disunity

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Thursday, 12 March 2015 : 3rd Week of Lent (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Luke 11 : 14-23

At that time, one day Jesus was driving out a demon, which was mute. When the demon had been driven out, the mute person could speak, and the people were amazed. Yet some of them said, “He drives out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the chief of the demons.” Others wanted to put Him to the test, by asking Him for a heavenly sign.

But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them, “Every nation divided by civil war is on the road to ruin, and will fall. If Satan also is divided, his empire is coming to an end. How can you say that I drive out demons by calling upon Beelzebul? If I drive them out by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons drive out demons? They will be your judges, then.”

“But if I drive out demons by the finger of God; would not this mean that the kingdom of God has come upon you? As long as a man, strong and well armed, guards his house, his goods are safe. But when a stronger man attacks and overcomes him, the challenger takes away all the weapons he relied on, and disposes of his spoils.”

“Whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not gather with Me, scatters.”

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Sunday, 23 March 2014 : 3rd Sunday of Lent (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

John 4 : 5-42

Jesus came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well is there. Tired from His journey, Jesus sat down by the well; it was about noon. Now a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had just gone into town to buy some food.

The Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan and a woman, for a drink?” (For Jews, in fact, have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift of God! If you knew who it is, who is asking you for a drink, you yourself would have asked Me, and I would have given you living water.”

The woman answered, “Sir, You have no bucket, and this well is deep; where is Your living water? Are You greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank from it himself, together with his sons and his cattle?”

Jesus said to her, “Those who drink of this water will be thirsty again; but those, who drink of the water that I shall give, will never be thirsty; for the water, that I shall give, will become in them a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to Him, “Give me this water, that I may never be thirsty, and never have to come here to draw water.” Jesus said, “Go, call your husband, and come back here.” The woman answered, “I have no husband.” And Jesus replied, “You are right to say, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you said is true.”

The woman then said to Him, “I see You are a prophet; tell me this : Our ancestors came to this mountain to worship God; but you Jews, do you not claim that Jerusalem is the only place to worship God?”

Jesus said to her, “Believe Me, woman, the hour is coming when you shall worship the Father, but that will not be on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is even now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for that is the kind of worshippers the Father wants. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit, and truth.”

The woman said to Him, “I know that the Messiah (that is the Christ) is coming. When He comes, He will tell us everything.” And Jesus said, “I who am talking to you, I am He.” At this point the disciples returned, and were surprised that Jesus was speaking with a woman; however, no one said, “What do You want?” or, “Why are You talking with her?”

So the woman left her water jar and ran to the town. There she said to the people, “Come and see a Man who told me everything I did! Could He not be the Christ?” So they left the town and went to meet Him.

In the meantime the disciples urged Jesus, “Master, eat.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” And the disciples wondered, “Has anyone brought Him food?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the One who sent Me, and to carry out His work.”

“You say that in four months there will be the harvest; now, I say to you, look up and see the fields white and ready for harvesting. People who reap the harvest are paid for their work, and the fruit is gathered for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.”

“Indeed the saying holds true : One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap where you did not work or suffer; others have worked, and you are now sharing in their labours.”

In that town many Samaritans believed in Him when they heard the woman who declared, “He told me everything I did.” So, when they came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them, and Jesus stayed there two days. After that, many more believed because of His own words, and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you told us; We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is the Saviour of the world.”

 

Alternative Reading (shorter version)

 

John 4 : 5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42

Jesus came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well is there. Tired from His journey, Jesus sat down by the well; it was about noon. Now a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had just gone into town to buy some food.

The Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan and a woman, for a drink?” (For Jews, in fact, have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift of God! If you knew who it is, who is asking you for a drink, you yourself would have asked Me, and I would have given you living water.”

The woman answered, “Sir, You have no bucket, and this well is deep; where is Your living water? Are You greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank from it himself, together with his sons and his cattle?”

Jesus said to her, “Those who drink of this water will be thirsty again; but those, who drink of the water that I shall give, will never be thirsty; for the water, that I shall give, will become in them a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to Him, “Give me this water, that I may never be thirsty, and never have to come here to draw water. I see You are a prophet; tell me this : Our ancestors came to this mountain to worship God; but you Jews, do you not claim that Jerusalem is the only place to worship God?”

Jesus said to her, “Believe Me, woman, the hour is coming when you shall worship the Father, but that will not be on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is even now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for that is the kind of worshippers the Father wants. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit, and truth.”

The woman said to Him, “I know that the Messiah (that is the Christ) is coming. When He comes, He will tell us everything.” And Jesus said, “I who am talking to you, I am He.”

In that town many Samaritans believed in Him. So, when they came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them, and Jesus stayed there two days. After that, many more believed because of His own words, and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is the Saviour of the world.”

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Sunday, 26 January 2014 : 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

1 Corinthians 1 : 10-13, 17

I beg of you, brothers, in the Name of Christ Jesus, our Lord, to agree among yourselves and do away with divisions; please be perfectly united, with one mind and one judgment.

For I heard from people of Cloe’s house about your rivalries. What I mean is this : some say, “I am for Paul,” and others : “I am for Apollo,” or “I am for Peter,” or “I am for Christ.” Is Christ divided or have I, Paul, been crucified for you? Have you been baptised in the name of Paul?

For Christ did not send me to baptise, but to proclaim His Gospel. And not with beautiful words! That would be like getting rid of the cross of Christ.

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Thursday, 7 March 2013 : 3rd Week of Lent, Memorial of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, Martyrs (Scripture Reflection)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today let us stand with God and declare our faith and love in Him, that we would not be like the stiff-necked people in Israel in the past, and those who spurned God’s love and even accused Him of doing evil in His divine ministry in this world. For they were blind, blinded by their human weaknesses, blinded by sin and evil that they have committed.

For they have no true love for the Lord in their hearts. They love not the Lord but the praise of men and worldly honour. For these people failed to see the works of the Holy Spirit in Jesus, in healing the disabled, and casting out demons from the possessed. They instead submitted to their human jealousy and hatred of the good deeds of the Lord. There were also those, as mentioned in the Gospel today, put the Lord to the test, to see if He is really sent by God, to test His powers by sending a sign for them to see.

In fact, the act that Jesus did in casting out demons from the possessed had been the very sign that they have sought, in order for them to believe in Him. But they still failed to see, for their eyes were veiled with a thick layer of worldly sin and filth, that prevented them from seeing the works of God that is good. Jealousy is another thing, that it was indeed possible that in the hearts of some of the people gathered there, there brewed jealousy for the powers that God had, in Christ. It was the same case in the Acts of the Apostles, where Simon the sorceror attempted to bribe the Apostles to have the same authority and power given to them. But the authority of God is not purchaseable, and God gives it only to those whom He deems worthy.

Indeed, brothers and sisters, today God wants to show us that we have to believe in God, and not to be distracted by the evil one, that we begin to accuse God’s works as evil, out of our blindness to see the truth, which eventually will cause divisions between us, and in the end, as Christ had said, we will not be able to stand united, and shall fall down.

Truly, we are One, One in Christ, one as a member of the One Body of Christ, that is the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, that is our Catholic Church. We must all always remember the warning that Christ had given us today, that no house divided against itself will be able to stand and survive. The devil will not survive if he is divided against his servants and his collaborators, and therefore, so does our Church.

Throughout the millenia since the birth of the Church, there had been many dissents and divisions that led to the painful separation and destruction of unity in the Church of Christ, in parallel to the civil war of the nation as mentioned by Christ. We managed to stay together as the Catholic Church, and even managed to welcome some of our separated brethren back into unity with the One and only Church of our Lord. But even within our Church today, there are divisions, that will threaten to destroy the unity and harmony between all the faithful ones in God.

There are those who are blinded to the reason for unity, and chose to separate themselves from the Universal Church to pursue their own goals and ideas, rejecting all other ideas and anything that our Church had come through in the past 50 years since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. On the other hand, there are many who had succumbed to the world, and buoyed by the evils of the world, begin to demand for worldly changes and innovations to enter the Church.

We must learn to be courageous and say no to all these things that brought disunity and discord into the holy Church of God. We must stand firm despite all the pulls that the world and evil that tried to break up the unity of the Church. How are we to bring back our separated brethren in Christ, those who had been lost in their long journeys in the faith, into the One Church of God, if we ourselves are divided in a civil war against ourselves?

Therefore. brothers and sisters, once again let us pray for unity, both among ourselves, the faithful in Christ already united in His Church, and ourselves and our separated brethren in the myriads of ‘churches’ throughout the world, with our brethren in the Eastern Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox Churches, and that very soon, Christ’s prayer and wish that all of us may be one (That they all may be One) just as He and the Father is one and indivisible, will be fulfilled, and all faithful in God, will be One.

Today, we also commemorate the memorial of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, who were martyrs in the early days of the Church. Saint Perpetua and Saint Felicity were a noble mother and her slave respectively, who were martyred in the height days of the Roman Empire, due to their steadfastness to stand by their faith and their God, and refused all forms of persuasion for them to leave their faith and convert back into paganism. Their faith in God and solid stand had earned them martyrdom and thus eternal life and place in heaven with God who loves them and all of us.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, let us not be divided among ourselves and instead strive for unity, beginning from those near to us, and gradually let us work for unity of all, reach out to our brother Christians who is not yet in full communion with the Holy Church of God. Pray that all will soon return and be united in Christ in the Church He had established on Peter, the Rock.

Pray for us, Saints Perpetua and Felicity, that we also can follow in your footsteps and imitate the strong and unshakeable faith both of you had in the Lord, even to giving up your life for God’s sake, out of love for Him and His children, all of us. Amen.