divine justice

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(Usus Antiquior) Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (II Classis) – Sunday, 6 July 2014 : Gradual and Alleluia

Psalm 78 : 9, 10 and Psalm 9 : 5, 10

Propitius esto, Domine, peccatis nostris : ne quando dicant gentes : Ubi est Deus eorum?

Response : Adjuva nos, Deus, salutaris noster : et propter honorem Nominis Tui, Domine, libera nos.

Alleluja, Alleluja.

Response : Deus, qui sedes super thronum, et judicas aequitatem : esto refugium pauperum in tribulatione. Alleluja.

English translation

Forgive us our sins, o Lord, lest the gentiles should at any time say, ‘Where is their God?’

Response : Help us, o God our Saviour; and for the honour of Your Name, o Lord, deliver us.

Alleluia, Alleluia.

Response : O God, who sits upon the throne, and judge of justice, may You be the refuge of the poor in tribulation. Alleluia.

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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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Thursday, 26 June 2014 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Today, brothers and sisters in Christ, we continue further on the catechesis related to the end of the kingdom period in Israel and Judah, as God punished them for having disobeyed Him and gave them to the hands of their enemies. The king of Babylon, the famous Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, the Holy City, and exiled many people including the king into the land of Babylon.

And in today’s Gospel, Jesus talked about the wisdom and the folly that happened in the building of a house. We all know very well what Jesus said, how those who built their house on sand will not be able go persevere and be swept away by the tides of water and waves, as well as by winds. Those who built their houses on firm ground will be able to resist and stand up strong against all the challenges mentioned earlier.

Jesus mentioned that those who built their houses on firm ground are those who listen to the Lord and His will, and not just that, but they also carry on to do the will of God and implement His teachings in their own lives. And those who ignore the word of God or fail to implement the way of the Lord in their lives, and instead depending on their own strengths and wisdom, are those who built their houses on sand.

It is very easy for us today to be tempted to follow our own heart’s desire, and be distracted to the point that we end up falling into the trap of the devil and weaken the very foundation of our faith. Our human wisdom and abilities, as well as experiences are extensive, but they are fallible and weak. And that is exactly why we are like those who build their houses on weak foundations if we rely on ourselves and on our strengths.

If we rely on the Lord and on His will for us, then our foundations will be firm and solid, and we will not easily be toppled by the forces that assail us. In our lives, we often encounter many different challenges and oppositions that seek to disrupt and destabilise our lives for the worse. If we do not have a firm hold on a strong anchor, we will be easily swept aside by the torrent and the storm, and we will fall into destruction.

Today, our society and even those within our Church are infected with this disease, also known as modernism and relativism, where those who are its proponents champion the modern development of human morality and human-established ideas and rules, at the expense of the truth that the Lord had conveyed to us through His Church and His faithful servants, the saints and the Apostles.

Many of us end up following what the world thinks is right, and we adopt the ideas and the morality as our own. This is the essence of relativism and modernism, where we do not challenge and question the developments of morality in this world that are independent of the truth in the Lord. Indeed, without the Lord, it is truly questionable if the morality of this world is a morality at all.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, therefore, today we are asked to reflect, on whether we truly believe what we believe in. Do we truly have our faith in the Lord, and practice it faithfully and completely? Or do we prefer to follow the ways of the world? Let us all pray for the grace to be able to stand our ground strong in the faith, that we will not end up falling into the trap of Satan in the world.

May the Lord strengthen us, empower us, and guide us to Himself, and be with us through our journey in this life. God bless us all. Amen.

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Monday, 23 June 2014 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are brought to an important lesson in life which our Lord wants us to remember at all times. Before we judge or think badly about someone, let us first take a look at our own selves and judge ourselves, that we know the fact, how all of us are in fact equally sinful, equally guilty, and equally wicked, and that we have no right to judge anyone else for we too can be judged in the same way that we have been judged.

In that way, therefore, we should not judge the people of Israel and Judah that we heard in the first reading either. The kingdom of Israel and Judah fell because of the disobedience and the wickedness of their people, who had left behind the Law of God and followed their own ways, committing evil at every turn. But if we judge them for such, will we not be judged similarly as well? We too, at different moments of our lives, failed to live up to our faith and commit things wicked in the sight of God.

But the first reading today is a vivid reminder of what happened if we remain persistent in our faith and not be repentant. The northern kingdom of Israel in particular had been very wicked and unrepentant, that despite the many prophets sent to them, they continued to engage in their rebellion against God, and as a result, they were exiled from the Land given to them and scattered among the nations.

The kingdom of Judah too did not escape the repercussions of their sinfulness and disobedience, since although prophets had been sent to them, as Israel had been, the people refused to listen to these prophets and instead of judging themselves first and repenting from their sins, they judged the prophets, hunting them down and killing them in cold blood. In this, they persisted in their rebelliousness and perish.

Thus, that too, will be our fate, if we remain in our obstinate behaviour and insistence on keeping our sinful ways and our wickedness. We must realise that we have sinned and we are unworthy of the Lord, but instead of blaming others and ourselves, and worse, instead of blaming God, we should really reflect on our own actions, on our own deeds and on our own words, whether in them, we have lived our faith really well, or whether our slander and our actions have hurt others and cause wicked things to occur before God and men.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let this day be a day of reminder for us, that we may begin on a committed path of life, one that is no longer judgmental and critical for others, but instead, one that is committed to help one another and strengthen one another in faith, and affirm each other in love. May our actions always be based on love, and let us always be with one another, to help each other to reach the Lord together as one. God be with us all. Amen.

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Friday, 20 June 2014 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today’s readings from the Scripture tell us a strong message that God wants all of us to know. He wants us to realise that we should not crave for human glory and power, or in any form of worldly glory and earthly recognition, but rather instead, we should rely on the Lord and on His precepts, building up our spiritual account rather than piling up our earthly and material wealth.

It is not necessarily wrong for us to gain and accumulate wealth or possession, as the material and the goods themselves are neutral and are capable indeed for both good and evil, as I have often mentioned. We do need them to satisfy the basic needs of our life, and we also can use them to accomplish many good things for others around us.

The problem and the danger comes when we begin to lose sight on the purpose of our lives and the purpose of what we have with us. We end up succumbing to our own personal emotions and human vulnerabilities, which end up in us committing sins before men and before God. Such is what had happened in the first reading that we heard today, on the story of the rise and fall of Queen Athaliah of Judea.

Queen Athaliah was the wife of King Joram of Judea, who met his end together with King Ahaziah of the northern kingdom of Israel, when God meted out His punishment to the house of Ahab, who had brought much wickedness to the northern kingdom. With the death of the king, then one of his sons should have taken over his position as king of Judea. However, as we saw and heard, that was not how things turned out to be.

Queen Athaliah decided to take matters and power into her own hands. As she was not of the House of David, she had absolutely no right to rule in her own right as the Queen of Judea. Yet, she did what she did, and she took power into her own hands after murdering many sons and children of her husband the deceased king, and then installed herself in power, thinking that she had removed all obstacles and were then secure.

Her example was a clear-cut example of how things will go if we allow pride and human desire, in our greed and want, to take over our being, our heart, mind and soul. It corrupted her and many other people throughout history, causing them to fall into the trap of power which the devil had set up to attack us at our most vulnerable, that is our pride, ego and our desire.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we must not let our pride, ego and desire to get the better of us, and we have to learn to control them, so that we may avoid what had happened to men and women throughout the centuries, as exemplified by Queen Athaliah, making them to fall into sin and committing things evil in the sight of God and mankind. We must forgo our pride and allow God to come into our love, and speak within our hearts. We have to listen to Him and find out what His will is for us.

In our world today, we are inundated with many things of the world, where achievements, glories, and the power among men are preeminent. Those who have more of all these will receive human approval and praise, and those who have less or none of those will be looked down upon and rejected by the society. This is the hard reality of the world we are living in now.

So what are we to do, brothers and sisters? What should we do? Most importantly, we need to do something that many of us had often not done, in the midst of our busy life schedules, that is to pray, and pray genuinely to the Lord our God. This prayer is not just empty prayers and a prayer without meaning or understanding. A prayer is a conversation with God, a two-way conversation in which we speak with God and He speaks with us.

That is how we should act, to bring ourselves ever closer to God and keeping ourselves always in touch with Him, and there is no better way to do this other than through prayer. Yes, prayer that is made with the heart and through the heart, when we open the doors of our hearts and minds to God who then may keep in touch with us and touch our heart with His love.

May the Lord guide us in our ways and our lives, so that we may not follow the path of decadence and evil, controlling our emotions and avoid falling into the temptation of power and pride, and give ourselves totally to God’s love and providence. May He bless us all always and forever. Amen.

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Thursday, 19 June 2014 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Sts. Philip Minh, Priest and Companions, Martyrs (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Psalm 96 : 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7

The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the distant islands be glad. Clouds and darkness surround Him; justice and right are His throne.

Fire goes before Him, burning His foes on every side. His lightning lights up the world; the earth watches and trembles.

The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim His justice, all peoples see His glory.

Shame on worshippers of idols, on those proud of their worthless images. Let all spirits bow before Him.

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Tuesday, 17 June 2014 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 50 : 3-4, 5-6a, 11 and 16

Have mercy on me, o God, in Your love. In Your great compassion blot out my sin. Wash me thoroughly of my guilt; cleanse me of evil.

For I acknowledge my wrongdoings and have my sins ever in mind. Against You alone have I sinned.

Turn Your face away from my sins and blot out all my offenses. Deliver me, o God, from the guilt of blood, and of Your justice I shall sing aloud.

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Wednesday, 11 June 2014 : 10th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Barnabas, Apostle (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Psalm 97 : 1, 2-3ab, 3c-4, 5-6

Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done wonders; His right hand, His holy arm, has won victory for Him.

The Lord has shown His salvation, revealing His justice to the nations. He has not forgotten His love nor His faithfulness to Israel.

The farthest ends of the earth all have seen God’s saving power. All you lands, make a joyful noise to the Lord, break into song and sing praise.

With melody of the lyre and with music of the harp. With trumpet blast and sound of the horn, rejoice before the King, the Lord!

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Monday, 9 June 2014 : 10th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Ephrem, Deacon and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Matthew 5 : 1-12

When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up the mountain. He sat down and His disciples gathered around Him. Then He spoke and began to teach them :

Fortunate are those who are poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Fortunate are those who mourn, they shall be comforted.

Fortunate are the gentle, they shall possess the land.

Fortunate are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.

Fortunate are the merciful, for they shall find mercy.

Fortunate are those with a pure heart, for they shall see God.

Fortunate are those who work for peace, they shall be called children of God.

Fortunate are those who are persecuted for the cause of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Fortunate are you, when people insult you and persecute you and speak all kinds of evil against you because you are My followers.

Be glad and joyful, for a great reward is kept for you in God. This is how this people persecuted the prophets who lived before you.

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Saturday, 7 June 2014 : 7th Week of Easter (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 10 : 4, 5 and 7

The Lord is in His holy place – our God whose throne is in heaven. He looks down to earth to observe the race of Adam.

The Lord searches both righteous and wicked. He hates those who delight in violence. For the Lord is righteous; He loves justice. The upright will see His face.