Divine Love

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Friday, 28 February 2014 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the law of God which He first revealed through Moses had been adapted, changed, and suited to the uses and means of the people of God, that is the Israelites, which they had often misunderstood in its true purpose, that is to serve God’s purpose rather than the purpose of men. Yet, in reality, the laws had been made subservient to the will of men.

And no other time was this more evident, than at the time of Jesus, when the abuse was at its relative maximum. The Pharisees, the scribes and the teachers of the law, who were the leaders of the people in the matter of faith, misused their teaching authority and gave the people of God a much improvised version of the true law of God.

The strictness of the law of God which was revealed through Moses, was indeed due to the thick-headedness of the Israelites, who constantly grumbled and disobeyed the Lord on their way through the desert to the Promised Land. They ignored the precepts and way of the Lord, preferring instead to submit to their own emotions and human desires, rather than obeying the Lord their God.

But was the intention of the Lord truly to punish and burden them with such laws? No! These laws were there because God loved and cared for them, and He dreaded the most if any of His beloved were to fall into the hands of Satan and evil, and be separated from Him by the eternal agony of hell. God loved mankind and all of His children, and that is why He bothered to give them His laws to help them.

But what the people had done by the time of Jesus was that of blind obedience, which can be as bad as thick-headedness and plain disobedience of their ancestors. That is because if their ancestors refused to believe in the Lord and His ways, the people at the time of Jesus believed only at the surface, through the various observations of the complicated rules and regulations as established by the Pharisees.

And the result is that they were as wayward as their ancestors were, and first of all would be the Pharisees and the leaders of the people themselves, who led the people in their obstinate state, refusing to listen even to the Holy One of God, the promised Messiah. When God came down upon us to explain the truth about what He desired in mankind, they refused to believe in Him and preferred to trust in their own human wisdom and judgment.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, these people saw the Lord, and yet they did not realise, as the first reading today mentioned, that the judge is already at the door, ready to mete judgment against them. But He still gave them chance for repentance, and some did repent, accepting His mercy and love.

The same too applies to us, brethren. Do we recognise the Lord and His Presence? Do we recognise Him in our faith, and do we truly believe in what we believe? Are we like those who only prefer to believe what they want to believe and discard the rest, the so-called cafetaria Christians? If we do so then we are no better than the Pharisees who chose to believe in their own human wisdom rather than in the Lord.

Are we genuine in our love and devotion for the Lord? Our devotion and faith cannot be just merely mean going for Mass every Sunday and that is it. It cannot also mean just saying our prayers without real action, and neither can it be just plain works and good deeds, without prayer and proper devotion to the Lord. If we are to dedicate ourselves to God, then we must be genuine in our faith, and we cannot be half-hearted in it.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us resolve from now on to deepen our faith in God ever further, that our faith may grow ever stronger in the Lord, and that we no longer be hampered by our own human pride, arrogance, ambitions and stubbornness, that we may listen to the Lord and know what He truly wants from us.

May we all become good and faithful children of God, resolving not to disobey the Lord by following our own path, as the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law had done. Let us dull the edge of our pride and sharpen the edge of our humility, and open wide the doors of our heart, and put up our ears, that we may listen to God as He speaks to us, and follow His ways, always and till the end of our lives. God bless us all. Amen.

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Friday, 28 February 2014 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 102 : 1-2, 3-4, 8-9, 11-12

Bless the Lord, my soul; all my being, bless His holy Name! Bless the Lord, my soul, and do not forget all His kindness.

He forgives all your sins and heals all your sickness; He redeems your life from destruction and crowns you with love and compassion.

The Lord is gracious and merciful, abounding in love and slow to anger; He will not always scold nor will He be angry forever.

As the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His love for those fearing Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove from us our sins.

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Friday, 28 February 2014 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

James 5 : 9-12

Beloved, do not fight among yourselves and you will not be judged. See, the judge is already at the door. Take for yourselves, as an example of patience, the suffering of the prophets who spoke in the Lord’s Name.

See how those who were patient are called blessed. You have heard of the patience of Job and know how the Lord dealt with him in the end. For the Lord is merciful and shows compassion.

Above all, my beloved, do not swear either by heaven or by earth, or make a habit of swearing. Let your yes be yes and your no be no, lest you become liable for judgment.

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Thursday, 27 February 2014 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 48 : 14-15ab, 15cd-16, 17-18, 19-20

This is the fate of people trusting themselves, the future of those who rely on their strength. Like sheep led to the grave, they have death as their shepherd and ruler.

Quickly their form will be consumed in the world of the dead, which is their home. But God will rescue my soul from the grave by receiving me unto Himself.

Fear not when someone grows rich, when his power becomes oppressively great, for nothing will he take when he dies; his wealth and pomp he will leave behind.

Though he praised himself in his lifetime, “All will say that I have enjoyed life,” he will join the generation of his forebears, who will never again see the light.

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Wednesday, 26 February 2014 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have to trust in the Lord and put all of our attention to fulfill whatever He has come upon this world to do. He came into this world to bring goodness into it, and to bring the light of God to unveil the darkness that has been in this world and close our eyes from the truth. He brought to us the salvation in God, to free us from the depredations of evil.

And in today’s Gospel, Jesus wanted to show His disciples, and all of us, that we should never be exclusive in our work for the Lord, but we must be inclusive. That is because all good works ultimately have their source in God, and all good works have their meaning in serving the purposes of the Lord. Doing good can never mean doing the purpose of the devil.

All said, in this matter, we cannot separate and distinguish between good actions and faith. As St. James has often stressed in his letter, that faith cannot be good without concrete actions, which are good actions, and neither can actions be truly good without faith. Both faith and works are related closely to each other, and indeed, when someone does a good work, we should not stop him, especially without knowing first his or her background. He may be just one of the faithful like ourselves!

What Jesus is trying to tell us today is that we must neither be judgmental or be exclusivist in our attitude. We have to try our best to incorporate others in our good services to the Lord, and that means, rather than condemn others or see them as a competition with our own works, we should instead seek to reach out to them and bring them to our fold, that we may work together as one, and achieve even greater things.

One example which we can use in this world today is the works of the various Christian churches and followers of the Lord, many of whom are separated from the unity that is in the Church, the One and only, and yet at the same time, these people, in their separated state, do still do good things for the sake of the faithful. They did good things just as we do.

We should not outright condemn them for what they do and try to stop what they are doing. If any, if we want to condemn them at all, condemn them only if they persist in their separation from the One Church of God, and role in perpetuating that division. Yes, we should all, first above all, seek and work towards unity, and we must make sure that whatever we do are in tandem with each others’ works.

Let us therefore unite our efforts and bring all of our good works as one, to serve the Lord and His people. Bar not the good works of those who do them, even outside of our Church, but focus instead our effort on bringing them back into the fold, that our efforts may be more united than ever before, and all our works may transcend all the evils of division that had wracked our Church all this while.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all seek to do good always in our lives, changing our ways that we may do good for the sake of God and His people. Open our hearts to the Lord and welcome Him into our hearts, walk graciously in His ways and may our examples be a shining example to all others as well. Do good, be humble, and remain faithful, brothers and sisters in Christ. Be inclusive and never be judgmental, seek reunion and unity rather than condemnation and rejection. Amen.

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Tuesday, 25 February 2014 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Be righteous, be humble and be faithful. These are the key takeaways from today’s readings, from both the letter of St. James, urging us to seek the Lord and His will in our lives, and to be humble, and in the Gospel today, taken from the Gospel of St. Mark, that we may have a genuine faith, that is like the faith of a young children.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are presented with the things that were reality at the time of Jesus, and indeed is still a reality even today. We squabble and fight with our own friends and neighbours, because we desire certain things, be it power, affluence, wealth, friendships, and many other things, and we as mankind, has in our nature to be greedy and to desire for more and more things.

And in the end we often miss the point on what it means to be the children and disciples of the Lord. We often seek power and glory, position and honour, that we often forget about the Lord. We did not keep faithful to His commandments but instead walk in our own ways, that is following the ways of this world, which include violence, hatred, prejudice and many other things.

We follow the ways of the world often because it offers us very many things, things that look beautiful and tempting in our eyes. It offers us influence, power, authority, wealth and other things that may prevent us from reaching out to the truth in God. The reality is that, while these things seem to be very enjoyable and pleasurable to us, they are merely temporary. The pursuit of these things will not bear us much fruits, other than bitterness and regret at the end of our lives.

For if we make friends with the ways of the world, in all its corruption by evil, then we are no longer following God or remain as His disciples. We instead walk in the rebellious path of the devil. And God does not want this to happen to us, and that is why He sent to us Jesus His own Son, to straighten the path for us and to make us aware what it truly means to be followers of the Lord.

We have to be genuine in our faith and love for God, and we have to change our mindset and actions, that we no longer adhere to the ways of the world, but instead follow the Lord in His ways and walk in His ways. We cannot be half-hearted in our faith, because we must be firm and strong in resisting the temptations and challenges of this world.

We have to put away our pride and dull the edge of our human ego. At the same time, we should also remain humble, and keep strong this humility at all times in our life. Pride and arrogance often separates us from the Lord, and they act as barriers preventing us from accessing the Lord, keeping us away from His salvation. Humility, on the other hand, allow us to open ourselves to the Lord.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us heed the Lord and His call. Let us not turn our back towards Him, and let us give Him our full attention without divide. We have to dedicate ourselves to the Lord, and practice it in our words, deeds and actions. As the prophet Micah said, let us walk humbly with our God, and let us follow Him with all of our hearts. Amen.

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Monday, 24 February 2014 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Brothers and sisters in Christ! Today we are taught how to be good disciples of the Lord. We are told what are the characteristics that make us children and servants of the Lord. We have to be humble and open to suggestions, listening to others’ opinions, and most importantly, to pray and pray seriously, and pray deeply with our hearts.

We have to get rid from ourselves all of our negative influences and emotions, ridding of ourselves from pride, arrogance, hatred, jealousy and many other things that prevent us from truly becoming good and holy servants of the Lord. We have to detach ourselves from many things of this world, and instead put ourselves ever closer to the Lord our God.

Our faith in God must be a living one, and must be an active one, which St. James, whose letter is in our first reading today, often emphasised in his writings. This faith must be based on genuine love we have for God and for His people, that is our fellow brothers and sisters, our fellow mankind.

One way for us to be faithful to God is as often emphasised by St. James himself, is to love, that means to love one another, and to show it in all of our actions. However, we also need to pray, that is to devote ourselves to God in a deep conversation, from our heart to the heart of God. This is in essence what a prayer should be, and indeed prayers must not become a litany of demands and desires, but instead, prayers must be a genuine channel through which we communicate with God.

Through prayer, we strengthen ourselves, in terms of our spiritual defense and grace from God. We receive much grace and power through prayer, because it is through prayer that God gets into contact with us individually, and it also strengthen the anchor of faith that we have in God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we all reflect on the readings and their meaning to us today, let us take a look at our own lives, whether we have truly been committed to the Lord through prayer and action. We cannot separate one from the other, just as St. James had told us, that faith cannot be separated from action, and neither can good actions be truly separated from faith in God.

Have we been faithful to God and spend our precious time with Him? Have we been faithful and walk always in the ways of the Lord, showing it through concrete actions? If we have done these, then our faith is genuine and alive, and we are on the right track. Otherwise, change, brothers and sisters! Change and abandon all the wickedness of your past and go seek the Lord with all the strength that you have.

It may be a daunting task for us to do so, but if we do not begin even from simple and little things, we will never get things done. It has to begin now, and it can begin even by us spending small amount of time every day, especially before we are about to go to sleep, to quieten ourselves down, and to open our hearts to God. Forget about all the things that bother us in this world, and forget about all the business and the dealings that we have in our daily lives, just for a moment, and offer that time wholly to God.

If we do so, then we are on the right track. Have faith in the Lord, my brothers and sisters in Christ, open our hearts to Him and communicate intimately with Him, so that we may know what He wants from us, that we will be able to translate it into concrete actions, filled with love, both for God and for our fellow mankind. God bless us all. Amen.

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Sunday, 23 February 2014 : 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus taught us the truth about God’s laws, as revealed first through Moses, which the people had often misinterpreted and took it at the face value and keep it just at that. Many failed to see the true intention of God’s laws and ordinances, and their true purpose. God did not intend for His laws to punish or pressure His people with burden, because He intended His laws for love.

That was why Jesus showed God’s people, that His laws should not be interpreted in a way that exclude love out of the equation. The ancient laws and customs of the Jewish people included the concept of vengeance and revenge, named accurately, ‘do ut des’, which means that one receives what one has given, or the concept of reciprocity.

That when translated into how the people carried out the laws of God means that a particularly harsh way of dealing with crimes and how to punish these lawbreakers. They had those who had committed a crime to pay back exactly what they had committed, and that is why the term, an eye for an eye and so on and so forth.

The result was clear, the community of the people of God, that is Israel, became a society governed with fear, prejudice and hatred, that is very far from what God intended for them, that is to build upon a community of love and inclusiveness. The people became boxed in into their obedience to the law, and the fear of God and His wrath should they disobey the law.

Yet, in doing so, under the guidance of the Pharisees in particular, the laws had been lost in its true meaning, often covered by false obedience and empty observations of the law. Jesus showed them that there is a need for the understanding of the purpose of the Law. The Law is about love, and in obeying the law, the people of God have to observe love in all their actions and deeds.

And this love is in fact not the same kind of love that we are often accustomed to in this world. The love that we know about in this world is often a very selfish love. Just as Jesus had said, we often love only those who love us back, and we do not love our enemies and those who hate us. We hate them back and even curse at them as best as we can.

And in our understanding of love, we even have it at an even more flawed level, one that is mingled with lust, greed and human desire. Our form of love is corrupted by desire and wickedness. We lust and desire for worldly pleasures, and that results in us failing further to understand what God truly intends for us.

We are often prejudiced and choosy in our love, and we give no love to those whom we do not love, and those who hate us. But the Lord shows us that when we love we cannot be prejudiced, and we have to be selfless in giving our love. Love should be given to all around us, and even to those who hate and persecute us. If we love only those who already love us, then what we do to them are not quite as meaningful as if we love those who hate us.

The Lord shows us that He knows about what it means to value-add our faith, and the love that is in this world. Loving our enemies and those who hate us will in itself help them to understand love, and hopefully that they will be awakened from their slumber in darkness and in the seas of hate. It falls upon us then, for us to show love to them. If we show them hate instead of love, then we are likely to end up dooming them to hate, and we will be held responsible for that too.

Yes, brothers and sisters in Christ, in line with what Jesus had taught and shown us, we have to change our perspectives of those around us, our brothers and sisters. We must not be judgmental or be filled with prejudice. We have to show love to all, even when the other side does not want our love. Show them that to be children of God means to love. And when we love, we have to do so unconditionally.

Let us all deepen our faith in God and deepen our understanding of His will. Let us understand further the love He has for us, and let us hope that we mankind may learn to love more, and to devote ourselves truly to God, seeking God in all the things we do, and follow in His ways in all of our actions. May God walk with us and guide us, teach us how to understand His will and show us how to love each other and to love Him. Amen.

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Sunday, 23 February 2014 : 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Matthew 5 : 38-48

You have heard that it was said : An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you this : do not oppose evil with evil; if someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn and offer the other. If someone sues you in court for your shirt, give him your coat as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go two miles with him. Give when asked, and do not turn your back on anyone who wants to borrow from you.

You have heard that it was said : Love your neighbour and do not do good to your enemy. But this I tell you : Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in Heaven. For He makes His sun rise on both the wicked and the good, and He gives rain to both the just and the unjust.

If you love those who love you, what is special about that? Do not even tax collectors do as much? And if you are friendly only to your friends, what is so exceptional about that? Do not even the pagans do as much? As for you, be righteous and perfect in the way your heavenly Father is righteous and perfect.

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Sunday, 23 February 2014 : 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 102 : 1-2, 3-4, 8 and 10, 12-13

Bless the Lord, my soul; all my being, bless His holy Name! Bless the Lord, my soul, and do not forget all His kindness.

He forgives all your sins and heals all your sickness; He redeems your life from destruction and crowns you with love and compassion.

The Lord is gracious and merciful, abounding in love and slow to anger. He does not treat us according to our sins, nor does He punish us as we deserve.