darkness

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Friday, 6 December 2013 : 1st Week of Advent, Memorial of St. Nicholas, Bishop (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet or White (Bishops)

Isaiah 29 : 17-24

In a very short time, Lebanon will become a fruitful field and the fruitful field will be as a forest. On that day the deaf will hear the words of the book, and out of the dark and obscurity, the eyes of the blind will see. The meek will find joy and the poor among men will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.

For the tyrant will be no more and the scoffers gone forever, and all who plan to do evil will be cut down – those who by a word make you guilty, those who for a bribe can lay a snare and send home the just empty-handed.

Therefore YHVH, Abraham’s Redeemer, speaks concerning the people of Jacob : No longer will Jacob be ashamed; no longer will his face grow pale. When he sees the work of My hands, his children again in his midst, they will sanctify My Name, they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and stand in awe of the God of Israel.

Those who err in spirit will understand; those who murmur will learn.

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Sunday, 17 November 2013 : 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord shall come as He had promised, and the hour of His coming is drawing very near indeed. And we do not know when this will exactly happen. It is only the Lord who knows the time of His second coming, when He will come to judge all creations, and indeed, to judge all of us, whether we will be found worthy or unworthy to be with Him in the glory of heaven.

That was what the prophet Malachi, the last of all the prophets of the Old Testament had proclaimed, that the Lord will come again, and His coming will be likened to a sun of justice, the light and brightness of which shall unveil all errors and evils, cast out all things dark into its proper place, that is in the darkness of hell, which will be condemned together with those rebels and wicked ones, at the end of time.

Yes, the Lord had indeed once come into this world of ours, God incarnate into our frail body of man, and the divine who assumed the mortality of our human flesh, in Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, and yet at the same time, also the Son of God, fully man and fully divine. This is the first coming of our Lord, who came to destroy the veil of darkness that had separated us for so long from our God. This veil is sin.

The Lord had come to pierce the veil of darkness, and place in all of us, each of us, the light that belongs to Him. This is so that we truly can belong to Him who is Light, as the children of the light, and not of the false light, that is Lucifer, the fallen lightbearer, the deceiver of mankind, and the evil one. In Jesus Christ who came into our world to be our Messiah, our Saviour, exists the fullness of God’s redemption and love.

Yes, the Lord has offered us full pardon and the complete extent of His love for us. All we need is to believe in Him, believe in His death and His resurrection, through whom He had made all these possible for us. Just as He had risen from the dead and elevated into the heavenly glory, assuming His place at the right hand of the Father, we too will be raised up, just as Jesus had promised us through His disciples.

But all of these do not come free and easy, my brothers and sisters, for we have to work and toil hard for it to come about. This is just as St. Paul had said in his letter to the Church in Thessaly, how they laboured and worked hard. They laboured not only for their own sustenance, that they will not bother and be a burden to the people whom they worked with, but they also laboured for the sake of the Gospel.

That is why we too must labour and work, not in any menial way, but what we need to do is that we need to live up the faith that we have in God and show that faith through actions and through love that we show in our actions. We have to show our love for God through our actions, by serving Him wholeheartedly, and by loving our fellow men, especially those who need most of our love and help.

In us, Jesus has dwelled and remained within us, if we have accepted Him as our Lord through the waters of baptism. The Holy Spirit from the Lord dwells within each of us the faithful ones, and we become the Temples of the Holy Spirit. We have been planted with the seeds of goodness, that is with faith, hope, and love, the three most important cardinal virtues. That is why we are expected to bear fruits of faith, the fruits of hope, and ultimately the fruits of love, through our actions that reflect our nature, which itself is a reflection of God.

Jesus Himself referred to His own Body as the Temple of God, as from the time of His coming onwards, and from the time when He had fulfilled the grand plan of salvation, that is dying on the cross at Calvary, the physical Temple of Jerusalem was no longer necessary. The Temple was first built by King Solomon and prepared by his father, King David, built of great beauty and adorned with great wealth and adornments worthy of the Almighty God, Lord and King of all kings.

That Temple was razed at the fall of the city of Jerusalem and the end of the kingdom of Judea to the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar. The exiled people of Israel returned to their homeland after seventy years in Babylonian exile, and built the second Temple, which lasted until the time of King Herod the Great, the same King Herod who was mentioned in the birth of Christ, the one trying to kill Jesus.

King Herod rebuilt that Temple into a magnificent Temple that we refer to as the Temple of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. It took many years to build, and it was not to be completed until decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection. And only a few years after its completion, it would be destroyed by the Romans after a failed Jewish rebellion, which saw the expulsion of the Jews from their homeland. This was the fulfillment of what Jesus had said, that the Temple as it was would not stand and remain, and would be destroyed.

But Jesus also referred to His Body, that is the Temple, which is referred to in other similar Gospel passages, where the people taunted Him when Jesus said that He will tear down the Temple of God and rebuild it in three days. The physical Temple, as we can see, has given way to the real Temple, that is Jesus Christ Himself, God incarnate. This we can see when the veil of the Temple was torn apart when Jesus gave up His life, signalling the end of separation of God from mankind.

Yes, the tearing of that veil symbolises the beginning of a new era for all mankind, that is for all of us. The veil was once used to separate the Holy of holies where God resided in the Temple, and all the people. That veil represented the separation that was present between us and God, that is the barrier preventing us from approaching God. That barrier and veil was indeed sin, our sinfulness.

Jesus tore down that veil by His death, where He brought upon Himself, the punishments for the sins of the entire world. With that singular act, He had made us all worthy once again of God, and we would no longer be impeded on our way to the Lord our Creator and our God. And Jesus has given Himself to us, that from then on, we would live in Him and He in us. Through the Most Holy Eucharist, He had resolved to come and dwell within us, making us the new Temple of His Presence.

That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, we ought to prepare, that we ensure daily cleanliness and purity of this holy Temple, that is our body and soul, as God has resided in all of us who believe in Him. We cannot contemplate to sin or commit any evil acts that will corrupt this holy Temples of ours, incompatible with God. Remember that without God we are nothing, and antagonising God is the last thing we all should think of doing.

That said, as mentioned earlier, Jesus promised us the coming end of times, and the fulfillment of salvation. He promised that we will not suffer death but receive new and eternal life, if we all remain faithful to Him. He will be a beautiful light as the sun of justice to all who believe and to all who are righteous in their ways. But to those who are wicked and keep wickedness and evil in their ways, their acts, and their thoughts, they will suffer greatly.

We should not be worried for the coming of the kingdom of God, brethren, for worrying bring about no good. Indeed, worry only distracts us from the real work that we have to do. And worry in this case, that is about our fate and our salvation, only highlight the nature of our self-centredness and our selfishness. We tend to become idle in worry and therefore fail to do what is expected from us.

We ought to love, and to show that love in our daily actions and deeds. We cannot be lax, brethren, for the coming of our Lord is known to Him alone, and that is why we must be ever ready, and ever prepared for His coming. No better way to do this, than to profess our faith daily to Him through real action and real dedication of love, of our hope, to our brethren, especially those who desperately are in need of them.

May the Lord therefore, the great sun of justice, the great and true Light of the world, shine His light upon us, on the path that we are to take, that we may keep faithfully to the path that He had shown us. Hence, we will not fall or go astray from the truth, and seek instead the lies of the devil, in the pleasures of the world. May God continue to love us, watch over us, and guide us as we approach towards His great kingdom. God bless us all. Amen.

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Thursday, 14 November 2013 : 32nd Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Wisdom 7 : 22 – Wisdom 8 : 1

Because Wisdom, who designed them all, taught me. In her is a Spirit that is intelligent, saintly, unique, manifold, subtle, active, concise, pure, and lucid. It cannot corrupt, loves what is good and nothing can restrain it; it is beneficent, loving humankind, steadfast, dependable, calm though almighty. It sees everything and penetrates all spirits, however intelligent, subtle, and pure they may be.

Wisdom, in fact, surpasses in mobility all that moves, and being so pure pervades and permeates all things. She is a breath of the power of God, a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; nothing impure can enter her. She is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of God’s action and an image of His goodness.

She is but One, yet Wisdom can do all things and, herself unchanging, she renews all things. She enters holy souls, making them prophets and friends of God, for God loves only those who live with Wisdom. She is indeed more beautiful than the sun and surpasses all the constellations; she outrivals light, for light gives way to night, but evil cannot prevail against Wisdom.

Wisdom displays her strength from one end of the earth to the other, ordering all things rightly.

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Wednesday, 6 November 2013 : 31st Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 111 : 1-2, 4-5, 9

Alleluia! Blessed is the one who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in His commands. His children will be powerful on earth; the upright’s offspring will be blessed.

He is for the righteous a light in darkness, He is kind, merciful, and upright. It will be well with him who lends freely, who leads a life of justice and honesty.

He gives generously to the poor, his merits will last forever and his head will be raised in honour.

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Monday, 28 October 2013 : 30th Week of Ordinary Time, Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude, Apostles (Scripture Reflection)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Today, brothers and sisters in Christ, we celebrate the feast of two of the Twelve Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, namely St. Simon, well known once as the Zealot, because he belonged to the faction of the Jews called the Zealots who were bitterly opposed to the Roman Empire dominance over Judea and the people of Israel. The other one is St. Jude, son of James, also often better known as St. Jude Thaddeus, to distinguish them from the traitor, Judas Iscariot.

They were among those who had given their all for the cause of Christ after they had witnessed Jesus and His ministry in this world, even unto giving up their own life in sacred martyrdom as they spread the Good News of salvation to the far ends of the world. St. Simon the Zealot went far and travelled to the ends of the known world at the time, spreading the word of God to people of many nations.

He was martyred in his mission, and met his death defending the faith he had in God, after a life of full dedication to the Lord, and after having saved many souls of nations and bring them back to God. St. Jude Thaddeus, whom we all know as a patron saint for hopeless and difficult cases, also went far and travelled around the regions, preaching the Gospel and salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord.

He converted many to the cause of the Lord, and bring the faith to faraway lands, including Armenia, Libya, and present day Iraq. He was martyred in area now known as Lebanon, together with St. Simon the Zealot I had mentioned earlier, and were beheaded together in the defense of their faith. Their deaths on the same occasion, is the reason why we celebrate their feasts together on the same day, that is this day.

The Apostles were called from among the many disciples of Christ, to be the closest confidants and followers of Christ, and to be the witnesses of the Lord’s grand plan for salvation, witnessing the rebirth of mankind from the darkness which had engulfed them for so long, into the light of God.

These were witnessed by the Apostles, as well as some of the disciples, in its entirety, save for Judas Iscariot, who faltered along the way and betrayed the Lord to His death. He is no longer counted among the Apostles, and indeed, perhaps even among those who are saved in Christ. The other Apostles too faced difficulties, and they too faltered especially when Christ was taken away from them by the chief priests and the Roman authorities.

Yet, the Holy Spirit came upon them and dwell deep in their hearts, and they were empowered and encouraged, to stand up and defend the faith they have received from God, and went on to be on the front lines, working, preaching, and spreading to all nations the Good News of salvation. Their mission, given to them by God is not an easy one, but they persevered and feared not any persecution nor opposition.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us today, therefore, follow in the example of the Holy Apostles, especially that of St. Simon the Zealot and St. Jude Thaddeus, whose feasts we are celebrating today, proclaiming God’s glory and power to all the nations, without fear and with complete faith in the Lord our God. Let us strive for the Lord’s sake and for the sake of His people, our brethren, especially those who still live in the darkness of sin.

May the Lord strengthen us and our faith, empowering us with His love. God’s love be with us all. Amen.

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Saturday, 12 October 2013 : 27th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are ever reminded of the love and kindness that God has shown us all these while. We are also reminded of the love and dedication that God has for us, by sending a deliverance to us in His Son, Jesus Christ. We are then finally reminded of the promise of salvation and eternal joy that He had made with us, through the covenant, the new covenant sealed by the Blood of His Son Jesus on the cross.

That everlasting joy, the happiness that never ends will be ours, if we remain faithful to the Lord, and if we are consistent in our commitment to the Lord and His cause. If we do so, we will receive rich rewards in the end, while those who diverge from the path of righteousness and turned their backs to the Lord, they will be damned to eternal suffering in hell.

However, brothers and sisters in Christ, we must not be focused too much on the rewards and punishments that await us at the end of our lives. Our love for the Lord must not be because of our fear of punishment or indeed because we desire rewards from the Lord. In that manner, our love and devotion to the Lord must be really genuine and pure, without any hidden desires or purposes.

The Lord rewards the just and all those who keep His commandments, staying true to His laws and words, tempted not by the worldly pleasures and evils. He loves us dearly and wants us to remain in His grace. He is loving and forgiving, caring for all of us. But if we divert from the path of the Lord, and walk in the land of the wicked, His anger will be upon us.

But the Lord is angry at us not because He does not love us, but precisely because He cares for all of us with all of His heart. He sent us prophets and helpers along time, and all these times, He had given much of His attention to us, that we can be saved, and be worthy of Him, and not fall into eternal suffering of death.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, it is often that we spurned God’s eternal love for us. It is often that we turned away from His loving embrace, from His light, as we prefer darkness to the light of God. In the darkness of the pleasures of this world, we find the false guide and the false light, and we spurned God’s love and God’s care for all of us.

Therefore, brethren, let us renew our commitment to the Lord, to be loving children of God, loving one another and loving He who is our Father, promising that we will keep true to His words and His proclamations, casting away all that is evil from our lives and doing good at all times, giving love to our fellow men. God bless us all. Amen.

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Thursday, 10 October 2013 : 27th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

The Lord is love, and He cares for us like a father cares for his children. That is no mere love, but unconditional love, a form of pure love between individuals that is corrupted neither by worldly desires nor by our personal desires. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, that, in essence, is what the love and dedication the Lord our God has for us, as our Father and Creator, and as our friend and caretaker.

Much blessings and graces He had prepared for us, and He had prepared His angels to come and serve to our needs. It does not mean that ever since we have sinned against God, then we are forever cut out of His loving embrace. In fact, He brings us even closer towards Himself and tries His best to return us to the path of the righteous that we will live in glory and not die in condemnation.

All these He had generously prepared for us, and everything is ready to be unleashed upon us, awaiting only for our call to Him. Just like a father and his children, that if the children call out for the father in need of something, that father will rush immediately to his children’s side, leaving everything that he is currently doing, and ready to deliver to his children, his help and his undying love.

Such is the nature of God’s love for us, and we are truly special to Him, each and every one of us. The Lord needs us only to call out to Him. Yes, we only need to ask and knock at His doors, and He will certainly answer us. What we need is simply to come and approach Him with an open heart, open for His love and care for us. If we do not knock, or if we are afraid to approach Him because of our fear for His anger, then we will never gain access to the Lord’s unfailing help.

The Lord also does not punish us or rebuke us without a clear reason, and neither did He punish us because He took pleasure in seeing our suffering and pain. On the contrary, what He truly wished from us is our liberation from sin, and the chains of slavery which had bounded us to sin from the beginning of time.

He admonishes us and punishes us like a father punishing his child, driven not by hatred or anger, but by love, genuine love he has for his child. Therefore, in the same way, God who is our Father also loves us so dearly that, in order to prevent us from falling again into sin and therefore risk losing us for eternity to damnation in hell, He makes Himself available for us, to seek, to knock at His door, and to seek for His love and mercy.

We have to remember the fundamental thing that, we belong to the Lord, and therefore, it is natural that He wants us to behave exactly like what He expects of us, that is to be good and loving just as He is good and loving. He, as our eternal Father certainly will not let harm or evil come to us. He will use all within His power to deliver us from the hands of Satan, and He will make sure that we remain in the light.

That is why, brethren, let us, from now on, commit ourselves to love the Lord our God and Father ever more, and no longer walk in the path of sin and darkness, but instead walk in the light with God. May the Lord who loves us with all of His heart, continue to love us and empower us with His love, that we too may love Him in the same way, as well as loving our fellow brothers and sisters, the same children of God.

For too long we have belonged in the darkness, and it is time for us to rise up and walk towards God’s love. Let us wait no longer and instead accept the offer of the Lord’s salvation, He who extended His hands for us all, that we may walk in His path and be saved, in eternal life of bliss and joy in heaven. May God Almighty and ever-loving Lord continue to strengthen us with His love, protecting us and caring for us, admonishing us whenever we err in our path, but at the same time, giving us hope for eternal salvation in Him.

God be with us all and may He open His door, the door of His love to us, just as we open the doors of our heart to His loving presence. Amen.

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Tuesday, 24 September 2013 : 25th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we hear a very profound message from our Lord Jesus, that He had made all those who are righteous and do the will of God, being obedient to the Law as His own, as the ones counted among those to whom He gives His everlasting care and attention.

Yes, Jesus had come down from heaven, God incarnate as Man, so that He can be with us, and claim us from the darkness that enslaved us all. He revealed to all the children of God, even today, on the nature of God’s love for us, so much so that He sent His only Son, that we may be saved and have life in Him.

Being the children of God, as the most beloved and precious of His creations, mankind has long been destined for great things. For even the stewardship of this world was entrusted to us through our ancestors, through God’s commands to Adam and Eve, his wife. Yet, we have fallen from grace by our corruption with sin and no longer worthy to call God, our Father.

That is where Christ came in, and His coming into this world had reestablished that link between us and the Father. He had become one of us, that our links with God become ever more tangible, and He who is God, lives within us and is present within us, we who receive the gifts of His Most Precious Body and Blood through the Holy Eucharist in the Mass.

Yes, now that the Lord is in us, and we in Him, we have been made and marked as truly belonged to the Lord, and freed from the bonds and slavery under sin. All this, if we would accept Christ as our Lord and Saviour, and most importantly, showing it in a concrete manner, by following the will of God, that is loving one another, and through that, loving God with all our strengths.

Through Christ, we have been remade, and made pure and wonderful again in the presence of the Lord. Through Him, we cast aside our old and sinful selves and embrace new and loving life, life anchored in faith and love towards God who also loves us dearly. It is precisely like what we read today in the first reading, on the efforts of the rebuilding of the House of God, the Temple, in Jerusalem, after the return of Israel from the exile in Babylon.

The people of Israel had done things abhorred by God and rebelled against His love, and therefore, was punished by being given over to their enemies. They suffered in exile, separated from the land God had promised them, because they had broken the covenant their ancestors had established with God, ever since the days of Abraham.

Yet, God showed them His mercy, and through His power exercised via Cyrus and Darius, the rulers of the Persian Empire, the people of God was allowed once again to walk on the land God had given them and dwell in it. The first Temple and House of the Lord, the one King Solomon had made was destroyed with Jerusalem when the Babylonians took over the city, and yet, in the first reading today, we hear about the rebuilding of the Temple, which would become the Second Temple, still standing by the time of Christ, and was the place where He often taught the people during His earthly ministry.

In the same way, the Lord had established a new Temple, that is the Temple of His Body, that even when the physical Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed soon later by the Romans, the real Temple of God, that is His house, remains. Each one of us who have faith in Christ and obey the will of God, are these new Houses of the Lord, the Holy Temple in which God resides.

And now because we are the Temples of the Lord, then within each one of us had been entrusted with a great light of God. That is why it is important that we do not hide that light, but reveal it for all to see. If we do things that are wicked and against the Lord’s wishes, essentially what we have done is that we have been corrupting that Temple that is our body and our being.

Therefore, the light that is within us will not be able to shine brightly, as it is hidden behind screen of darkness and evils, which marred the light God had given to all of us. Hence, dear brethren, let us from now on respond to this matter, and most importantly, have the resolve to break free from this prison of darkness and returns to the light.

Let us, from this moment onward, no longer fear to show the light that is in us to the world, to all those who are around us. Let us be the light placed on the lampstand, to be shown to all peoples, the bright light within us that can never be dimmed. Remember, that Christ, the Light of the world, is also lifted up high above the earth, that He was seen by all. That all who sees that Light, may have a new hope, that is an eternal life of happiness and true joy with God.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, because we who have accepted and received Christ into ourselves had already had Christ within each and every one of us, therefore, we as the possessions of Christ, should also reflect His light in us, and show it to the world, as the light that nurtures and show the way to others still lost in the darkness.

Let us not be fearful and be courageous to take up the challenge God had given us, to shine brightly and show our faith to the world without hesitation. Be like Christ who showed His love for all, and yes, indeed, for all to see, that all who saw Him receive new life through salvation. May the Lord strengthen us and empower us to love, to love both Him and one another. Amen.

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

Liturgical Colour : Green

Colossians 1 : 9-14

Because of this, from the day we received news of you, we have not ceased praying to God for you, that you may attain the full knowledge of His will through all the gifts of wisdom and spiritual understanding. May your lifestyle be worthy of the Lord and completely pleasing to Him. May you bear fruit in every good work and grow in the knowledge of God.

May you become strong in everything by a sharing of the Glory of God, so that you may have great endurance and persevere in joy. Constantly give thanks to the Father who has empowered us to receive our share in the inheritance of the saints in His kingdom of light. He rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son. In Him we are redeemed and forgiven.

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Tuesday, 3 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

1 Thessalonians 5 : 1-6, 9-11

You do not need anyone to write to you about the delay and the appointed time for these events. You know that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When people feel secure and at peace, the disaster will suddenly come upon them as the birth pangs of a woman in labour, and they will not escape.

But you, beloved, are not in darkness; so that day will not surprise you like a thief. All of you are citizens of the light and the day; we do not belong to night and darkness. Let us not, therefore, sleep as others do, but remain alert and sober.

For God has not willed us to be condemned but to win salvation through Christ Jesus our Lord. He died for us so that we might enter into life with Him, whether we are still awake or already asleep. Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, as you are doing now.