compassion

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Sunday, 31 July 2016 : 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Priest (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday, we heard a very strong theme in the Scripture Readings, which told us about the impermanence of all things. Beginning from the Book of Ecclesiastes or Qoheleth, the one speaking in the Book told about the uselessness of and meaninglessness of the many things which we have in life.

And this ties in nicely with what we heard in the Gospel passage today, where our Lord Jesus Himself spoke to His disciples about the cautiousness that people should adopt in the way of their life, lest they be trapped into the trap of human greed and pride. The parable which Jesus told His disciples, reflected clearly this warning, should any of us fall into the temptations of worldly pleasures and desires.

In that parable, Jesus spoke about a rich man who had many possessions, barns after barns of crops and the results of bountiful harvest, which he stored until they were all in full capacity. And he planned to tear those barns down and create even bigger barns so that he might accumulate even more crops, grains and thus wealth. And thus he in his moments of pride and self-praise thought that he would gain even more and became greater, but he forgot that he is not the master of his life.

Indeed, all of us, each and every one of us are accountable to the One Who is the only Master of all our lives, the Lord and Master of all. He alone has the jurisdiction and power over us, over our life which we have no control over. And yet, many of us unfortunately fell into the thinking that we have that illusory degree of control, and thinking that we can do what we like with our lives because we should get what we want in this life.

But in case we think in that manner, then we should know that such a way of thinking is mistaken. Let us just ask ourselves, how often is it that we go out of our way to seek for more things in this world which satisfy our wants and our ego? How many of us spend much time just so that we may gain more of the wealth of the world for its various reasons?

Indeed in this world there are uses for our possessions and our wealth. We do use them for a variety of purposes, and in many cases, even for good purposes. But when that becomes an addiction and a pursuit of the flesh, then it is where the pursuit of more worldliness becomes our greatest obstacle on this path in which we are walking towards God now.

We are all mortals, all of whom live at the mercy and at the will of God. It is God Who gave us life and it is God again Who will take it back, when He calls us all to return to Him, and receive the judgment, whether we are worthy to receive His promised glory, or if we are unworthy and thus should be cast out into the utter darkness and eternal suffering in hell.

This is the fact that many of us are unaware of. We continue our pursuit of wealth, fame and human pride, satisfying our ego and wants, but at what price? Are all these going to be any help for us at the end? Just a gust of wind, a bonfire of flames, the shaking of the earth, the power of rust and other worldly forces, and in the blink of an eye, all of these may perish.

If we put our trust in these perishable things, then are we not then like those whom the Lord mentioned in another parable, that we built our houses upon the weak foundations of sand? One moment and everything may just come tumbling down. That is how meaningless and useless it is for us to be so preoccupied with worldly things that do not last, that we end up forgetting about our true goal in life, that is the Lord our God.

If we put our trust in God, we surely will not be disappointed, for God Himself is forever faithful to His people. And to all those who keep their faith in Him, He will also show His grace and love. And that was what exactly happened to the great saint whose feast happened to be on this day as well, the great founder of the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuit order, that is St. Ignatius of Loyola.

St. Ignatius of Loyola was born into a Spanish noble family, a family of high esteem and prestige, of high social status and expectation. And as a member and heir of that family, he was brought up in a life of privilege, and grew up aspiring for greater honour and glory for himself. And thus he became a knight and went through battles after battles seeking greater glory for himself.

But during one of the battles, at the siege of the castle called Pamplona in northeastern Spain, he was injured and therefore was left out of much of the battle. And at that time, he had a revelation and received the calling from God which changed his life forever. From then on, he devoted himself to a new cause, one that was far more worthy than what he did previously.

Instead of seeking personal glory and honour, St. Ignatius of Loyola from then on sought to bring forth the greater glory of God, as shown in his personal motto, which is also the motto of the Jesuits, that is ‘Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam’ or ‘For the Greater Glory of God’. It was no longer human glory and worldly desires that St. Ignatius of Loyola sought for, but instead the true treasure that can be found in God alone.

And when he gathered together like-minded people, he helped to establish one of the most influential and largest contributor to the efforts of the Church in combatting and countering the terrible heresies and damages of the so-called Protestant ‘reformation’. In the Counter-Reformation, St. Ignatius of Loyola and his Jesuit order were often at the forefront of the effort to reclaim many souls back for the Lord.

St. Ignatius of Loyola and many others who have followed in his footsteps have made their choice, to abandon behind the worldly desires of the flesh, and to take up their crosses and follow the Lord their God. Shall we all also follow the same then? Shall we not also reject the temptations of the devil, who tempted us with the temptations of pleasure and flesh to distract us from finding our true treasure in God?

May the Lord help us in discerning our path and help strengthen our faith, so that we may devote ourselves more to the Lord, and commit ourselves thoroughly to His ways. May He bless our endeavours and may He strengthen us always, be our Guide and help us to reach Him at the end of our journey. May St. Ignatius of Loyola also be our intercessor and be our inspiration on how we ought to live our lives. For the greater glory of God. Amen.

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Sunday, 31 July 2016 : 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Priest (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Colossians 3 : 1-5, 9-11

So then, if you are risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on earthly things. For you have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, Who is your life, reveals Himself, you also will be revealed with Him in Glory.

Therefore, put to death what is earthly in your life, that is immorality, impurity, inordinate passions, wicked desires and greed which is a way of worshipping idols. Do not lie to one another. You have been stripped of the old self and its way of thinking to put on the new, which is being renewed and is to reach perfect knowledge and the likeness of its Creator.

There is no room for distinction between Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, foreigner, slave or free, but Christ is all and in all.

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Saturday, 30 July 2016 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops or Saturday Mass of our Lady)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard the message of the Sacred Scriptures, telling us about the persecution that were up against the faithful people of God, foremost of which were against the prophets and holy servants of God, Jeremiah and St. John the Baptist, both of whom suffered from the persecution by the forces of the world who rejected the Lord and His message.

In the first reading, we heard about how the people and the powerful men of Judah plotted against Jeremiah for all of his supposed annoyance by his repeated doom messages and they treated him as a nuisance. Those people trusted in their power, and in the belief that they would be able to stand up against the Babylonians who were about to destroy the remnants of their kingdom, while continuing to live in sin.

What Jeremiah warned them was that the anger of God against their sins and wickedness would bring them to the fate which he had foretold to them. But as we all know how human nature works, no one is happy or welcoming to hear bad and evil news. They would not bend their ego and they refused to know that they were in such a bad state and that something would be required from them to change their ways and for them to abandon their sinful past.

Thus, it was the same as well in the Gospel we heard today. What we heard today in the Gospel is a classic example of how men and their worldly needs triumphed over their need for faith and obedience to God and His ways. King Herod Agrippa, the king of Galilee at that time, lived in a state of great sin because he illegally married and lived with the wife of his deceased brother, Philip.

In order to understand this, we should see deeper into the background and context, especially in the society at that time. One may be quick to point out that there seems to be a discrepancy between what St. John the Baptist had said to Herod and what the Sadducees said to Jesus, when they were debating about the resurrection. According to them, the laws of Moses stated that a woman need to marry her husband’s brother in order to carry on his lineage.

However, if we read carefully, that was because the husband died without having a child with the wife. In Herod’s case, it was likely that Herodias, his brother’s wife whom he married, had already had a daughter with his brother, who was the girl dancing in the presence of Herod and his guests. And thus, what he had committed, both Herod and Herodias, was tantamount to adultery and great sin before God and men alike.

And it was the anger and resentment shown by Herodias which had caused the suffering of the servant of God, St. John the Baptist, and how eventually he was martyred in prison. It was suffice to conclude that Herodias must have resented the man of God because he spoke ill about her unnatural and sinful relation with the brother of her own deceased husband, committing adultery. She must have been afraid that her position as the royal consort would be threatened.

It was the same as how it was at the time of the kingdom of Judah, at the time of the prophet Jeremiah. The people placed their trust in their own strength rather than in God, and they thought that they had everything in their control. And when Jeremiah came and proclaimed their errors, they hardened their hearts and refused to believe in, preferring to move forward in their own error.

Thus the world hated the Lord and His ways, because its ways are not compatible with His ways. And therefore, all of us who follow the Lord, will thus also face the consequences of the opposition of the world. We may be persecuted and may face difficulties along our path, but yet we should not be afraid. If God is on our side, then there is nothing we should be afraid of.

Today let us all heed the example of St. Peter Chrysologus, the saint whose feast we celebrate on this day. St. Peter Chrysologus was a great bishop of Ravenna, who was renowned for his oratorical abilities. That was why he was known as Chrysologus or ‘golden-worded’. He was known for his preaching skills and for his hard work in spreading the faith, in combatting heresies and false teachings.

St. Peter Chrysologus spoke in the same manner as the prophet Jeremiah and the servant of God, St. John the Baptist. He spoke the truth of God to the people, and he spoke with great clarity in his many sermons, calling the people of God to repentance and to turn themselves to the Lord their God. Of course he did not have it easy, as challenges from those who refused to believe, the heretics who refused to repent and all others had been obstacles to his works.

But he did not give up, and he continued to preach and to minister to the people who had been entrusted to him. And in the end, he gained for the Church many souls who otherwise would have been lost. In the same manner, no matter how difficult it was, the prophet Jeremiah and St. John the Baptist never quit, never gave up on the missions given to them, and persevered on to end.

We have to learn to be more like them, brethren. We have to learn to be devoted to God as they were, and we must renew that love which all of us ought to show to the Lord our God. The world and all who are against God will persecute us, just as they have persecuted and rejected the Lord and His servants. We have to rise above the persecution by the world, and persevere to do our best to be faithful and devoted in all things.

Let us all recommit this life we have and offer it to the Lord, and let us from now on follow His ways and His laws. May we all grow closer and more devoted to the Lord, and be faithful always in His presence. May God bless us all in our endeavours and strengthen our faith in Him. Amen.

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Friday, 29 July 2016 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Martha (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate the feast of St. Martha, one of the close friends of our Lord Jesus Christ, who went with Him and provided support to Him and His disciples. She was one of the holy women mentioned in the Gospels and in the Bible. But in the beginning, which story we heard today, she kind of lost her focus and attention on the Lord, when she welcomed the Lord for the first time into her house.

St. Martha was so busy with her chores, preparing everything for the benefit of her guests, while her sister Mary sat at the side of the Lord, listening to Him as He spoke and taught her and others there about the Lord. When St. Martha complained to the Lord that her sister was leaving her to do all the work and preparation alone, He rebuked her by saying that in her business, she had forgotten about the most important thing of all, as she was distracted by all the things she was doing.

It was not that St. Martha was doing something wrong or wicked in the sight of God, and neither was it that she intentionally ignored the Lord or refused to listen to His teachings, but rather, because of all the things that occupied her, all these things have distracted her, shut her off from the Lord, made her unable to appreciate and sense the importance of what the Lord is telling Mary and the other disciples.

Let us all ask ourselves, have we been like St. Martha? How many of us in our own lives have those occasions when the Lord called on us, and yet we ignored Him, tried to shut Him off, or trying to walk away from Him. God has been so kind to us so as to provide us with so many good things, including the best gift of all, the gift of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the source of all of our salvation and redemption.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, God has given us the best of everything, and He even provided us with all that we need. But we tend to surround ourselves, either intentionally or unintentionally with the many things and occupations in this world that distract us from our true goal in finding our way to the Lord. Be it money, pleasures of the flesh, the temptation of power and human praise, worldly fame and many other things, we are often distracted by them.

We are so busy in our pursuit for money, possessions and other things. Just think about it, brethren, how many times is it in our lives that we place our focus on the wrong things? We spend hours after many hours trying to get for ourselves ever more comfortable lives, and we desire many things, all the things that this world are pushing upon us, all the materialism weighing down upon us, and all the temptations that the devil is trying to drown us with.

Sometimes, it is good for us to take a step back and reflect. Yes, we should reflect about many things, not least of which is the actions we take in this life, and the choices which we made. Let us ask ourselves, do we choose what we want, or do we rather choose the Lord? Which one is more trustworthy, to put our trust in the Lord or to put our trust in our feeble human power?

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we all live in this important time when all that we do and everything that we have are influenced heavily by how we choose our focus in life. We have to discern and be careful in thinking and deciding how we are to devote our time and attention. Do we want to put our trust in the untrustworthy and easily lost treasures of this world, or do we rather trust in the promise of salvation from the One Who is always forever faithful?

We should be like St. Martha, who was once so busied by the daily chores and routines, by worries and other things that she was not able to see the Lord and understand Him. But eventually, she became an ardent believer, that when her brother Lazarus died from an illness, she trusted that Jesus would heal him and bring him back even from death.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, may the Lord bless us and help us. May He keep us and strengthen our faith, so that we may draw ever closer to Him and find our way to His glory and presence. May we all receive worthily the promise of eternal salvation and life that God had promised all those who placed their trust in Him. Let the examples and lessons of St. Martha and the other holy saints of God be our guide and example. God bless us all. Amen.

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Thursday, 28 July 2016 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard the Lord speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, about He Who is like the potter working on the clay on his hands. In the same way therefore, the Lord also moulded and guided the people whom He had chosen as a potter moulded the pottery from an unappealing mass of clay into an amazing and beautiful piece of art.

In order to understand this, we should link what we know of a potter’s job with what we also heard at the Gospel today regarding the kingdom of heaven likened to a big fishing net thrown into the sea, where the good fish are gathered and kept, while the bad and unwanted fish are thrown back into the sea or are destroyed. And in this, a comparison was made in terms of gathering what is good and throwing away what is wicked and undesirable.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, if we make parallels between these parables and stories with our own life, then surely we will be able to spot many things that are in accordance with how we ourselves live our lives. If our lives as mentioned is compared to a potter’s vase, with the Lord our God as our potter and shaper, then indeed, we should follow His lead in His guidance for us in how we ought to live our lives.

Let us ask ourselves, that if we go out to find and buy a flower vase or a pot, will we not look for the finest and the best quality vase or pot, so that when we have them, we may be proud and may boast of the great quality and the beauty of the flower vase or pot? Then if we are clay in the sight of God, should He not then also want to make us to be the most beautiful and precious piece of pottery, one that is worthy of His glory?

But unfortunately, while God wants to make us all the beautiful reflection of His love and glory, it is we ourselves who resist such attempts by God. We resisted Him and rejected Him, spurned His love and sought other things to worship and love. Thus, we are like clay that refused to set and harden, and we accumulate filthy impurities in us, which makes us ugly and wicked, which is the taint of sin.

Let us ask ourselves, is this what we want for ourselves? Do we want ourselves to be that ugly and imperfect pottery at the end? Indeed, we as humans as we are, we have our imperfections, as well as our weaknesses. But the question is, do we embrace these imperfections, or do we rather turn ourselves to God’s loving embrace and seek His help to free us from all these wicked things? Shall we not endeavour to reject sin in all of its forms?

The lesson for us from today’s Gospel is important, because as Jesus told His disciples, the Angels will come at the end of time, and pick up the good wheat while throwing away all of the bad and evil weeds into the fire to be burnt. The Angels of God will come to us and when at that time, we are considered to be unworthy, then it is too late for us, and the fate of punishment and suffering will be upon us.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us act from now on, and commit ourselves to change our ways, and devote ourselves to seek the Lord and walk in His ways from now on. Let us not lose our sight on the goal ahead, that is for us to be with the Lord, and devote ourselves, heart and soul to Him alone, that at the end of it all, each and every one of us will be good, worthy and beautiful in His sight, and be welcomed into His eternal glory. God bless us all. Amen.

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Thursday, 28 July 2016 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 145 : 1-2, 3-4, 5-6ab

Alleluia! Praise the Lord, my soul! I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to God while I live.

Do not put your trust in princes, in a great one who cannot save. Not sooner his spirit has left, that he goes back to the earth; on that very day, any plan comes to nothing.

Blessed are they whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, Maker of heaven and earth, the sea and all they contain.

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Wednesday, 27 July 2016 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day the readings from the Scripture tell us about turning away from our evil and wicked ways, and then seek the Lord with all of our hearts. From the first reading taken from the Book of the prophet Jeremiah, we heard about the Lord Who promised His people that He would forgive them and welcome them back if they had a change of heart and were willing to leave behind their sinful ways and regret their past mistakes.

In this, we see God in His merciful love, which He is offering to all of us mankind. To the people of the kingdom of Judah, He had also offered the same mercy and forgiveness. Yet, as they refused to repent and continued in their sins, worshipping pagan gods and idols and brought profanation upon the holy altar of God. They refused to bend their knees and to obey the Lord, and for that, they suffered the consequences of their disobedience.

They have placed their bet in the world and in their own power, and they got what they had dealt with. But the Lord is always trying to give us a chance, and trying all the time to bring as many of us as possible back to His loving embrace. And that was why He gave us His own Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to bring to us the full revelation of truth about Him, His love and what we all should do to be saved.

And all of this is revealed in the Gospel today, as Jesus spoke of the parable of the treasure and the kingdom of God. In that parable, Jesus likened the kingdom of God with the treasure, which all of us should aspire for and should look for. The kingdom of God is likened to a pearl of great and unsurpassable quality, a pearl of such excellence and price that all who see it should hearken to it and get it.

And this is the problem which many of us have, brothers and sisters in Christ. It is often that we do not know what is the true treasure of our life. Instead, we end up looking for the wrong treasures in this life, either because of ignorance, or because of the temptations and persuasions we faced, from the community, from the norms of our world and all the other things that pushed us to seek all the worldly things instead of finding our way to the Lord.

Let us ask ourselves, what is the worth of all the money and possessions that we gathered? What is the worth of all the fame and the praise we heaped upon ourselves? All of these will not be of good use to us at the time when we leave this world behind to our judgment. Yes, we should know that we are not going to carry our wealth or all the human fame and praises with us. It is only our deeds and actions that will be our sole proof to be shown to God.

Thus, we should heed what our Lord Jesus said on another occasion, asking us not to put our trust or gather treasures for ourselves that can be destroyed by fire, or by water, or by rust or by moth and other worldly forces. Rather, build for ourselves the true treasures of the kingdom of heaven, the incomparable pearl of great quality, by doing what God has asked us to do, by obeying His laws and commandments, loving Him and our fellow brethren.

May God help us on our journey, and may He strengthen our faith that we may not stumble along the way and be tempted into sin again. But let us renew our commitment to live faithfully with our God, and strive to be ever faithful and be ever righteous in His presence. God bless us all. Amen.

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Wednesday, 27 July 2016 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Jeremiah 15 : 10, 16-21

Woe is me, Mother, why did you bring me to the light? A man of dissension throughout the land! I owe them nothing, neither do they owe me, yet they all curse me!

I devoured Your words when they came. They were my happiness and I felt full of joy when You made Your Name rest on me. Never did I associate with worldly people, amusing myself with scoffers! When Your hand was upon me I stood apart and You filled me with Your anger.

Why is there no end to my sorrow or healing for my wound? Why do You deceive me, and why does my spring suddenly dry up? Then YHVH spoke to me, “If you return I will take you back and you will serve Me again. Draw the gold from the dross and you will be as My own mouth. You must draw them to you and not go over to them.”

“I will make you a fortress and a wall of bronze facing them; if they fight against you they will not overcome you; I am with you to free you and save you. I will redeem you from the wicked and free you from the hands of tyrants.”

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Tuesday, 26 July 2016 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Joachim and St. Anne, Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in today’s first reading taken from the Book of the prophet Jeremiah, we heard about the lamentation about the kingdom of Judah, how that kingdom has been overrun and has been abandoned by the favour of God, awaiting its final days and downfall. It was far from what it was like during the glorious days of kings David and Solomon.

And all of that was caused by the disobedience of the people of God, who have grown to trust their wealth and power more than they trust in God. And as a result, they have also wandered off away from the path that God had set for them. They have disobeyed His precepts, tortured and rejected His prophets and messengers, and they have lived in debauchery and wicked life, led by many of their kings who were unfaithful.

And thus God has abandoned His people to their enemies, allowing them to tear at them and made them suffer, as the just punishment and consequences for their lack of faith in Him. But it does not mean that He entirely despised them or did not care for them, as we have to understand that what God despises is the sins that we have committed, the wicked things that tainted us all in the body, heart and soul.

God loves all of us His children. We are the most beloved and precious of His creations. Yet, it pained Him to see that His beloved children abandoned Him and chose rather to be with the false gods and idols which they deemed to be their gods instead of their only one and only true God. He loves us all in person, and He cares for each and every one of us, but it is the sins that we have committed which separated us from Him.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, that is why in the Gospel passage today, we heard about the Lord Jesus Who spoke to His disciples about the parable of the wheat and the weed. The Lord is the sower, Who sowed good seeds in our hearts, as we are all the fertile lands and grounds upon which God had given His grace and blessings. But the devil sowed the seeds of division and confusion, hoping that these would strangle the faith inside of us and trap us with the snares of sin.

If we allow these seeds to grow and develop, then I am afraid that over time it will grow to ensnare us and make it difficult for us to be faithful and loyal disciple of our Lord and God. Temptations and falsehoods of the devil are plentiful, and these are the things that will help those wicked seeds to grow, while preventing the growth or suffocating the growth of the seeds of faith inside each and every one of us.

And thus, perhaps it is good for us to take note of the examples of the two great and venerable saints whose feast we are celebrating today. They are none other than the parents of the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, making them to be the grandparents of our Lord and Saviour. St. Joachim and St. Anne were the parents of Mary, the Mother of our Lord, and through their devout and good life as well as their good care of Mary, they have played a great part in the Lord’s plan of salvation.

Indeed, Mary had been conceived without sin, as the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, a centre tenet of our faith has told us, but it is equally important that she was brought up in a good family with a devout and faithful upbringing, which certainly St. Joachim and St. Anne had done for their daughter. This then highlights to us the importance of our own Christian families in the strengthening of the faith in each and every one of us.

Many of us do not realise it, but the family is a very important part of the Church, one of the strong pillars that helped to hold it all together. Without a stable and good family structure, and without a family that devote itself to the Lord and actively promote devotions and commitment towards God, then I am afraid that was the very reason why so many Christians had erred and been led into the falsehoods and the temptations of the devil.

Instead, as Christians, especially those of us in the families of Christ, each and every one of us, be it as a father, or as a mother, as a brother or a sister, as sons and daughters, all of us have a role to play in our Christian families. We are the foundations of the Church, as the saying goes that a family who prays together, stays together. If our families are run and kept as how Mary’s family was, and later on, as how the Holy Family was like, then surely there will be no problem.

The confusion and the wickedness spread by the devil can only grow when the situation and condition is ripe for such a growth, namely in situations where parental care is lacking, and where the Christian values that are supposed to be inculcated since young through the family are absent. Certainly, we do not want this to happen.

Therefore, let us all commit ourselves anew to the Lord by strengthening our families, filled with faith, and devote ourselves anew. May God bless us all and keep us all in His grace, and may His blessings and graces be upon us always, now and forever. Amen.

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Monday, 25 July 2016 : Feast of St. James, Apostle (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the feast day of one of the great Twelve Apostles, the chief disciples and servants of our Lord Jesus Christ. Today is the feast of St. James the Apostle, also known as St. James the Greater, the brother of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist. They were featured in today’s Gospel as their mother came up to Jesus with them and asked Him to grant a great favour to her sons, that is to sit at the sides of the Lord in His triumph.

The attitude of the mother of the two Apostles, as well as the two Apostles themselves would serve to highlight the misunderstanding that the world often have with regards to power, influence, fame and all the things which we mankind often link together with greatness and success. But St. Paul in his letter to the faithful in Corinth reminded them all that the true treasure we have in us is in reality, the treasure of Christ, by sharing in His death and resurrection.

The people of this world by its nature are looking for good and happy things, putting their trust in accumulating and gathering more and more of what would satisfy their desires, all the temptation of power, of pleasure and debauchery, of fame and human praise, the glorification of the ego and the person above that of the suffering that others may endure due to our endless pursuits for those things.

But to be a disciple of Christ, we have to heed what the Lord Himself had said to St. James and St. John, that they would drink from the same cup of suffering and persecution that the Lord would drink, and they would share in the same persecution and opposition which He had endured from the world. To be a follower of Christ, it also means that we may be ridiculed and be rejected by the world, as our ways may then come into conflict with what the world considers as a norm.

Indeed, our Lord Himself showed by the examples He Himself had done. That by rejecting human pride and desire, He came into the world not to boast of His own power and majesty, but instead to serve and care with love a people whom He had claimed for Himself. He told His disciples, that while the way and the norm of this world is for the strong to oppress the weak with their power, it should not be so for those who follow Him.

And St. James took this advice to the heart and committed himself to the service of God with zeal and devotion. He ministered to the people of God and worked hard to establish the foundations of the early Church. He proclaimed the Gospel and the Good News to the world, telling the people about their Lord and Saviour, going even as far as the land of Hispania, now in Spain, to evangelise to the people there, where now a great Cathedral is standing for his honour, the renowned Cathedral of St. James of Compostela, Santiago de Compostela.

Lastly, as the fulfilment of what Christ our Lord Himself had told both St. James and St. John, indeed, St. James would share in the suffering of the Lord, by being imprisoned on the order of king Herod of Galilee. He was suffering in prison, and for the pride and greed of the wicked and unfaithful king, he was martyred, one of the first among the Twelve Apostles to suffer martyrdom for their faith in God.

And while his brother, St. John the Apostle and Evangelist was known to be the only one among the Twelve Apostles not to face martyrdom, but St. John also suffered greatly in his many years of life and service to the Church. St. John was imprisoned many times, and had to run for fear of his life many times, but remained faithful to the Lord to the end.

All of these showed us, brothers and sisters in Christ, as we rejoice in the glory of God’s holy saints and Apostles, that being a follower of Christ require commitment, hard work and perseverance. It will not be an easy path for us to follow if we choose to be faithful to God. If we think it has been easy so far, then we have to remember what Christ had said, that we ought to follow Him by taking up our own crosses in life and walk in His path.

Perhaps in many occasions we have allowed ourselves to let go of the many obligations of being Christians. Perhaps we have allowed ourselves to be swayed by the arguments and judgments of this world that led us into confusion and inability to discern and decide what it is like to be a Christian, that is to be truly faithful and to be committed to our calling to be one of God’s chosen ones.

Let us discern this and reflect on this matter as we celebrate the feast of the great Apostle St. James. Let us all follow in his footsteps and reinvigorate our effort to live ever more faithfully as those whom God had called and chosen. Let us all be fearful no more, but instead renew our faith in Him and be ever closer to Him and be faithful to all of His ways. God bless us all. Amen.