful people of God, that they will keep solemnly and faithfully the vows they have made before God on the day of their Holy Matrimony. Let us all pray that they will be able to keep their promises before God, and build up together holy, functional and loving families, through which faith can be transmitted and passed on, ensuring that our Church remains strong, vibrant and living.

May the Lord empower us and our families, so that He may always be at the centre of our lives, and we may be able to resist the temptations of worldliness, and all the other things that have caused us to sin and broke apart our families. May the Lord give us His strength so that we may persevere in faith, and remain true to Him, all of us and our families together as one. Amen.

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Friday, 24 February 2017 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Mark 10 : 1-12

At that time, Jesus then left that place and went to the province of Judea, beyond the Jordan River. Once more crowds gathered around Him and once more He taught them as He always did. Some (Pharisees came and) put Him to the test with this question, “Is it right for a husband to divorce his wife?”

He replied, “What law did Moses give you?” They answered, “Moses allowed us to write a certificate of dismissal in order to divorce.” Then Jesus said to them, “Moses wrote this law for you, because you are stubborn. But in the beginning of creation God made them male and female, and because of this, man has to leave father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one body. So they are no longer two but one body. Therefore let no one separate what God has joined.”

When they were indoors at home, the disciples again asked Him about this, and He told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against his wife, and the woman who divorces her husband and marries another also commits adultery.”

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Friday, 24 February 2017 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 118 : 12, 16, 18, 27, 34, 35

Praise to You, o Lord; instruct me in Your statutes, that with my lips I may declare all Your spoken decrees.

In Your laws I will rejoice and will not neglect Your words.

Open my eyes that I may see the marvellous truths in Your law.

Explain to me all Your ordinances, and I will meditate on Your wondrous deeds.

Give me understanding, that I may observe Your law with all my heart.

Guide me in obeying Your instructions, for my pleasure lies in them.

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Friday, 24 February 2017 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Sirach 6 : 5-17

A gentle word makes many friends, an agreeable tongue calls forth gracious replies. Let your friends be many; but your counsellors, one in a thousand! If you would gain a friend, begin by testing him and do not put your confidence in him too quickly. For there is the friend who is such when it suits him but he does not remain faithful in the time of your adversity.

There is the friend who becomes an enemy and, to your confusion, makes known why you quarrelled. There is the friend who shares your table but does not remain faithful when things go against you. In times of prosperity he will be like your shadow and he will speak freely to those of your household. But if you are humiliated, he will turn against you and will avoid meeting you.

Distance yourself from your enemies and be careful about your friends. The faithful friend is a secure refuge; whoever has found one has found a treasure. A faithful friend is beyond all price; hold him as priceless. A faithful friend is a life-saving remedy, and those who fear the Lord will find one.

Whoever fears the Lord will make true friends for, as a man is, such will his friend be.

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Thursday, 23 February 2017 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard a very clear call through the Sacred Scripture passages, for us to repent from our sinfulness, reject our wayward path of life, and make a turnaround to follow the Lord our God with all our heart and strength, following Him with all sincerity and commitment. This is what the Lord had called us all to do, and we really should go and listen to what He had said.

Sin is something that had become a difficult and persistent stumbling block on our path, which is due to our disobedience and refusal to obey to the Lord and His ways. And all of these were born from our own human sense of pride, of arrogance and greed, as the prophet Sirach mentioned in our first reading today, as a series of warnings for us, not to be haughty and be overconfident, thinking that nothing can harm us.

Indeed, while God loves each and every one of us, but sin is one thing that God does not love from us. Truly, sin is an abomination in His sight, and it is because of our sins that we have suffered the consequences of those sins. We have been sundered from the grace of God, and because of that, we should have fallen into hell, and we should have faced the consequences for sin, that is death and eternal suffering, an eternity of suffering and despair out of which their is no hope for escape.

That is why the Lord sent His many messengers, prophets and servants to help guide His people, that is all of us, so that as many as possible among them might be saved. And we know just so much that God loves us to the point that He did the most extraordinary thing of all, that is to give His only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, the Divine Word of God, to us as our Saviour and our Hope.

Through Jesus His Son, God had revealed to us the importance for us to reject sin, as we heard it in the Gospel passage today. Jesus was speaking about maintaining the purity of our beings, our hearts, minds and all things, also in our physical bodies and flesh alike. But we must be careful not to misunderstand and misinterpret what He had said, as we cannot take things literally as He had said.

Why is that so? That is because certainly each and every one of us have been tempted through our various senses and parts of our bodies, and if we really literally follow through what Jesus had said, then just imagine how many people out there would be blinded or with just one eye, disabled and debilitated, with no arms or with no legs, just because we misunderstood the true intention of the Lord.

What the Lord wanted from us is for us to resist the temptations to sin, to restrain ourselves and not to give in to the pressure either from the outside or from the inside to sin. It is part of our nature to experience that desire and the temptation to sin and commit things that are not in accordance with what the Lord had taught us, but we ourselves are also able to consciously reject the advances of those temptations, and rebuke Satan and all of his attempts to subvert us to sin.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is where we really need to be prepared and we cannot be lax in our spiritual discipline. We cannot be like those who think that they have all the time in the world, and that they are free to enjoy the world and all of its goodness in whatever ways they like, even if in the process they fall into debauchery and wickedness.

We need to prepare ourselves, as when the Lord comes to seek the reckoning for each one of us, at the timing that He alone knows, then we must be prepared. Certainly, I am sure that we do not want to regret when the time of reckoning comes, and we end up among those whom God will condemn and reject, as sinners and wicked people.

Perhaps, it would be good for us to follow in the footsteps of St. Polycarp, the holy saint whose feast we are celebrating today. St. Polycarp was one of the disciples of the Apostles St. John who was one of the bishops of the early Church, whose contributions was crucial for the foundation and the strengthening of the early Church and the early Christian communities.

It was told that he was a convert to the faith, and he devoted his whole life to the service of the Church and God’s people, even though there were many difficulties facing the faithful people of God, due to the opposition and persecution by the state against the Christian faith. Eventually he was arrested and tortured, given a choice between betraying his faith and living, and standing by his faith and dying in painful agony.

St. Polycarp was not deterred by that temptation to abandon the Lord and preserve himself. Rather, he proclaimed courageously his faith in God before all those who were present at his trial, and stood by his faith among all the other people who had been arrested with him for their faith. As the shepherd of the flock, he had shown good examples for his people.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we should emulate the good examples of St. Polycarp in our own daily life. Let us all commit ourselves to the Lord, reject all forms of sin and temptations, so that we may grow ever closer to God and find our way to Him. May all of us draw closer to God and be reconciled with Him, through our actions and deeds that show our faith to Him at all times. May God be with us all, and may St. Polycarp intercede for us sinners. Amen.

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Thursday, 23 February 2017 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Mark 9 : 41-50

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone gives you a drink of water because you belong to Christ and bear His Name, truly, I say to you, he will not go without reward. If anyone should cause one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble and sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a great millstone around his neck.”

“If your hand makes you fall into sin, cut it off! It is better for you to enter life without a hand, than with two hands to go to hell, to the fire that never goes out. And if your foot makes you fall into sin, cut it off! It is better for you to enter life without a foot, than with both feet to be thrown into hell.”

“And if your eye makes you fall into sin, tear it out! It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than, keeping both eyes, to be thrown into hell, where the worms that eat them never die, and the fire never goes out. The fire itself will preserve them.”

“Salt is a good thing; but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.”

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Thursday, 23 February 2017 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Psalm 1 : 1-2, 3, 4 and 6

Blessed is the one who does not go where the wicked gather, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit where the scoffers sit! Instead, he finds delight in the law of the Lord and meditates day and night on His commandments.

He is like a tree beside a brook producing its fruit in due season, its leaves never withering. Everything he does is a success.

But it is different with the wicked. They are like chaff driven away by the wind. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous but cuts off the way of the wicked.

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Thursday, 23 February 2017 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Sirach 5 : 1-10 (Greek Septuagint version – Sirach 5 : 1-8)

Do not rely on your wealth. Do not say, “I am self-sufficient.” Do not let yourself be carried away by greed and violence; they would make you their slave.

Do not say, “Who can stop me?” For the Lord has power to punish you. Do not say, “I have sinned and nothing has happened!” For the Lord bides His time.

Do not be so sure of pardon when you are heaping sin upon sin. Do not say, “His compassion is great! He will forgive the vast number of my sins!” For with Him is mercy but also anger; His fury will be poured out on sinners.

Do not delay your return to the Lord, do not put it off from day to day. For suddenly the anger of the Lord will blaze forth and you will perish on the day of reckoning. Do not rely on riches wrongfully acquired for they will be of no use to you on the day of wrath.

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Wednesday, 22 February 2017 : Feast of Chair of St. Peter the Apostle (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day all of us celebrate together the great Feast of the Chair of St. Peter the Apostle. We may be wondering why is it that we celebrate the feast of a chair, but this chair mentioned here is not just a mere physical object, not just merely a chair, but even more importantly, it is the seat of authority of the Apostle St. Peter, whom God had appointed to be the leader of all of His disciples, and to whom He had entrusted the governance and authority over His entire Church.

The Chair of St. Peter refers to the Cathedra of St. Peter, or Cathedra Sancti Petri, the seat of the Episcopal authority of St. Peter as the first Bishop of Rome. And like that of the other bishops, the seat of the bishop or the Cathedra is the symbol of the authority which has been granted over the bishop over the entire flock in the diocese entrusted to his care. But for St. Peter, this authority granted to him is unique in a sense that as the Bishop of Rome, he and his many successors, that is the Popes throughout the ages have been given the authority not just over the Diocese of Rome, but also over the entire Church.

Thus today’s feast has a special significance, as it reminds us of the unity that all of us Christians have with the entire Church, anchored on the person of the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, who is the successor of St. Peter the Apostle, on whom God had established His Church. God had established His Church upon the solid rock foundation of St. Peter, whose name Cephas or Kepha in Aramaic, and Petros in Greek means rock.

We may think that God chose great and intellectual men, people with great capabilities and seemingly superhuman abilities. But that is not the way how God chose His servants and those whom He had deemed to be worthy. Men may have all the plans they prepared, and they may have all sorts of things in their mind, but it was not mankind who chose themselves before God, but God Who chose His people. He called those whom He had deemed to be worthy, not by any human standards, but by His standards.

St. Peter and the other members of the Twelve Apostles of our Lord Jesus were a diverse group of people, hailing from different origins and had different character and upbringing. Yet, most if not all of them are similar in one thing, that they, in the sight and opinion of mankind, are those who we commonly least expect to be those who were chosen for such important position.

Some of the Apostles were simple men, some holding positions that brought little prestige and acknowledgement then, even until today, such as fishermen and poor people of little renown. Most of the Apostles were illiterate and uneducated, a fact which we ourselves read in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, when the Pharisees and the elders were astounded at the great wisdom and eloquence at which the supposedly uneducated Apostles carried out the defence and witnessing of their faith.

St. Peter most important of all was a simple fisherman, who if we read the Gospels, is not a particularly faithful person. At times, there were moments when he faced challenges, doubts and weakness in his faith to the Lord. He was among the first of whom Jesus had called and chosen, and throughout his journey with our Lord, we heard of how, he stumbled when he tried to cross to Jesus walking on the water, as he doubted and his faith faltered, and started to sink before Jesus rescued him.

St. Peter also stumbled at Mount Tabor during the Transfiguration, when he wanted to convince Jesus to remain there on top of the mountain, awed by the glory of the Lord revealed to him there, and not wanting to go down to the lands below, to what Jesus had mentioned that He was to face great persecution, to be handed over to the chief priests and suffer death, and His disciples would suffer with Him.

And certainly all of us knew how St. Peter and the other Apostles fell asleep during the time when Jesus told them to stay on guard with Him at the Garden of Gethsemane during His time of agony and suffering, waiting for the betrayer Judas to come and take Him to the chief priests. He was chided with the other Apostles by Jesus, Who told them that while the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Finally, we all know how St. Peter denied Jesus three times during the time when He was incarcerated in the High Priest’s residence. In his fear, St. Peter denied Jesus not just once, but three times when the people around him accused him of being among those who followed Jesus. At that time, when Jesus had been arrested and were undergoing false charges of blasphemy, it was a very difficult time to be found out as those who followed Him, and St. Peter faltered.

Then all of must be wondering as to why Jesus chose St. Peter above all else, to be the one to whom He entrusted His entire Church, the entire body of all His faithful and beloved people to. Should God not have chosen better? Surely there are many more people who are more worthy of the task? This is exactly where what I have spoken about came to apply. It is not what man sees that God sees, and God sees faith and goodness where we may have failed to see it.

Even though his faith was weak, wavering, unsteady and shaken at many times, God saw in St. Peter, a heart and soul filled with genuine love and dedication, which is a trait also shared by the other Apostles, save that of Judas Iscariot the betrayer. All of them wavered in their faith, and had shaky belief in the Lord, but they all persevered through and did not give up, unlike Judas Iscariot. They showed the same qualities shared by the many other saints and martyrs of our Church.

God saw the goodness in them, and He forgave them their trespasses and failures, just as how Jesus forgave St. Peter three times after He had risen from the dead. It was a clear sign how Jesus had forgiven St. Peter and his denial, and his previous shortcomings. He knew just how much St. Peter loved Him, and just how far he would give himself to stand up and defend his faith in Him.

He gave him and the other Apostles His Holy Spirit, the Helper and strength through which He transformed these humble, uneducated and seemingly inconsequential and insignificant people, into steadfast and solid rocks of faith, the principal one which was the great faith of St. Peter, whom the Lord appointed to be the leader over all of the other Apostles, and by the virtue of that leadership, and the command which Jesus had given him, to take care of all the flock of the Lord.

Through all of these things which we have listened and pondered on this day, all of us can see how, first of all, God chose seemingly ordinary and insignificant man and woman, to be those whom He had chosen and blessed. He chose even sinners and those considered by many to be worthless and wicked, knowing that if these people repent, not only that they would be capable of truly great deeds, but at the same time, more soul would return to the Lord and be reconciled with Him.

Many saints were themselves great sinners, and they were called through repentance and much grief, having regretted their sins and wickedness, and therefore became the new parts of the Church, enriching it with their newfound faith and zeal. In the footsteps of the Apostles they have walked and toiled to make sure that the works which God had begun through His Apostles would be continued, that is the conversion of all mankind and the salvation of all souls. Through all of these, all of their contributions and works, they have glorified God and became examples for us all to follow.

Thus, all of us today need to continue the works of the Apostles, and united under the leadership of the Pope, who is the successor of St. Peter the Apostle, we need to continue to bring the Church through this modern day and time, and continue to preach the Good News of God, and call many others to repentance. The Lord had established His firm foundation on St. Peter, who was a simple man with wavering faith, but whom God had affirmed and strengthened, and thereafter became the solid rock foundation of the Church.

Let us all grow stronger in faith, by placing our complete trust in the Lord, and obey Him in all of His laws, commandments and precepts. Let us uphold the entirety of the teachings of the Church, through which we obediently follow the commandments of the Lord, just as He had taught these to His own Apostles and disciples. Let us all pray also for the intention of the entire Universal Church, and also for the Pope, our Vicar and leader, the Vicar of Christ on earth.

May the Lord bless us all, His Church on earth, and also our Pope, bishops, priests and all who had given themselves to the service of the Gospel and for the salvation of all mankind. May He strengthen our faith, that even though we may falter as St. Peter once did, but having put together our hope and faith in the Lord, we may grow stronger in faith, and become immovable like a rock, with steadfast and undying devotion as St. Peter and the other Apostles had in their Lord and Master, our God. St. Peter the Apostle, Vicar of Christ and Shepherd of all God’s people, pray for us and for God’s Church. Amen.

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Wednesday, 22 February 2017 : Feast of Chair of St. Peter the Apostle (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Matthew 16 : 13-19

At that time, Jesus came to Caesarea Philippi. He asked His disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They said, “For some of them You are John the Baptist, for others Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”

Jesus asked them, “But you, who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “It is well for you, Simon Bar-Jona, for it is not flesh or blood that has revealed this to you, but My Father in heaven.”

“And now I say to you : You are Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church; and never will the powers of death overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven : whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you unbind on earth shall be unbound in heaven.”