Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 95 : 1-2a, 2b-3, 5b-6
Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth! Sing to the Lord, bless His Name.
Proclaim His salvation day after day. Recall His glory among the nations, tell all the peoples His wonderful deeds.
YHVH is the One Who made the heavens. Splendour and majesty go before Him; power and glory fill His sanctuary.
Liturgical Colour : White
1 John 2 : 3-11
How can we know that we know Him? If we fulfil His commands. If you say, “I know Him,” but do not fulfil His commands, you are a liar and the truth is not in you. But if you keep His word, God’s love is made complete in you. This is how we know that we are in Him : he who claims to live in Him must live as He lived.
My dear friends, I am not writing you a new commandment, but reminding you of an old one, one you had from the beginning. This old commandment is the word you have heard. But, in a way, I give it as a new commandment that is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and true light already shines.
If you claim to be in the light but hate your brother, you are still in darkness. If you love your brothers and sisters, you remain in the light and nothing in you will make you fall. But if you hate your brother you are in the dark and walk in darkness without knowing where you go, for the darkness has blinded you.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate together the feast of the Holy Innocents, one of the earliest martyrs in the Church, for those innocents were the young infants of the town of Bethlehem, who was killed by the order of king Herod the Great of Judea, in his futile effort to try to destroy the coming Messiah and King, as written in the Holy Gospels and prophesied in the Old Testament by the prophets.
The Holy Innocents were the victims of human greed, ego and pride, the outcome of man’s attachment to worldly glory and the temptations of the world. I am sure that some of us may have wondered, why God allowed those infants in Bethlehem to be killed. Surely he could have intervened and prevented the infants from being killed? But this is where we need to understand that, the cause of this sad tragedy, was our attachments to sin and our refusal to obey God’s will.
God gave each and every one of us free will and the wisdom to discern His will. Yet, by our own conscious choice and abuse of our freedom, we chose to be selfish and to entertain the wicked temptations which Satan put in our place, as obstacles in our way towards the Lord. Throughout the history of mankind, there had been countless occasions when people suffered, because of the tyranny of those who had power, glory, prestige and superiority over others.
For this particular case on the Holy Innocents, we should also understand the context and the reason why king Herod did what he had done, in the slaughter of the innocent infants of Bethlehem. King Herod the Great was the first king and the founder of the Herodian dynasty of kings who would rule Judea, Galilee and parts of southern Syria, which at that time, just came under the rule and domination of the mighty Roman Empire.
King Herod took over control of Judea from the previous native, Jewish dynasty of the Hasmoneans, descendants of the Maccabees, who were the ones that won the independence of Judea from foreign rule, as written in the Book of the Maccabees. King Herod took over power by deceit and with support from the Romans, who made Herod some sort of a client king, who had some authority and autonomy over Judea, but ultimately had to submit to the Romans. Herod himself was not a Jew, but an Idumean.
Herod therefore, was insecure in his power and kingdom, and therefore, the news of the coming of the King among the Jewish people, was a very bad news for him. As a foreigner ruling as king over the Jewish population, he would have felt even more insecure with this revelation, and of the Three Wise Men who came to him saying that the King of Kings would be born in Bethlehem in the territory of his kingdom.
This is why, combined with Herod’s own megalomania and grandeur, as he was known for his many huge building projects, including vast expansion of the Temple of Jerusalem and a building named after himself, the Herodium, it would be natural for Herod to want the King of Kings to be killed as a rival to his power and authority. Yet, we have to understand that he clearly had a choice in this matter. He had it within his free will and choice not to do what was so abominable and wicked as killing innocent children, but he did it nonetheless.
And why is that so, brothers and sisters in Christ? It is because of his selfishness, his inability to detach himself from his pride and ego, and his greed for power. He did not want to allow a rival King to emerge, someone who might snatch the kingdom, power and glory that was in his hands. And unfortunately, this was the same reason why many of us mankind, throughout history had done, and caused untold sufferings and pains for countless others.
Therefore, today as we celebrate this feast of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem, all of us are called to reflect on our vulnerabilities to the temptations of pride and greed in our own lives, and how we can fall deep into the trap of sin should we indulge ourselves in them as Herod had done. Unless we consciously choose to resist those temptations, it is likely that we will cause sufferings and pains to others just as king Herod had done to the innocent infants of Bethlehem, all to satisfy his pride, ego and megalomania.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, during this blessed Christmas season, are we able to devote ourselves to God with a new strength and zeal? Are we willing to resist the pull and the temptation of worldly desires and to get rid of ourselves the pride and ego within our hearts and minds? Let us all instead turn towards God and follow the selfless example of Christ in everything we say, act and do, so that from now on, we are no longer living in sin, but in the grace of God. May God be with us always. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Matthew 2 : 13-18
After the wise men had left, an Angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph and said, “Get up, take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, for Herod will soon be looking for the Child in order to kill Him.”
Joseph got up, took the Child and His mother, and left that night for Egypt, where He stayed until the death of Herod. In this way, what the Lord had said through the prophet was fulfilled : I called My Son out of Egypt.
When Herod found out that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was furious. He gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its neighbourhood who were two years old or under. This was done in line with what he had learnt from the wise men about the time when the star appeared.
In this way, what the prophet Jeremiah had said was fulfilled : A cry is heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation : Rachel weeps for her children. She refuses to be comforted, for they are no more.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Psalm 123 : 2-3, 4-5, 7cd-8
Had not the Lord been on our side, when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us alive; such was their anger against us.
A bit more and the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, the raging waters would have swept us away.
The snare was broken and we were freed. Our help is in the Name of the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.
Liturgical Colour : Red
1 John 1 : 5 – 1 John 2 : 2
We heard His message from Him and announce it to you : God is light and there is no darkness in Him. If we say we are in fellowship with Him, while we walk in darkness, we lie instead of being in truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we are in fellowship with one another, and the Blood of Jesus, the Son of God, purifies us from all sin.
If we say, “We have no sin,” we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He Who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from our wickedness. If we say that we do not sin, we make God a liar, His word is not in us.
My little children, I write to you that you may not sin. But if anyone sins, we have an Intercessor with the Father, Jesus Christ, the Just One. He is the sacrificial Victim for our sins and the sins of the whole world.
Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if yesterday we celebrated the feast of the first martyr or protomartyr of the Church, St. Stephen, then today, the second day after Christmas we celebrate the feast of another great disciple of Christ, namely St. John the Apostle and Evangelist. St. John was one of the Twelve Apostles together with his brother St. James the Greater and also one of the four Evangelists who wrote the Holy Gospels.
St. John was one of the closest disciples of the Lord, who was often present at the many important events in the life and ministry of Our Lord, such as the Transfiguration, the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, the resurrection of the daughter of the synagogue official Jairus, and many others. He was also one of the two Apostles, together with St. Peter, as mentioned in the Gospel passage today, who went immediately to the tomb where the Body of the Lord had been buried after His crucifixion, when they heard of the Lord’s resurrection.
St. John was also the author of the Epistle from which we heard our first reading passage today about God’s love being present in our midst, and He also wrote the Book of the Revelations, in which he wrote all that he had seen in the heavenly visions of what was to come, about the end of time, when Christ is to come again in glory to judge all the living and the dead. St. John received these visions towards the end of his life, when he was exiled in the island of Patmos in what is today Greece.
St. John was the only one among the Twelve Apostles who did not suffer death in martyrdom for his faith, but instead, died in a very old age many decades after the resurrection of the Lord, likely the last of the Apostles to depart from this world. His works through the Gospel and the Epistles he wrote, his life and ministry among the people of God were essential in the early years of the Church, in strengthening the faith of those who lived in persecution. St. John himself endured many persecutions and exiles, and was likely imprisoned many times for his dedication to God.
Today, the Church celebrates the feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, because we are all called through God’s Church, to imitate the examples, the faith and the dedication which St. John had in the Lord. St. John stayed by the Lord even when all the other disciples fled at the moment when Jesus was betrayed by Judas and handed over to the Sanhedrin. He followed Him with Mary, the mother of God, all the way through to Calvary and was at the foot of the cross with her.
And St. John was the one to whom the Lord Jesus entrusted His mother Mary, at the moment just before He was about to give up His Spirit and die, and at the same time, He also entrusted St. John to the care of Mary, to be her own son. In this case, St. John represents all of us humanity, which God has entrusted to be under the care of His mother, Mary; to be our mother as well, and Mary has been entrusted to us, as our beloved mother.
Today, this mission which the Lord Jesus entrusted to His disciples, and especially to St. John the Apostle, remain in us, that each and every one of us, first and foremost must love God, and must have that living and true faith in us, as St. John himself had throughout his life. And we are also called to love His mother, Mary, who is also our mother, for if we love the Son, we must definitely also love the Mother, and vice versa.
Have we, in our respective lives, showed this faith and love that we ought to have for God? If we have not done so, then during this time and season of Christmas, it is imperative that we rediscover this love and devotion which we must have for God. Otherwise, I am afraid that we still have not yet understood the true meaning of Christmas. For Christmas is the embodiment of God’s infinite and boundless love for us, that He chose to come into this world as one of our own, and to suffer and die for the sake of our salvation.
Let us all seek to grow deeper in our love for God and in our faith and devotion in Him. After all, He has loved us first, so much, despite of our constant disobedience and refusal to love Him. He is always ever patient, wanting us to return to Him and to be reconciled with Him. Let us also ask for the intercession of St. John, His beloved Apostle and also His mother Mary, that we mankind, all of us who are sinners, may come to find peace in God, and grow to love Him more and more with each and every passing day. May God bless us and our Christmas joy. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : White
John 20 : 2-8
At that time, Mary of Magdala ran to Peter, and the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and she said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid Him.”
Peter then set out with the other disciple to go out to the tomb. They ran together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down and saw the linen cloths lying flat, but he did not enter. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and entered the tomb; he, too, saw the linen cloths lying flat.
The napkin, which had been around His head, was not lying flat like the other linen cloths, but lay rolled up in its place. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in; he saw and believed.
Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 96 : 1-2, 5-6, 11-12
The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the distant islands be glad. Clouds and darkness surround Him; justice and right are His throne.
The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim His justice, all peoples see His glory.
He sheds light upon the upright, and gladness upon the just. Rejoice in the Lord, you who are blameless, and give praise to His holy Name.
Liturgical Colour : White
1 John 1 : 1-4
This is what has been from the beginning, and what we have heard and have seen with our own eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, I mean the Word Who is Life…
The Life made Itself known, we have seen Eternal Life and we bear witness, and we are telling you of it. It was with the Father and made Himself known to us. So we tell you what we have seen and heard, that you may be in fellowship with us, and us, with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
And we write this that our joy may be complete.
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 