Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 67 : 29-30, 33-35a, 35b-36c
Summon Your power, o God, with the strength You have wielded for us. To Your Temple in Jerusalem, kings will come with gifts.
Sing to God, o kingdoms of the world; sing praises to the Lord, to Him Who rides the ancient heavens, and speaks in the voice of thunder. Proclaim the might of God.
He is great in Israel, powerful in heavens. Blessed be God!
Liturgical Colour : White
Acts 20 : 28-38
Keep watch over yourselves, and over the whole flock the Holy Spirit has placed into your care. Shepherd the Church of the Lord that He has won, at the price of His own Blood. I know that, after I leave, ruthless wolves will come among you and not spare the flock. And, from among you, some will arise, corrupting the truth, and inducing the disciples to follow them.
Be on the watch, therefore, remembering that, for three years, night and day, I did not cease to warn everyone, even with tears. Now, I commend you to God, and to His grace-filled word, which is able to make you grow and gain the inheritance that you shall share with all the saints.
I have not looked for anyone’s silver, gold or clothing. You, yourselves, know, that these hands of mine have provided for both my needs and the needs of those who were with me. In every way, I have shown you that by working hard one must help the weak, remembering the words that the Lord Jesus Himself said, “Happiness lies more in giving than in receiving.”
After this discourse, Paul knelt down with them and prayed. Then, they all began to weep and threw their arms around him and kissed him. They were deeply distressed because he had said that they would never see him again. And they went with him even to the ship.
Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day as we listened to the words of the Scripture, we are reminded that there will be difficulties, persecutions and challenges in our way as we seek to be faithful Christians and to obey the Lord in all things. We are not going to have it easy if we choose to follow the Lord’s commandments and walk faithfully in His path. Just as mentioned in our first reading today, even from the earliest days of the Church there had been persecutions against the faithful, and martyrdom as shown by St. Stephen and his martyrdom.
We heard of how Saul, the zealous and misguided young Pharisee, attempted to destroy the then still very young and fledging Church, using force and even violence to strike at the followers of Christ and all who were suspected to be Christians, not sparing even the women and children. There had been many sufferings and trials those early Christians had to suffer, and many had to endure prison and even martyrdom because of their steadfast faith in God.
But despite all of these, we must not lose heart just as those Christians remained strong in their faith, as they still committed themselves to the cause of the Lord and His Church even amidst the persecutions, like what St. Philip the Apostle had done, in preaching the Good News of God and performing his ministry even at the height of the persecution from the Jewish authorities and the vengeful but misguided crusade of people like Saul, the future St. Paul in those days when he was still a great enemy of the Church.
Saul has been a great persecutor of the faithful, but later on, God would call him and in turn he repented and became instead a great champion of the Church and the faith. And this is just how we must truly have faith and put our trust in God, for God will surely be with us, and we do not need to worry, for God has His plans for us. If someone who had been so vicious and so dangerous to the Church as Saul could be converted and had such a total change in his life to be a follower of God, then everything is indeed possible for God, although we may have thought that such a thing is impossible.
All the Apostles, the disciples and all those Christians, our very own predecessors have been able to persevere through those difficult moments, through those persecutions and trials because they truly put their trust in the Lord, their Risen and glorious Saviour. In our Gospel passage today, we continue to hear from what yesterday’s Gospel had told us on the discourse of the Bread of Life. Christ referred to Himself as the Bread of Life, to the disgust of some of His own followers who failed to understand what He had meant properly.
Through His gift of the Eucharist to us, the Lord has strengthened us and make us all to share in His Body and Blood, that all of us who partake in His own Most Precious Body and Blood, are united in this Communion with Him, the whole entire Church together, both all of us who are living in the present in this world, and also all those who have gone before us triumphantly, the same Apostles and disciples and all those who had endured martyrdom for their faith, namely the saints and martyrs, as well as all the holy souls in purgatory waiting for their time to enter the glory of Heaven.
All of us share in this same Bread of Life, the Lord Jesus Christ through Whom we have received the assurance of eternal life if we trust Him and have complete faith in Him. He has called us all from the nations and brought us to Him, that through Him we may find our way to the eternal glory with Him in heaven. That is why we must look forward to this and focus our attention on the Lord, our Hope and our Light, even when we may encounter difficulties and challenges in our lives as Christians.
Today, let us also look upon the good examples of our predecessor, St. Catherine of Siena, a great and renowned saint and Doctor of the Church whose life and contributions to the Church are still felt and experienced even to this very day. She was renowned for her many visions and experiences of the faith with the Lord that she had received from when she was as young as five or six years old, and which she would continue to receive through life.
She devoted herself and her whole life to the Lord, and she wrote extensively about her experiences and her visions, as well as treatises about the faith and the Church. She was deeply respected and honoured for her faith and piety, for her great visions and writings, and she was involved even in the resolutions of conflicts that were common at her time, in what is now Italy, over six hundred years ago. Even Popes and Cardinals at that time sought her advice and help for the issues of the Church.
St. Catherine of Siena truly placed her complete faith in the Lord, the Bread of Life, as she committed herself to an almost daily reception of the Holy Eucharist, living with great simplicity and practiced fasting so often that she had to be reminded to take care of herself. Nonetheless, her faith sustained her throughout her life and missions, her contributions and efforts in rejuvenation of the faith and the Church.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, are we able to imitate the good examples of St. Catherine of Siena in her faith and dedication to the Lord? Let us all put more of our trust in the Lord, and be more committed in our faith from now on, and appreciate this most wonderful gift He has given us in the Eucharist? By sharing in the Bread of Life, all of us will be strengthened in faith and in our lives, especially important in these days when things seem so bleak and hopeless all around us.
Let us all share our hope in the Lord, and share this joy of having the Bread of Life, the Christ with us, with one another. May the Lord be with us always and may He guide us through our journey, now and always. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : White
John 6 : 35-40
At that time, Jesus said to the people, “I am the Bread of Life; whoever comes to Me shall never be hungry, and whoever believes in Me shall never be thirsty. Nevertheless, as I said, you refuse to believe, even when you have seen. Yet all those whom the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me, I shall not turn away. For I have come from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of the One Who sent Me.”
“And the will of Him Who sent Me is that I lose nothing of what He has given Me, but instead that I raise it up on the last day. This is the will of the Father, that whoever sees the Son and believes in Him shall live eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 65 : 1-3a, 4-5, 6-7a
Shout with joy to God, all you on earth; sing to the glory of His Name; proclaim His glorious praise. Say to God, “How great are Your deeds!”
All the earth bows down to You, making music, in praise of You, singing in honour of Your Name. Come, and see God’s wonders; His deeds, awesome for humans.
He has turned the sea into dry land, and the river was crossed on foot. Let us, therefore, rejoice in Him. He rules by His might forever.
Liturgical Colour : White
Acts 8 : 1b-8
This was the beginning of a great persecution against the Church in Jerusalem. All, except the Apostles, were scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria. Devout men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. Saul, meanwhile, was trying to destroy the Church. He entered house after house and dragged off men and women, and had them put in jail.
At the same time, those who were scattered went about, preaching the word. Philip went down to a town of Samaria and proclaimed the Christ there. All the people paid close attention to what Philip said as they listened to him, and saw the miraculous signs that he did. For, in cases of possession, the unclean spirits came out shrieking loudly. Many people who were paralysed or crippled, were healed. So there was great joy in the town.
Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard of the salvation which God has bestowed upon us all through Christ, His beloved Son, by which all of us have been delivered from the precipice of destruction and death. That is what we have heard in our readings today, as we learn how we ought to love as Christians, living in grace and filled with the love of Christ in all things, as how the first Christians lived.
In our first reading today we heard from the Acts of the Apostles on the lives of the first Christians, on how they cared for one another, being very generous with their care and love, their sharing of God’s blessings with one another that no one were left out. They lived in the state of a wonderful bliss and grace, filled with the Holy Spirit, as people who have been reborn anew in God through the Spirit, exactly what the Lord had said to Nicodemus during their meeting.
The Lord had told Nicodemus that everyone who believe in Him ought to be reborn again in the Spirit, and this referred to the Baptism that we have all received at the time when we received that Sacrament, whether as infants or as adult converts. And through Baptism, all of us have been made sharers in the Lord’s Passion, suffering, death and resurrection. We have become sharers in His death, as we die to our sins and wickedness united to the Cross of Christ, by which He bore all of our sins and died for us, and then we are united in His resurrection into new life.
Yes, and this is how we enter into this new life and existence in God, a new life filled with love and the grace of God, an existence in the Holy Spirit of God. And we are also reminded how the Lord has also called us to reflect on the salvation which He has given to us, this new hope we have received through His Sacrifice on the Cross. The Lord Jesus revealed to Nicodemus how He Himself would do as how Moses lifted up the bronze serpent to save many of the Israelites who rebelled against God, and He Himself was lifted up on the Cross for all to us.
All of us, who have rebelled against God and therefore fallen into sin, are just like those Israelites who suffered and were about to perish from the folly of their actions, their rebellious attitudes, and the Lord had mercy and took pity on all of them. When Moses interceded on behalf of the people and crafted the bronze serpent that all who saw the bronze serpent would not die but live, it was a prefigurement of what the Lord Himself would be doing for the fulfilment of His promised salvation.
This time, it was the Lord Himself Who interceded on our behalf, as our High Priest, lifting Himself up on the Cross, offering His own Precious Body and Blood as a worthy sacrifice, the slaughtering of the Paschal Lamb for the atonement of our sins. He has done all these because of His everlasting, ever-enduring and most magnificent love for us all, that even when we have sinned against Him and wronged Him on so many occasions, He is still patient for us, waiting for us to return to Him and to be reconciled with Him.
He has given us all a new lease of life, giving us a new hope of life and a new existence through Him. He has called us all to embrace His mercy and forgiveness, to be cleansed from the many corruptions of our sins and to walk once again in His grace and in His path. As Christians, are we then willing and able to commit ourselves to walk with God down this new path in life? Are we able to endure the challenges and trials that we may encounter along this journey of faith?
Now, all of us are living in a particularly difficult time in our lives with so many troubles besetting many of us and our communities in this year alone. This is why perhaps it is time for us to be those beacons of hope and the light for others to brighten their lives and light their way out of the darkness. Are we willing and able to bring hope to our fellow brothers and sisters around us, especially to those who are in need of hope, in need of love, care, attention and some compassion? Let us look at the example set by our predecessors in faith for inspiration.
Today, we also celebrate the feast of St. Anselm, one of our holy predecessors, who was a renowned bishop and a Doctor of the Church. St. Anselm was remembered especially for his role as the Archbishop of Canterbury and therefore the Primate of England, originally a monk and abbot who laboured hard throughout Christendom in reforming the Church and the faith, and was then entrusted with the role of the leader of the Church in England by its king.
St. Anselm devoted himself to his office and calling, leading a virtuous and upright life, and showed exemplary faith throughout his years in ministry, and had to go up against even the opposition from the king and his enemies, that in fact he had to endure exile twice from his See. St. Anselm devoted himself and his life to reforming the corrupt practices of the government and the Church at his time regardless, giving his trust fully in God and bringing His love and compassion to all of his flock.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all embrace God’s love and compassion fully as St. Anselm had once done, and pass that same love and share them to one another. May the Lord be our guide and help us in our journey of faith, that we may always be faithful in walking down the path that God has set before us. May the Lord give us the strength and the courage to persevere through the various trials and difficulties we may have to face along this journey. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : White
John 3 : 7b-15
Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again from above. The wind blows where it pleases and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. It is like that with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus asked again, “How can this be?” And Jesus answered, “You are a teacher in Israel, and you do not know these things! Truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and we witness to the things we have seen, but you do not accept Our testimony. If you do not believe when I speak of earthly things, what then, when I speak to you of heavenly things? No one has ever gone up to heaven except the One Who came from heaven, the Son of Man.”
“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.”
Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 92 : 1ab, 1c-2, 5
YHVH reigns, robed in majesty; YHVH is girded with strength.
The world now, is firm; it cannot be moved. Your throne stands from long ago, o YHVH; from all eternity You are.
Your decrees can be trusted; holiness dwells in Your House, day after day, without end, o YHVH.
Liturgical Colour : White
Acts 4 : 32-37
The whole community of believers was one in heart and mind. No one claimed private ownership of any possessions; but rather, they shared all things in common. With great power, the Apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, for all of them were living in an exceptional time of grace.
There was no needy person among them, for those who owned land or houses, sold them and brought the proceeds of the sale. And they laid it at the feet of the Apostles, who distributed it, according to each one’s need. This is what a certain Joseph did. He was a Levite from Cyprus, whom the Apostles called Barnabas, meaning : “The encouraging one.” He sold a field which he owned and handed the money to the Apostles.
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