Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 24 : 4-5ab, 6 and 7bc, 8-9
Teach me Your ways, o Lord; make known to me Your paths. Guide me in Your truth and instruct me, for You are my God, my Saviour.
Remember Your compassion, o Lord, Your unfailing love from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth, but in Your love remember me.
Good and upright, the Lord teaches sinners His way. He teaches the humble of heart and guides them in what is right.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Offertory
Psalm 117 : 16-17
Dextera Domini fecit virtutem, dextera Domini exaltavit me : non moriae, sed vivam, et narrabo opera Domini.
English translation
The right hand of the Lord had wrought strength, the right hand of the Lord had exalted me. I shall not die, but live, and shall declare the works of the Lord.
Secret Prayer of the Priest
Haec hostia, Domine, quaesumus, emundet nostra delicta : et, ad sacrificium celebrandum, subditorum tibi corpora mentesque sanctificet. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium Tuum, Qui Tecum vivis et regnas in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.
English translation
May this offering, we beseech You, o Lord, wipe out our sins, and sanctify the bodies and minds of Your servants for the celebration of the sacrifice. Through our Lord Jesus Christ Your Son, who with You lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.
Communion
Luke 4 : 22
Mirabantur omnes de his, quae procedebant de ore Dei.
English translation
They all wondered at these things, which proceeded from the mouth of God.
Post-Communion Prayer
Quos tantis, Domine, largiris uti mysteriis : quaesumus; ut effectibus nos eorum veraciter aptare digneris. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium Tuum, Qui Tecum vivis et regnas in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.
English translation
O Lord, who had freely given the enjoyment of so great mysteries, we beseech You that You would vouchsafe to render us truly worthy to receive their effects. Through our Lord Jesus Christ Your Son, who with You lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 84 : 8 and 10, 11-12, 13-14
Show us, o Lord, Your unfailing love and grant us Your saving help. Yet His salvation is near to those who fear Him, and His Glory will dwell in our land.
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.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today in the Gospel and the readings, we heard about the nature of the incompatibility of the beliefs and practices of the people of God, Israel, between the ancient practice of animal offerings and harvest offerings to God at the Temple, the shedding of the blood of lambs and the offering of fats, which priests offered daily for various purposes, namely thanksgiving, giving praise, and most importantly, sin offering, for the remission of the people’s sins.
The priests offered the offerings of goat and birds’ blood for his own sins and for the sins of the people, but this is only a temporary measure to remit one’s sins, and thus the offering had to be made again and again, for the simple fact that no amount of animal offering, even the best fats of the lamb can account for the vastness and the depth of mankind’s sins and wickedness.
And all of the practices of the people of Israel, as the elders described them and included them in the customs, such as the ritual washing and purification, as well as the observation of fasting and penitence, are all external application of the people’s desire to be made pure and clean from the defilements of the world as they come to celebrate and worship the Lord.
But all those had been turned obsolete by the action of a single Man, who single-handedly carried all of the sins of mankind past, present and future, every single man from Adam the first man to the last man, that He might absolve them by His action as a priest, and indeed not just as any priests, but as the one sole High Priest of all creation, of all mankind, that is our Lord Jesus Christ.
Yes, our Lord Jesus Christ is our High Priest, just as the Letter to the Hebrews had highlighted in our first reading today. He is the High Priest who offered the perfect offering and sacrifice, the only one that is worthy to absolve and erase our sins, once and for all, for all eternity. And that sacrifice is none other than the very sacrifice that He had made on Calvary, the place of the skulls, where He laid down His life for us on the cross.
He offered not the blood of lambs, goats or doves, but His own Blood, the Most Precious Blood of the Lord, which is perfect beyond any others and the only one that is worthy enough to pay the entire debts of our sins, once and for all. He therefore offered Himself as the sacrifice for our sake. His suffering, the wounds He sustained and endured, and the nails that pierced His holy hands and feet are the manifestation of His love for us, that He was willing to endure all that so that we can be saved.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, all these shows why the old ways and customs which the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law stubbornly clinged to, are no longer valid and necessary. The sacrifice of Jesus had made it unnecessary to offer regularly the animal sacrifices and the oblations which they persistently insist, along with the various laws and observations they imposed on the people of God.
The way of the Pharisees were filled with human laws and human interpretations of the Law, which is often flawed, and indeed, in its execution, they lost the true focus of why they observe the laws of God, that is to serve God and to follow His will. They end up serving human purposes and even misuse them to glorify themselves and bringing human praise to themselves.
That is what Jesus meant by His parable of the cloth and the wineskins. One cannot patch old and new cloth together, as they are incompatible. When you wash the two together, they will shrink differently and thus will tear apart from each other. And old wineskin cannot be filled with new wine, and vice versa for the same reason. Things that are incompatible will not be able to match, and they will bring about difficulties and conflict, just as the Law of Christ are incompatible with the laws of men advocated by the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law.
Then some of us may ask, why then, our priests and the Church continue to celebrate the Holy Mass daily and regularly? The Holy Mass is a sacrifice, the Sacrifice which our Lord Jesus had made on the cross. Does this mean then that Jesus is crucified again and again? Does this mean that we ignore the fact that Christ died once and for all, for us?
No, brothers and sisters in Christ, for the Holy Mass is the same sacrifice that Christ had offered at Calvary, and not a new sacrifice. The priests represent Christ Himself, as Alter Christus, who offered the same offering on the cross at Calvary. The Holy Mass is united in meaning and purpose, in substance and reality to the same sacrifice made that day when Christ laid down His life for us.
And that is why we also believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist, for the bread and wine which the priest by the power of God invested in him as the Christ personified, are truly transformed in material and spirit, into the Real Body and Real Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, even though in appearance, they remain as bread and wine. This is our faith and this is what we believe in, for our salvation.
Remember that Jesus told His disciples and the people that those who eat of His Body and drink of His Blood will live forever and not die. And thus this is what will happen to all of us who believe and worthily accept Him into ourselves. If we choose to believe in Him and follow Him, we can be assured that we will be well taken care of. Thus, we need to support our priests, who are working hard, and who daily celebrate the Mass for our sake, that through the Mass which is the same Sacrifice of Jesus our Lord, we may receive eternal life through His sacrifice.
May Almighty God be with us all, bless us all and guide us in our life. Let us no longer be stubborn in our sinfulness, but remain faithful to the Lord and be grateful ever for the love He had shown us all. God bless us. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Mark 2 : 1-12
At that time, after some days Jesus returned to Capernaum. As the news spread that He was in the house, so many people gathered, that there was no longer room even outside the door. While Jesus was preaching the Word to them, some people brought a paralysed man to Him.
The four men who carried him could not get near Jesus because of the crowd, so they opened the roof above the room where Jesus was and, through the hole, lowered the man on his mat. When Jesus saw the faith of these people, He said to the paralytic, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”
Now some teachers of the Law, who were sitting there, wondered within themselves, “How can He speak like this, insulting God? Who can forgive sins except God?” At once Jesus knew in His Spirit what they were thinking, and asked, “Why do you wonder? Is it easier to say to this paralysed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your mat and walk?'”
“But now you shall know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” And He said to the paralytic, “Stand up, take up your mat and go home.” The man rose and, in the sight of all those people, he took up his mat and went out. All of them were astonished and praised God, saying, “Never have we seen anything like this!”
Homily and Reflection :
Liturgical Colour : Green
Mark 1 : 29-39
At that time, on leaving the synagogue, Jesus went to the home of Simon and Andrew with James and John. As Simon’s mother-in-law was sick in bed with fever, they immediately told Him about her. Jesus went to her and, taking her by the hand, raised her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.
That evening at sundown, people brought to Jesus all the sick and those who had evil spirits : the whole town was pressing around the door. Jesus healed many who had various diseases, and drove out many demons; but He did not let them speak, for they knew who He was.
Very early in the morning, before daylight, Jesus went off to a lonely place where He prayed. Simon and the others went out also, searching for Him; and when they found Him, they said, “Everyone is looking for You.” Then Jesus answered, “Let us go to the nearby villages so that I may preach there too; for that is why I came.”
So Jesus set out to preach in all the synagogues throughout Galilee; He also cast out demons.
Homily and Reflection :
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard about the Lord Jesus healing the sick, the possessed and the suffering ones, from whom He cast out the demons. Yes, even demons had to obey that Man, our Lord Jesus Christ, for He is not just merely a Man, but also the Lord and Master of all creations. Satan was also once counted among His angels, and so did the other evil spirits, who were cast down from heaven for their rebellion against God.
He had come into the world to set everything straight and to take all things into His own hands, the Lord of all creations and all existences. He came to reclaim us from the clutches of Satan and to free us from the chains of sin and death. Thus, He came through Jesus, who became Man for our sake, and for our sake He laboured and toiled, resisting and fighting the forces of evil wherever He went during His ministry in this world.
And that was exactly what led to His works in this world, His casting out of demons and healing of the sick, so that He might make full again a people who had been torn apart by the darkness of the world, and bring them to the salvation which He had brought into the world. He came to save sinners and rescue those who are lost, the ones who could not find their way, blinded by sin and darkness.
Thus is the love which God has for us all mankind, so great that He was willing to humble Himself to come down to dwell among us as a simple Man, and to suffer for us, bearing all of our sins and the sufferings for those sins, that we may be liberated and brought free, released from the bonds and shackles which Satan has imposed on us, that is sin, the wickedness within our body, heart and soul, the disease of the soul that separated us from our loving God.
Many of us think that we are perfectly healthy, capable of doing many things we want in life, and many of us think of ourselves as unassailable and invincible, and great as well, because of our achievements and many other things. However, do we realise that all of us are truly afflicted with the sickness of sin? All of us without exception, all of mankind save for Christ alone are subjected to sin and corrupted by it in one way or another.
That is why our Lord who loves us, desires that we be brought to Him and be healed from the affliction of sin. He offered nothing else more precious and greater than Himself, as the Lamb of Sacrifice, offered on the Altar of Calvary, shedding His own Blood and offering it with His Body as a pleasing sacrifice to God, so that by that act of ultimate love and sacrifice, He purchased us and freed us from the slavery and bondage under Satan, and paid for our sinfulness in full.
And that is what Satan fears very much, his ultimate and greatest defeat, when mankind was snatched from his grasp and he knew of his ultimate defeat at the hands of the triumphant Lord. Even the devil knows that he has to submit and acknowledge his defeat before the Lord no matter how much he refused to do so and no matter how reluctant he was.
Therefore, today, as we continue to live our lives faithfully, we have to realise that our hope lies only in the Lord, for it is only He who is the source of salvation and life that can deliver us from the hands of the evil one and his allies. We cannot triumph and succeed on our own, but with the Lord on our side, nothing is impossible. Let us all ask the Lord to come to us and heal us from our afflictions of sin, and remove from us this corruption from our souls, minds, bodies and hearts.
Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Hilary of Poitiers, one of the greatest and most influential early Church father, whose works and teachings still profoundly affect many of the faithful and the Church of God even until today. St. Hilary of Poitiers was born a Roman pagan, but after studying the Scriptures thoroughly, he became convinced of the salvation which only our Lord God can offer, and he and his family converted to the true Faith.
At that time, many of the faithful came under the sway of the lies of the devil, and by the devil’s machinations, many were lost in the heresy as espoused and preached by Arius, now known as the Arian heresy. Arianism swept like wildfire across Christendom and caught many countless souls among its victims. Many went into hellfire and condemnation because they were swayed and tempted by the lies of the devil.
St. Hilary of Poitiers worked hard to reverse all that and saved as many souls as he could from the clutches of the devil. He succeeded in converting many but his path was not easy. It is often that those who have been ensnared in the lies of the devil and who had power, used that power to persecute the faithful ones, including St. Hilary of Poitiers. But St. Hilary never gave up and until the end of his life he continued to minister to the people of God and call them to repent from their sins. This is indeed an example we all should follow in our own lives.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all the children of God and the members of His Church commit ourselves anew to reject Satan and all of his false promises and lies. With the intercession and the help of St. Hilary of Poitiers, let us cast aside his sweet words and falsehoods and instead put our complete trust and faith in God alone. Yes, we ought to put our trust in He who had given His all for our sake so that we may be healed and freed from sin. God be with us all, now and forever. Amen.
First Reading :
Psalm :
Gospel Reading :
Liturgical Colour : White
Isaiah 55 : 1-11
YHVH said, “Come here, all you who are thirsty, come to the water! All who have no money, come! Yes, without money and at no cost, buy and drink wine and milk. Why spend money on what is not food and labour for what does not satisfy? Listen to Me, and you will eat well; you will enjoy the richest of fare.”
“Incline your ear and come to Me; listen, that your soul may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, I will fulfill in you My promises to David. See, I have given him for a witness to the nations, a leader and commander of the people. Likewise you will summon a nation unknown to you, and nations that do not know you will come hurrying to you for the sake of YHVH your God, the Holy One of Israel, for He has promoted you.”
Seek YHVH while He may be found; call to Him while He is near. Let the wicked abandon his way, let him forsake his thoughts, let him turn to YHVH for He will have mercy, for our God is generous in forgiving. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, My ways are not your ways,” says YHVH.
“For as the heavens are above the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts above your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return till they have watered the earth, making it yield seed for the sower and food for others to eat, so is My Word that goes forth out of My mouth : It will not return to Me idle, but It shall accomplish My will, the purpose for which It has been sent.”
Alternative reading (from the Readings of Year A)
Isaiah 42 : 1-4, 6-7
Here is My servant whom I uphold, My Chosen One in whom I delight. I have put My Spirit upon Him, and He will bring justice to the nations. He does not shout or raise His voice, proclamations are not heard in the streets.
A broken reed He will not crush, nor will He snuff out the light of the wavering wick. He will make justice appear in truth. He will not waver or be broken until He has established justice on earth; the islands are waiting for His Law.
I, YHVH, have called You for the sake of justice; I will hold Your hand to make You firm; I will make You as a Covenant to the people, and as a Light to the nations, to open eyes that do not see, to free captives from prison, to bring out to light those who sit in darkness.
Homily and Reflection :
Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard how John, messenger of God and baptiser of the people proclaimed the Messiah and professed his faith to God and commitment to his vocation in front of the public and in front of the Pharisees and those sent by the chief priests to question him. The latter ones did not believe in John and tried what they could to discredit him and rein him in in his works.
They questioned him and his actions, for they failed to see in John the works of God, which He had revealed through John and what he had done. John called for the people of God still dwelling in the darkness to return to the Light of Christ. He had been sent as the messenger of God to preach to the stubborn men, dwelling in their state of sin, so that they might repent and be ready for the coming of the Lord.
He paved the way for Christ, and he is a role model for all of us in his dedication and humility. For he was famous and popular, flocks and throngs of people came to him to be baptised and countless more peoples listened to his words and urgings for their repentance. He could have seized all the glory to himself and received great praise and fame for that action, but he did not.
Instead, he assumed the attitude of a servant and a follower to the will of God. He did the works as was given to him from the time when he was conceived in his mother’s womb. He dedicated his whole life to the Lord, that through him the works of the Messiah would be made easier and as the extension of the reach of God’s love for His people.
In the first reading God also warned us through the other John, His Apostle, to be vigilant and careful against the devil who will try to seduce us and lead us astray by sweet lies and false promises, through the false prophets and the antichrists. If Christ the Saviour of all brought with Him the real promise of eternal life and eternal joy, then the antichrists are His antithesis, bringing us instead temporary joy and a false life, one that will likely end in death, and not just any death, but eternal death.
That is why God sent forth His servants and messengers, for the sole purpose of the guidance of all of us His people, so that amidst the darkness in the world, amidst the temptations, and all the distractions of the world, we may rediscover our focus, that should be on the Lord. There are too much noise and distractions in this world, and it is important for us to shut them out, so that we will not be distracted.
We have to remain focused on the Lord, His ways and teachings so that we may be delivered from the confusion caused by Satan and be freed from the bonds of sin he had imposed on us. And that is why those teachers of the Faith are so precious to us, as they help us to find our way as we progress on in our lives. And today we celebrate the feast of two of such teachers and saints, namely St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen.
St. Basil the Great was the bishop of Caesarea, during the time after the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea having affirmed the orthodox and standard teachings of the Faith. He was a well known theologian who defended the true faith against the perversions of heresies such as the Arian heresy that rejected the divinity of Christ, as well as many other syncretic and heterodox practices that compromises on the true faith.
He also cared greatly for the poor and the weak, the downtrodden and the unloved, practicing the faith he professed through his own actions and deeds. He did not let those who have been lost to the darkness through heresy to remain lost, and he did what he could, to bring them back to the Light. He worked together with many other saints of his time, and he worked hard to resist and fight the forces of heresy that was taking deep roots among the faithful at the time.
Meanwhile, St. Gregory Nazianzen was a contemporary of St. Basil the Great who was the Archbishop of Constantinople and also a great theologian who fought against the heresies of the faith and also teaching the true faith to many, keeping them on the right track against the lies of the devil. Together with his contemporaries, with St. Basil the Great and the other saints and great theologians, they worked hard to keep the truth of Christ alive amidst the forces of darkness that surround them.
From these holy men and devoted servants of God we can learn what we need to do, as what they have done is not just limited to them. We too are required to help one another to keep each other in the faith, and so that none would be lost to the darkness. Let us therefore follow in the examples of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen, so that we may help keep each other in the grace of God.
May Almighty God bless us all and grant us the wisdom to discern the falsehoods of Satan, all of his lies so that we may find our way to our loving God and Father. God bless us all. Amen.
First Reading :
Psalm :
Gospel Reading :
Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we hear about listening to God and obeying His laws, and fulfilling the commandments which He had given to us. It is highlighted in the first reading today from the first letter of St. John the Apostle, that as the servants and disciples of God, that we have to live out our faith and be concrete in that faith, showing it in our actions, words and deeds, and not doing what is contrary to the teachings of our Lord Jesus.
If we call ourselves as the children of God and as the members of His Church, then we have to behave as one. We cannot profess to be the children of God, and yet our actions prove to be completely otherwise. The very reason why it has been so difficult for many to believe in Christ and indeed why many of them refused to believe in Him is because we who are the disciples of Christ preached about Him but we did not practice what we preached.
How can they believe in us and in what we preached to them if we ourselves did not embody what we have preached. Instead, we become an embarrassment of the Faith, and our Lord will not be pleased at us. Not only that we have failed to observe His laws and commandments, but we have also made others to lack the faith in Him because of our own wicked actions and deeds, not in line with what we preached.
Therefore, we have to mean what we say, and we have to act on what we believe in. Otherwise, our faith in God is empty and meaningless, and instead of salvation we will gain condemnation from God and eternal punishment. St. James in his epistle, the letter of St. James, highlighted in it that faith without works is essentially the same as dead. That means faith without action based on that faith is a useless one and indeed, as I have elaborated, this kind of faith is harmful to us.
Yes, and that is the same faith which the hypocrites committed. The Pharisees and the scribes of the Law whom the Lord condemned as hypocrites were externally and outwardly seeming to be pious and good servants of the Lord, but in reality, they have no God in them, for whom they spared no place in their hearts. They preached faith and devotion to God and trumpeted their devotion loud for others to see, and yet they did these for themselves and to satisfy their own vanity.
Jesus condemned them precisely because they have no regards for the Lord and did not obey His laws and commandments as they should have. They have besmirched the Name of the Lord and spat on His precepts. They cared not for the Lord nor for His people but for their own self-aggrandisement. They were the ones who should have recognised the Christ when He came, and yet they doubted Him, rejected Him and laid difficulties along His works and His paths.
Our actions must not be like that of theirs, and instead we have to do as we believed, and we have to act in the way not contradicting the very Creed we profess. And this is what we can learn from the saint whose feast we are celebrating today, namely St. Thomas of Canterbury, also known by his name, St. Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury during the high Medieval age of the twelfth century, during the reign of King Henry II of England.
St. Thomas Becket was a devoted man of God, who followed the will of God wholeheartedly and who took the laws and commandments of God seriously in his heart. He was particularly staunch at the enforcement of the law of God and the Church. He was once a servant of the king entrusted with many matters because of his skills in management, appointed to chancellorship by the king.
The king had hoped that if he appointed St. Thomas Becket to the position of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the primate of England and the chief of the religious officer of the state, he would continue to show preference to serve the king and the state as he had been before. But St. Thomas Becket would prove him to be wrong. He was a faithful and pious servant of the Church, who did not mince his words and who was sorrowed by the great corruption in the lives of the king and his servants.
St. Thomas Becket practiced his faith faithfully to the core of its foundations, fulfilling the teachings of Christ. He showed mercy and love to sinners who sought God’s help, but to those who were wicked and unrepentant, and to those who persisted in their love for the world, he had no love for them. He excommunicated and expelled many from the Church those who had followed the path of the Pharisees, getting themselves rich at the cost of others and those who have caused untold sufferings for many.
He gained the enmity and hatred of many in the king’s court and circles, and this eventually led to a group of knights who plotted to assassinate him as he celebrated the solemn prayers. He was assassinated in cold blood at the holy places, while he surrendered himself completely to God. Those who were involved in the assassination including the king were punished severely by the Church, excommunicated and asked to do serious and long series of penance for their murder of the holy man of God, who was canonised as a martyr and saint soon after his murder.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the example of St. Thomas Becket should inspire us all to walk and practice our faith with genuine intention and devotion to our God. If only that all the faithful would emulate his upright life and devotion to his Faith, then the whole world would have been converted upon seeing our brilliant examples and dedication to the way of the Lord.
It is therefore necessary that we mean what we say, and if we are to preach the Word of God, then we have to mean what we preach and practice it ourselves, so that others who see us may know that we truly belongs to Christ, and not following our own selfish way. May St. Thomas of Canterbury, St. Thomas Becket pray for us and intercede for us sinners. Amen.
First Reading :
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