divine blessings

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Tuesday, 16 September 2014 : 24th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Cornelius, Pope and Martyr, and St. Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard about how Jesus healed the son of a widow from Naim, bringing him back from death into life, in which He showed to the people, the loving and merciful aspects of God, who truly loved and cared for all of us. He had pity on the mother who was sorrowful for having been left alone by her son, and brought them back into true joy and happiness in God.

And in the first reading, in the letter written by St. Paul to the Church and the faithful in Corinth, about the nature of the Church of God, and how in the Church, which is in fact comprised of all of us who believe in Christ the Lord, there exist a certain hierarchy of its members, which allow the Church to function as a body, just as in our body we have various organs and parts that have distinct functions working together in order to achieve certain goals and actions.

St. Paul mentioned how each members and each people in the Church have their own distinct gifts from the Lord, also known as the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which the Apostles and disciples themselves had received during the occasion of the Pentecost day. Everyone had been called by the Lord for a specific purpose and task, and one ought not to think proudly of himself or herself so as to assume that they can gain for themselves the entirety of the goodness and the gifts of the Lord.

Thus, the Church of God, which is centred on our Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, and we as the members of His Body, has a specific task in order to carry out and continue the good works which Jesus had initiated in this world, that is the works of love and mercy, as He showed through the rising of the son of the widow of Naim from the dead.

The Church of God comprised of many different people, and indeed, different groups of people, from the laity to the ordained ministers, that is the sacred priesthood and those who dedicated their lives in the service of God, and everyone else, including those of us who belong to the group of those who serve the Lord and yet also still live in this world.

And even among the priesthood, we have various roles, such as the bishops and then the priests themselves. Bishops are those who have been given a greater role in the Church, as overseers of a group of priests and the laity, and they are entrusted with the sheep of the Lord’s flock, as the shepherds, who are then led by the chief shepherds on earth, that is the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and the Vicar of Christ in this world, the representation of the Chief Shepherd of all, Jesus Christ.

The bishops therefore lead the Church in the works of love and mercy, and are also entrusted with the supervision duty of the body of the faithful in the Church, and they are also entrusted with the management of the Church. That said, there are also many others who are also involved in the management of the Church, both among the laity, as well as those in the priesthood and the ordained ministry.

The priests serve the people of God in various means, that is by providing them a spiritual guidance and protection against the harms of the devil, and in some cases also by providing alms and charity works for them. Then, the deacons, as we heard in the New Testament, were appointed as those who would serve the people of God directly, aid in the works of charity of the Church, to aid the priests and the bishops, so that they can channel to the people of God, particularly the poorest and the weakest, the love of God through His Church.

Yet, it is sad indeed, that many today in the Church aspire to have everything in their greed and lack of faith. Many began to question their roles in the Church and some even fought in the name of what they described as equality. Therefore we have those who proposed such outrageous ideas such as the abolition of the sacred priesthood and the ordained ministry, as well as the ordination of women to the priesthood.

Those who proposed and supported such proposals failed to understand that each of us in the Church have our own unique roles which help to supplement each other and therefore, it makes the Church stronger. To go against this natural law of order would in fact mean to destroy the unity and strength of the holy Church of God and undermine its authority in this world. Every one has been given a specific and particular gift which enables us to have our own roles in the Church to carry out what the Lord had planned for us.

Brothers and sisters, today we celebrate together as the Church the feast day of two great saints, whose life will inspire us to appreciate the beauty of the order and hierarchy in the Church, namely that of Pope St. Cornelius and St. Cyprian, both holy martyrs of the faith, at the time of the persecutions of the Roman Empire.

Pope St. Cornelius was the Pope and the Vicar of Christ in the middle of the third century after the birth of Christ, during the reign of the Emperor Decius, the great persecutor of the faithful. Then St. Cyprian was his contemporary, as the Bishop of Carthage and the supporter of Pope St. Cornelius’ view regarding the faithful.

The two saints lived in a difficult time, when Christians and all who believed in the Lord were persecuted heavily and when their very lives were threatened by the Roman authorities. And amidst those persecutions, there were those among the faithful who submitted to the will of the state and the Emperor, and gave offering to the pagan idols, essentially an act of apostasy, or leaving the Church of God, who should be thereafter be treated the same as the pagans.

However, some of them repented their sins and returned to the embrace of the Holy Mother Church, and were received back among the faithful as long as they were sincere in their repentance. But, there were those in the Church who were opposed to the return of these so called traitors and apostates and demanded much stricter regulations to even allow them to be readmitted into the Church.

St. Cyprian and Pope St. Cornelius were the champions of those in the Church who would allow the faithful who had gone astray to return to the Church as long as their repentance was sincere. They worked hard among the faithful and among those who had gone astray to bring them back towards the Lord and to heal them from the afflictions of their souls. The laity themselves also played their own parts and supported the works of their shepherds, while they also kept their faith alive and strong despite even great persecutions.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, these saints, Pope St. Cornelius and St. Cyprian, who were both eventually martyred for their faith, had showed us the model of their faith, which showed love and mercy for the least of the society, those who were rejected because of the stigma of their status as apostates and betrayer of their faith. They showed that while in the Church itself there were already many different groups of people, there would always be a space for those who realised their errors and repented for their sins.

Let us all therefore reflect on the Scripture readings of this day, and grow to find in our hearts, the role that we can play as part of the Church of God. Let us all work together to continue the good works of Christ, to bring God’s love to all the peoples, and to heal many from their afflictions, both physical, and even more importantly, to heal the spiritual aspects of many people.

May Almighty God, together with the intercession of the holy saints, Pope St. Cornelius and St. Cyprian, bless us this day and guide us, so that we may also follow in their footsteps, to serve the people of God and love one another in the Lord. God bless us all and bring us into His light. Amen.

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Tuesday, 16 September 2014 : 24th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Cornelius, Pope and Martyr, and St. Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Psalm 99 : 2, 3, 4, 5

Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs.

Know that the Lord is God; He created us and we are His people, the sheep of His fold.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving, His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and bless His Name.

For the Lord is good; His love lasts forever and His faithfulness through all generations.

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Friday, 5 September 2014 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Psalm 36 : 3-4, 5-6, 27-28, 39-40

Trust in the Lord and do good, dwell in the land and live on it. Make the Lord your delight, and He will grant your heart’s desire.

Commit your way to the Lord; put your trust in Him and let Him act. Then will your revenge come, beautiful as the dawn, and the justification of your cause, bright as the noonday sun.

Do good and shun evil, so that you will live secure forever. For the Lord loves justice and right, and never forsakes His faithful ones. The wicked instead will perish and their breed will be cut off.

The Lord is the salvation of the righteous; in time of distress, He is their refuge. The Lord helps them, and rescues them from the oppressor; He saves them for they sought shelter in Him.

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Thursday, 21 August 2014 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Pius X, Pope (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the feast of a great saint, the Pope of the Holy Eucharist as he is famously known, namely Pope St. Pius X, the first Pope to be elected in the twentieth century, and a great reformer of the faith who brought great rejuvenation both to the Church and to God’s people. Pope St. Pius X had done a great deal of goodness for the Lord and His people, and the effects of what He had done can still be clearly felt today.

Pope St. Pius X was the one who reformed much of the liturgy and the celebration of worship in the Church, and he made the Gregorian chant once again the predominant hymn and song used in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Through his contributions, he made the liturgy of worship to God much richer and more beneficial for the growth of the faith and devotion among the faithful. Numerous other contributions he had made to the benefit of God’s people.

And his greatest contribution was the great improvement in the accessibility and focus on the Most Holy Eucharist, the very Precious Body and Blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who had given us these freely as He offered Himself humbly to the Lord as the sacrifice for the sake of our salvation, which we celebrate regularly in the Holy Mass. This is the centre of our faith, and the very foundation of what we believe in God.

In addition, if we today know the Holy Communion as something we always do every time we attend the Holy Mass, and if we can remember the time when we first received the Holy Communion in our early youth, then all of these could be attributed to the works of this holy Pope, Pope St. Pius X, and this is why he is also known famously as the Pope of the Eucharist. Why is this so? Let me elaborate further.

Pope St. Pius X encouraged frequent reception of the Holy Eucharist by the faithful, and he also lowered the minimum age required for the reception of the first Holy Communion, bringing the Lord closer to even young children. This reminds us clearly of what the Lord Jesus had said to His disciples and followers, that all of us ought to imitate the faith of children, and we should not prevent children from coming to the Lord.

With that consideration, what Pope St. Pius X had done was truly exemplary, allowing children, provided that they are at an age when they are already able to discern about the Lord, to receive the Lord in the Most Holy Eucharist, certainly at an age significantly younger than what was previously stipulated and practiced in the Church. This helps many of the youths and children to be close to the Lord for the important years when their faiths in God are developing and taking roots.

And ultimately, today we will focus on the role of this holy man and shepherd of the Church, in how he transformed and brought the Lord and His fullness of truth into the centre of the faithful’s attention, by emphasizing strongly on the importance of worship and the properness in worship of the Lord, in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which we also celebrate today, but which in many places had notably dropped in terms of our ability to appreciate how important it is to properly worship the Lord.

This relates precisely to the reading of today, in which Jesus told His disciples a parable, which described the wedding feast organised by a king for his son, and how the guests whom the king had invited to the feast refused to come to the feast prepared for them. Those guests were given what they had deserved, and they were cast down.

And when the king invited new groups of people who were then invited to the wedding banquet, he found someone who was not wearing the garments appropriate for the wedding feast, and consequently he was thrown out of the banquet and cast into the darkness to suffer the penalty of his actions and his ignorance.

How is this relevant to us and our faith? Precisely because the Holy Mass is the wedding banquet of the Lord, when the Lord comes to be one with us and to dwell among us, none other than through His Most Holy Presence in the Eucharist, bread and wine transformed completely into the Most Precious Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And our focus should indeed be on the action of the guest who had come into the banquet not wearing the appropriate wedding garment. This in fact reflects on those among us, and many of us indeed, who did not take the celebration of the sacrifice of our Lord seriously. It reflects clearly on our part when we are not serious about our part in the celebration of the Holy Mass. And in particular, in the recent years, more and more abuses of worship and of the celebration has occurred.

How many of us would come to the Church properly dressed and with a proper heart and mind? That means, how many of us actually prepare ourselves thoroughly to attend the Holy Mass and participate with the fullness of our hearts? Many of us often did not do so, and conveniently ignored these, and ended up physically and spiritually unprepared to be with the Lord in the Mass. In this, we are no different from the person who attended the king’s banquet without a proper clothing.

The Mass is truly great and holy, because in it we celebrate the very sacrifice that our Lord had made that day on the hill of Calvary, when He was hung on the cross between the heavens and earth, and for what? For our sake, brethren, that is for our salvation. He died so that He may break us free from the bonds of death and destruction that await us and bring us into life. And in that, He offered Himself through the Body and Blood He gave us, which through His priests, who transformed the bread and wine into that of our Lord’s Body and Blood for us to receive and eat, and drink.

If it is the Lord Himself who is present in the Holy Mass, then why did we not worship Him? Why did we not respect Him? Why did we blaspheme against Him by our words and actions? And why did we ignore Him and attend to our own needs and to our own human arrogance? I am talking about how many people increasingly lost their focus, and especially in the Mass, and they end up not worshipping God and His love, but instead praising themselves.

This is evident from the rise of unorthodox and heretical practices in the Holy Mass, which in many places, particularly in the West, but also widespread in other places, of inappropriate actions by both the laity and the priests, who did not give glory to God through their actions, but instead glorify and praise themselves. The practices of ‘liturgical dance’, speaking in tongues, use of inappropriate music in the celebration of the Mass and many other liturgical abuses of the Mass, unlike the attitude of the man without a proper garment in the banquet.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, on this great occasion of the feast of Pope St. Pius X, let us ask for his kind intercession and help, so that the Lord may strengthen the faith in us, and hopefully we may learn to know how to properly prepare and place ourselves in the worship of our great Lord and God. Let us all redirect our attention away from ourselves back towards the Lord. Let us all restore the solemnity and holiness in the celebration of the Holy Mass. Let us all work together to make our celebration of the Mass be truly heaven on earth, and get rid of any forms of abuses that still mar our spirit of celebration of this great banquet of the Lord.

May Almighty God guide us on our efforts, strengthen our faith and renew in us the love that we have for Him. Let us strive to make our worship a true worship once again, gaining inspiration from what Pope St. Pius X had once done for the good of the souls of the faithful. God be with us all. Amen.

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Wednesday, 20 August 2014 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Matthew 20 : 1-16a

This story throws a light on the Kingdom of Heaven : A landowner went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay each worker the usual daily wage, and sent them to his vineyard.

He went out again at about nine in the morning, and seeing others idle in the town square, he said to them, “You also, go to my vineyard, and I will pay you what is just.” So they went.

The owner went out at midday, and again at three in the afternoon, and he did the same. Finally he went out at the last working hour – the eleventh hour – and he saw others standing there. So he said to them, “Why do you stay idle the whole day?”

They answered, “Because no one has hired us.” The master said, “Go and work in my vineyard.”

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the workers and pay them their wage, beginning with the last and ending with the first.” Those who had come to work at the eleventh hour turned up, and were each given a silver coin.

When it was the turn of the first, they thought they would receive more. But they, too, each received a silver coin. So, on receiving it, they began to grumble against the landowner. They said, “These last hardly worked an hour, yet you have treated them the same as us, who have endured the heavy work of the day and the heat.”

The owner said to one of them, “Friend, I have not been unjust to you. Did we not agree on one silver coin per day? So take what is yours and go. I want to give to the last the same as I give to you. Do I not have the right to do as I please with what is mine? Why are you envious when I am kind?”

So will it be : the last will be first, the first will be last.

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Tuesday, 19 August 2014 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. John Eudes, Priest (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, in today’s readings are the continuation of the messages of the Scripture from yesterday, and we continue to talk about how worldly possessions may hinder us from truly reaching out to the Lord. The difficulty for the rich which Jesus mentioned, for them to enter the kingdom of heaven, is itself not because of the rich status or the fault of the wealth or material possessions, but in fact because of our innate weakness and proneness to the tempting power of those possessions.

Essentially, those possessions keep us away from the Lord because they rob the focus of our hearts, hijacking our hearts and minds which should really be thinking and focusing on the Lord and all of His goodness, and instead we think more and more of our wealth and possession, to the point that we eventually worry more and more about them, on how we can gain more of them and how we can safeguard them.

We mankind are easy to be tempted if we do not take the steps to actively prevent this temptation. Ever since the days of Adam and Eve, when they were tempted with knowledge and greatness by the lies of Satan, we mankind had been exposed to the works of evil in this world, which threaten to pull us deep into the pit of damnation just as our ancestors had been trapped in those lies of Satan that brought us away from our divine inheritance.

The first reading today talked about how God proclaimed His judgment and prediction on the fate of Tyre, which was a great city of the land of Sidon, of the Phoenicians, a great seafaring nation, which built colonies far and wide, and the progenitor of the later Carthaginian Empire. Tyre is the mother city of the Phoenicians who were great navigators, traders and merchants who built their cities strong with wealth, and Tyre the foremost among them. The rich purple dye of the rulers and Emperors of Rome were named Tyrian purple after the wealth of the city in which this dye originally came from.

Tyre had all reasons to be overconfident, as it had a great influence, mighty and powerful over the seas. In addition to that, the city was built on a nature island off the coast of what is today Lebanon, and therefore is naturally protected against any enemies and forces arrayed against it. Nevertheless, it is in this arrogance and power that ended up in their downfall.

What the Lord spoke of, became true when the Greek King, Alexander the Great conquered the city of Tyre after a long siege, and the city never regained its power, prominence and glory. Therefore, it had been cast down and its power was broken, never to recover. And therefore the same will also eventually happen to us, if we depend on our human power, as well as on our desire for wealth, glory and fame.

It is important for us to realise that wealth, possession, fame, achievement in life and greatness are often not the answers for our lives, and they are neither the solutions for which we can live our lives in a better and more meaningful way. It is too often that mankind had been destroyed by all these, as they are unable to resist their greed and desire and end up destroying themselves.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. John Eudes, a priest of the Lord who founded a religious congregation, the Congregation of Jesus and Mary. He took a vow of chastity at a young age, and then proceeded to join the religious life fully dedicated to the Lord. Under his actions, numerous good works had been done for the sake of the Lord by St. John Eudes himself, who worked hard to serve the people of God and spread the Word of God to many people around him.

St. John Eudes was especially intrigued by those around him who lived in sin and in the darkness of the world, particularly prostitutes who were common in that age. Therefore, St. John Eudes worked hard to help those who were destitute and weak in faith, and through his religious congregation, he endeavoured to advance the preparation and education of priests and all those who devoted themselves to the Lord, that they may do better works for the sake of God and His people.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, people like St. John Eudes and many others who had given up everything, all glory, wealth and fame that they may be true servants of the Lord are our role models. They have resisted the temptations of the flesh and that of the world, so that they are no longer governed by the whim of their desire, but instead by the will of God speaking inside them, guiding them in life to bear much fruits of their good works in the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, is it not right indeed, that we should truly follow in their footsteps? We should all use these opportunities given to us, so that we may free ourselves from the unending pull of desires and human greed, and instead begin to live wholly and completely in the grace and love of God. Let us all ask St. John Eudes for his prayers and intercession, that we too may serve God and His people just as he had once done.

May Almighty God be with us all, in our lives, that we may do good works for the sake of all those around us, particularly those who are weak, destitute and downtrodden. Amen.

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Thursday, 14 August 2014 : Vigil Mass of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Luke 11 : 27-28

As Jesus was speaking, a woman spoke from the crowd and said to Him, “Blessed is the one who gave You birth and nursed You!”

Jesus replied, “Truly blessed are those who hear the word of God, and keep it as well.”

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Sunday, 20 July 2014 : 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Bible Sunday (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today this Sunday just as last Sunday, we celebrate Bible or Scripture Sunday, when we truly come together to appreciate and honour this writing and collections of books which together make up the entire revelation of God and His words, which He spoke through the prophets and through His many servants throughout the ages.

In order to be able to fully appreciate and understand the importance of the Bible or the Holy Scriptures, then first we must know it and take the word of God in it into our hearts and minds. And it is important to know that without a sufficient knowledge of the word of God in the Scriptures, we cannot be truly faithful and devoted to God, for we are bound to be affected and corrupted by the falsehoods of Satan, the evil one, who spread his lies all the time to trap those whose faith are not strong.

But that does not mean we can just memorise and remember the Holy Scriptures and the word of God without understanding it and the true meaning of the literary works of the prophets and the writers of the Holy Scriptures. Do you all remember what Satan did when he tempted Jesus our Lord in the desert just after His baptism? Yes, precisely, Satan quoted the passages of the Holy Scriptures, and then twisting their meaning to serve his own wicked purposes.

Such will be the dangerous and powerful weapon that Satan will employ against those who knows the Scriptures, but refuse or disregard the need to understand the word of God and its meaning as written in the Holy Scriptures. Therefore, we cannot study or understand the Scriptures on our own, or claim that our understanding of them to be sufficient for our salvation, a view and idea which is called sola scriptura and which has quite a following among those who thought that they know it better than the early Church fathers in the matters of the faith.

Remember brothers and sisters, that the authority to teach the meaning of the Holy Scriptures has been bestowed by God to none other than Jesus Christ, His own Son, who came into the world. In Jesus lay the full completeness and perfection of all the messages and the prophecies of the prophets of the past and all the words of God revealed through the servants of God. All these are in what we know today as the Old Testament, that is the testaments and the works of the servant of God before the coming of Christ.

Jesus taught His disciples and many other people through the means of parables, or stories that are related to many different life experiences and scenarios, often not talking directly about God in those parables. For the laypersons and all those who did not understand the meaning of those parables, what Jesus told them in the parables might not make sense to them, but they might have truly understood what the stories were about.

The parables of Jesus were constructed around many real examples that if one is to take a closer inspection, would reveal that Jesus often talked about the professions that were truly ubiquitous and renowned, as well as common during the time when He was in the world. These include shepherds, which we know in the case when Jesus talked about shepherds and Himself as the Good Shepherd; fishermen, which Jesus often referred to in His teachings to the disciples in their future role as the fishers of men.

Jesus talked about farmers and sowing of seeds most often, because farming truly was the most prevalent job in the society at the time. By using these analogies, or parables, He taught the meaning of the Word of God in the Holy Scriptures with perfect clarity and true authority of teaching. With those examples and references, He could relate with the life experiences of the people, who then might understand the word better.

However, as we all know, that Jesus did not stay in the world for long. He accomplished the long-planned salvation for mankind by going through the punishments meant for our sins, bearing them on the cross towards Calvary, and gave us a new hope in life. Jesus rose up from the dead and showed us hope in His resurrection and then departed from this world to return to His throne in heaven to prepare a place for all of us.

Hence, Jesus passed down the authority to teach the Holy Scriptures in its complete and true meaning to the Apostles and the disciples whom He had chosen from among the people. He sent them the Holy Spirit, the Advocate and the Helper, who enlightened them with zeal and faith, and through the Spirit sent by God to them, they passed down the same truth and teachings of the Lord to their successors, to pass them down in the Church of God, on which God had invested the authority over all of the faithful.

There is no other wisdom and truth beyond that of the Lord’s wisdom and power, and hence there can be no truth in the Scriptures and the Word of God beyond the teachings of the Church. There were those who thought that they have the intellect and knowledge better than the Church and the early Church fathers who had received the teachings and the directly from the Lord Himself.

Luther, Henry VIII, Calvin, Zwingli, and many other countless heretics who rebelled against God and His Church were the very examples of how people have misinterpreted, twisted and misused the words of the Lord in the Holy Scriptures for their own selfish purposes. They were attached to the promises of Satan in the glories and pleasures of the world, and so deeply attached they were to their own human frailty and weakness, that they failed to see what the Lord truly meant in His words and instead caused great divisions in the body of the faithful, that is the Church.

Therefore, it is important that as we celebrate this occasion of the Bible or Scripture Sunday, that we read the Scriptures with understanding, and do our best to obey and listen to the teachings of the Church as espoused and held firm by its members and through the successors of the Apostles, namely our Pope, the Cardinals, bishops and priests of the Church of God.

Nevertheless, it is also important for us to take note that, we do not have to worry about our faith if we hold true to the teachings of the Church. What is important is that we have faith in God and keep it true at all times. God has told us through Jesus, that the faith in us is like the mustard seed. Mustard seed from the mustard plant is a very small seed, only barely a small speck to our eyes. However, when the mustard plant is fully grown, the plant is truly large, at least four to five metres tall.

What Jesus meant was that, if we allow our faith to develop and grow in us, then no matter how small that faith is, it will grow and flourish, and affecting not just ourselves, but also those around us and inspiring them to come closer to the Lord as well. But if we choose not to allow this faith to grow in us, then we will wither and perish, just as a mustard seed will remain just that, a seed if it does not sprout and grow.

How do we let it grow healthily then? It is by listening to the word of God, and not just by our ears or by our eyes that we witness these words of the Lord, but also to carry them deep into our hearts. Follow faithfully the teachings of the Lord that we gained through the Church, and we will do fine. Let us all work together, that all of us may grow stronger together in faith, hope and love in God. May He bless us always, now and forever. Amen.

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Saturday, 5 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Anthony Zaccaria, Priest (Psalm)

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

Psalm 84 : 9, 11-12, 13-14

Would that I hear God’s proclamation, that He promise peace to His people, His saints – lest they come back to their folly.

Love and faithfulness have met; righteousness and peace have embraced. Faithfulness will reach up from the earth while justice bends down from heaven.

The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its fruit. Justice will go before Him, and peace will follow along His path.

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Saturday, 5 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Anthony Zaccaria, Priest (First Reading)

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

Amos 9 : 11-15

“On that day I shall restore the fallen hut of David and wall up its breaches and raise its ruined walls and so build it as in days of old. They shall conquer the remnant of Edom and the neighbouring nations upon which My Name has been called.” Thus says YHVH, the One who will do this.

YHVH says also, “The days are coming when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes overtake the sower. The mountains shall drip sweet wine and all the hills shall melt. I shall bring back the exiles of My people Israel; they will rebuild the desolate cities and dwell in them.”

“They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will have orchards and eat their fruit. I shall plant them in their own country and they shall never again be rooted up from the land which I have given them,” says YHVH your God.