early Church

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Thursday, 18 May 2017 : 5th Week of Easter, Memorial of Pope St. John I, Pope and Martyr (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)
Acts 15 : 7-21

As the discussions became heated, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that from the beginning God chose me among you so that non-Jews could hear the Good News from me and believe. God, Who can read hearts, put Himself on their side by giving the Holy Spirit to them just as He did to us. He made no distinction between us and them and cleansed their hearts through faith.”

“So why do you want to put God to the test? Why do you lay on the disciples a burden that neither our ancestors nor we ourselves were able to carry? We believe, indeed, that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they are.”

The whole assembly kept silent as they listened to Paul and Barnabas tell of all the miraculous signs and wonders that God had done through them among the non-Jews. After they had finished, James spoke up, “Listen to me, brothers. Symeon has just explained how God first showed His care by taking a people for Himself from non-Jewish nations.”

“And the words of the prophets agree with this, for Scripture says, ‘After this I will return and rebuild the booth of David which has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins and set it up again. Then the rest of humanity will look for the Lord, and all the nations will be consecrated to My Name. So says the Lord, Who does today what He decided from the beginning.'”

“Because of this, I think that we should not make difficulties for those non-Jews who are turning to God. Let us just tell them not to eat food that is unclean from having been offered to idols; to keep themselves from prohibited marriages; and not to eat the flesh of animals that have been strangled, or any blood. For from the earliest times Moses has been taught in every place, and every Sabbath his laws are recalled.”

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Wednesday, 17 May 2017 : 5th Week of Easter (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Acts 15 : 1-6

Some persons who had come from Judea to Antioch were teaching the brothers in this way, “Unless you are circumcised according to the law of Moses, you cannot be saved.”

Because of this there was trouble, and Paul and Barnabas had fierce arguments with them. For Paul told the people to remain as they were when they became believers. Finally those who had come from Jerusalem suggested that Paul and Barnabas and some others go up to Jerusalem to discuss the matter with the Apostles and elders.

They were sent on their way by the Church. As they passed through Phoenicia and Samaria they reported how the non-Jews had turned to God, and there was great joy among all the brothers and sisters. On their arrival in Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the Church, the Apostles and the elders, to whom they told all that God had done through them.

Some believers, however, who belonged to the party of the Pharisees, stood up and said that non-Jewish men must be circumcised and instructed to keep the law of Moses. So the Apostles and elders met together to consider the matter.

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Tuesday, 16 May 2017 : 5th Week of Easter (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Acts 14 : 19-28

Then some Jews arrived from Antioch and Iconium and turned the people against Paul and Barnabas. They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the town, leaving him for dead. But when his disciples gathered around him, he stood up and returned to the town. And the next day he left for Derbe with Barnabas.

After proclaiming the Gospel in that town and making many disciples, they returned to Lystra and Iconium and on to Antioch. They were strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain firm in the faith, for they said, “We must go through many trials to enter the Kingdom of God.”

In each Church they appointed elders and, after praying and fasting, they commended them to the Lord in Whom they had placed their faith. Then they travelled through Pisidia, and came to Pamphylia. They preached the Word in Perga and went down to Attalia. From there they sailed back to Antioch, where they had first been commended to God’s grace for the task they had now completed.

On their arrival they gathered the Church together and told them all that God had done through them and how He had opened the door of faith to the non-Jews. They spent a fairly long time there with the disciples.

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Monday, 15 May 2017 : 5th Week of Easter (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Acts 14 : 5-18

A move was made by pagans and Jews, together with their leaders, to harm the Apostles and to stone them. But Paul and Barnabas learnt of this and fled to Lycaonian towns of Lystra and Derbe and to the surrounding countryside, where they continued preaching the Good News.

Paul and Barnabas spent a fairly long time at Lystra. There was a crippled man in Lystra who had never been able to stand or walk. One day, as he was listening to the preaching, Paul looked intently at him and saw that he had the faith to be saved. So he spoke to him in a loud voice, “In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you to stand up on your feet!” And the man stood up and began to walk around.

When the people saw what Paul had done, they cried out in the language of Lycaonia, “The gods have come to us in human likeness!” They named Barnabas Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes, since he was the chief speaker. Even the priest of the Temple of Zeus, which stood outside the town, brought oxen and garlands to the gate; together with the people, he wanted to offer sacrifice to them.

When Barnabas and Paul heard this, they tore their garment to show their indignation and rushed into the crowd, shouting, “Friends, why are you doing this? We are human beings with the same weakness you have and we are now telling you to turn away from these useless things to the living God Who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and all that is in them.”

“In past generations He allowed each nation to go its own way, though He never stopped making Himself known; for He is continually doing good, giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, providing you with food and filling your hearts with gladness.”

Even these words could hardly keep the crowd from offering sacrifice to them.

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Sunday, 14 May 2017 : Fifth Sunday of Easter, Feast of St. Matthias, Apostle (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Acts 6 : 1-7

In those days, as the number of disciples grew, the so-called Hellenists complained against the so-called Hebrews, because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. 

So the Twelve summoned the whole body of disciples together and said, “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God to serve at tables. So, friends, choose from among yourselves seven respected men full of Spirit and wisdom, that we may appoint them to this task. As for us, we shall give ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.”

The whole community agreed and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and Holy Spirit : Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenus and Nicolaus of Antioch who was a proselyte. They presented these men to the Apostles who first prayed over them and then laid hands upon them.

The Word of God continued to spread, and the number of the disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly and even many priests accepted the faith.

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Wednesday, 10 May 2017 : 4th Week of Easter (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Acts 12 : 24 – Acts 13 : 5a

Meanwhile the word of God was increasing and spreading. Barnabas and Saul carried out their mission and then came back to Jerusalem, taking with them John also called Mark.

There were at Antioch – in the Church which was there – prophets and teachers : Barnabas, Symeon known as Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod, and Saul.

On one occasion while they were celebrating the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said to them, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul to do the work for which I have called them.” So, after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off.

These then, sent by the Holy Spirit, went down the port of Seleucia and from there sailed to Cyprus. Upon their arrival in Salamis they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogue.

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Tuesday, 9 May 2017 : 4th Week of Easter (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Acts 11 : 19-26

Those who had been scattered because of the persecution over Stephen travelled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message, but only to the Jews. But there were some natives of Cyprus and Cyrene among them who, on coming into Antioch, spoke also to the Greeks, giving them the Good News of the Lord Jesus. The hand of the Lord was with them so that a great number believed and turned to the Lord.

News of this reached the ears of the Church in Jerusalem, so they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw the manifest signs of God’s favour, he rejoiced and urged them all to remain firmly faithful to the Lord; for he himself was a good man filled with Holy Spirit and faith. Thus large crowds came to know the Lord.

Then Barnabas went off to Tarsus to look for Saul and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they had meetings with the Church and instructed many people. It was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.

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Wednesday, 3 May 2017 : Feast of St. Philip and St. James, Apostles (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red
1 Corinthians 15 : 1-8

Let me remind you, brothers and sisters, of the Good News that I preached to you and which you received and on which you stand firm. By that Gospel you are saved, provided that you hold to it as I preached it. Otherwise, you will have believed in vain.

In the first place, I have passed on to you what I myself received that Christ died for our sins, as Scripture says; that He was buried; that He was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures; that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve. Afterwards He appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters together; most of them are still alive, although some have already gone to rest.

Then He appeared to James and after that to all the Apostles. And last of all, He appeared to the most despicable of them, this is to me.

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Tuesday, 25 April 2017 : Feast of St. Mark, Evangelist (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate together the feast of one of the four great writers of the Holy Gospels, the accounts of the life and the works of our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Mark was one of the Evangelists, those whose accounts had been deemed by the Church and the by the Apostles and their successors to be true and free of error version of the life of the Lord.

St. Mark, like St. Luke, was not one of the Apostles of the Lord, unlike St. Matthew and St. John, both of whom also wrote their own Gospels. But all four of them were those who were very close to the Lord and had extensive knowledge of what happened during the time of Jesus and His life on earth, from His birth and His years of life, to the time of His ministry and eventually suffering and death on the cross. And they also witnessed the resurrection of the Lord and all other things He had done.

On this day, let us all place our attention to what the Lord had helped to assemble through His Church, a set of witnesses and proofs which His servants had gathered and kept for many centuries and ages, the passages from the history of the Lord’s salvation, and also through the traditions passed down from generations to generations, which we now know as the Bible or the Holy Scriptures.

In the Gospel today, the Lord Jesus gave His disciples one last and important command before He ascended into His heavenly glory. He commanded them to go forth to all the nations, to peoples from all the four corners of the world, to travel to the furthest and uttermost distant land to preach the Good News and the truth of God to all, so that all may come to be reconciled with God, and may seek to be baptised and sealed by the sacrament of baptism in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

That was why the Apostles and the disciples of the Lord went to faraway lands, to all parts of the Roman Empire and also to the land of the Persians, to India and beyond, carrying with them the testimonies of the faith as they had received from the Lord, and which the Holy Spirit affirmed in them, by the divine wisdom granted and provided to them. They laboured hard and showed the Lord’s teachings through their actions, and converted many people to the faith.

The Evangelists like St. Mark also did their part in fulfilling the will of God, by writing down upon the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, of the account of the life and the works of Jesus, noting down all that He had done in the midst of the people, as attested and witnessed by all those to whom the Lord had shown His deeds and taught His ways. In that way, the venerable testimonies of the faith and traditions will not be forgotten, as they were written and recorded in the Gospels and the Scriptures.

Now, let us heed what we heard from St. Peter in his first Epistle, our first reading today. In his Epistle, St. Peter spoke of the need for us all to be ever vigilant, against the assaults from the devil, our great enemy, who is always ever ready to strike at us whenever we are unprepared and not ready, and whenever he sees an opportunity to bring us down, just as he struck down our first ancestors, Adam and Eve, by the means of false promises, lies and sweet temptations.

The devil has many allies in this world, all of whom are evil spirits, or those affected by the evil spirits, who are then working together trying to claim our souls from the Lord, by bringing us to our downfall, by causing us to sin before God and men alike. This is what St. Peter warned all the people to whom he was writing to, and that is what all of us need to heed and pay attention to as well.

Therefore, how do we then prepare ourselves? How do we then remain vigilant? It is something that surely all of us will be asking. First of all, we must be committed in our faith, and we cannot be lukewarm in living our faith. Our actions must reflect what we believe, and our faith in God must be the foundation and reason for our actions in life, or else we will end up being easily shaken when temptation and challenges come on our way.

We have to know what our faith is about, and the best way to do it is to read what the holy saints and Evangelists had written in the Scriptures and in the Holy Gospels. Let us ask ourselves, brothers and sisters in Christ, whether our answers to the following questions are yes or no. For it is important that we must reflect on how we have lived our faith life thus far.

Have we spent at least some time each day to read the words of the Lord, the history of our salvation, and trying to understand just how much the Lord loves each and every one of us by reading the Scriptures? Have we spent some time amidst our busy life schedules and worldly commitments to take a step back, and remember about the Lord? Have we spent more hours worrying about what to do tomorrow, about what we are to gain tomorrow, than remembering the Lord and knowing just how fortunate it is that we can continue living each and every day by the grace of God?

Brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us need to become stronger in our faith, and the best way to begin is by familiarising ourselves with the word of God found in the Scriptures, particularly in the Gospels where the account of how the Lord gave us His salvation through Christ had been written for our sake. Now that we have access to the truth, should we now then go and actually spend time reading the word of God?

Brothers and sisters in Christ, may all of us draw more closely to the Lord, and deepen our relationship with Him. May all of us grow stronger in our faith, and in all the things we say and do, let us all reflect the faith which we have in the Lord, and let us act in the same way as what the Apostles and the saints of the past had done before us. May God bless us all. St. Mark the Evangelist, holy and devoted saint of God, pray for us. Amen.

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Tuesday, 25 April 2017 : Feast of St. Mark, Evangelist (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Mark 16 : 15-20

At that time, Jesus told His disciples, “Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News to all creation. The one who believes and is baptised will be saved; the one who refuses to believe will be condemned.”

“Signs like these will accompany those who have believed : in My Name they will cast out demons and speak new languages; they will pick up snakes, and if they drink anything poisonous, they will be unharmed; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will be healed.”

So then, after speaking to them, the Lord Jesus was taken up into heaven and took His place at the right hand of God. The Eleven went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.