Liturgical Colour : White
Ephesians 3 : 2-3a, 5-6
You may have heard of the graces God bestowed on me for your sake. By a revelation He gave me the knowledge of His mysterious design. This mystery was not made known to past generations but only now, through revelations given to holy Apostles and prophets.
Now the non-Jewish people share the inheritance; in Christ Jesus the non-Jews are incorporated and are to enjoy the Promise. This is the Good News.
Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about the humility of John the Baptist, the holy servant of God, the Herald of His Messiah, Who came into the world in order to save it and all of mankind. John the Baptist came before Jesus in order to prepare His way, and he baptised many people at the Jordan, calling them to repentance and to turn away from their sinful ways.
And even though many people listened to him and hearkened to his call for repentance, and although many people flocked to him and he was truly famous and respected by many, but in numerous occasions, as what we have also heard in the Gospel today, he denied that he was the Messiah, that is he denied that he was the Saviour that was to come into the world as prophesied.
He humbly revealed that he was merely the servant, the voice calling out in the wilderness to call the people of God to prepare themselves for the coming of the Lord and to prepare them to receive His salvation. He refused the temptation to be a great person himself, the temptation of power and worldly glory, and he preferred to remain faithful to the mission which he had come into this world for.
We can relate this to the first reading which we had today, the Epistle which St. John had written to the faithful to remind them to be true to their faith and reject all the falsehoods and lies, and to reject and resist all the false teachings of the false prophets and the antichrists, whose ways are not of the Lord but of the devil, and whose temptations on the faithful could cause these to lose their track on their way towards salvation and fall into damnation instead.
Just as Adam and Eve, these false prophets and antichrists were tempted by the devil with the false promises and the lies of worldly power and glory, if only that they would abandon their God and disobey Him, following rather the path of their own hearts’ desires and wants. And they succumbed to the temptation and followed the devil in his ways, and then they also preached the same falsehoods to mislead many others from among the faithful.
Throughout the ages, we have encountered many of them, the heretics such as Arius, Nestorius, and many others, including that of Martin Luther, Calvin and Zwingli in the more recent time. These people have turned the hearts of many of the faithful into the wrong paths, because instead of adhering to the teachings of the Lord as what had been kept faithfully by the Apostles and the Church fathers, they allowed their own judgments and ideas to supersede the truth.
And now, let us see the examples of the two very important saints whose feast we celebrate today, namely St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen. Both of these saints were widely honoured, especially in the eastern half of Christendom, where they were credited with the defence of the true faith against the dangerous heresies that threatened to divide and tear apart the Church of God.
St. Basil the Great was the Bishop of Caesarea who lived and worked at about the same time of his contemporary, St. Gregory Nazianzen or St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who was the Archbishop of the new capital city of the Roman Empire, Constantinople. Both of them worked together in the effort to counter the influence and the false teachings of the heretics such as the Arians and the many other sects which taught teachings contrary to the orthodox and true Church teachings.
Many of the faithful were divided against each other, with those who refused to leave behind the truth of God and join the heresies against those who have given themselves up to the false and twisted teachings. It fell to St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory Nazianzen and their fellow elders of the Church as well as the faithful among the laity to resist the advances of those seeking to destroy the Church and its truth.
It was not an easy journey, as many challenges awaited and faced them. All those who are opposed to the two saints made things difficult for them, the priests and bishops aligned with the heretical teachings constantly challenged them and made things difficult for the faithful people of God. Nevertheless, St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen never gave up, and with clarity of Christian teachings and truth in their hands, they worked hard and managed to turn many back to the true path towards the Lord.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we heard the examples of the faithful saints of God, and also that of John the Baptist who faithfully carried out his mission, rejecting the temptation of the evil one and the world, and humbly fulfilling what has been expected of him, let us all also reflect on these and walk in their footsteps, following their examples by doing the same in our own lives.
Let us all reject our human pride and desire for worldly glory, for these are the tools with which the devil will be able to easily manipulate us and tempt us to do what is sinful and wicked. We all have to stay together and to work together to maintain our faith life, and deepen our spiritual connection with the Lord by doing all that God had asked us to do, loving one another and serving each other with love.
Thus, after all that we have done, God Who rewards all who are faithful to Him will bless us and keep us in His grace, and He will not let us to suffer in the hands of the unfaithful, but He shall bless us with ever richer abundance of grace. God bless us all, now and forever. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : White
1 John 2 : 22-28
Who is the liar? The one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is an antichrist, who denies both the Father and the Son. The one who denies the Son is without the Father, and those who acknowledge the Son also have the Father.
Let what you heard from the beginning remain in you. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, you, too, will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise He Himself gave us : eternal life.
I write this to you thinking of those who try to lead you astray. You received from Him an anointing, and it remains in you, so you do not need someone to teach you. His anointing teaches you all things, it speaks the truth and does not lie to you; so remain in Him, and keep what He has taught you.
And now, my children, live in Him, so that when He appears in His glory, we may be confident and not ashamed before Him when He comes.
Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we commemorate the beginning of the new year in the reckoning of our calendar, and as we welcome the very first moments of this year, we also remember, as we have done every year, the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, also known as Theotokos, by the virtue of her being the mother of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Today’s celebration is very important for us and for our faith, for in it lies the very basic tenet of our Faith, which even many people over the ages tried to rebuke and disprove in their wrong thoughts and heretical teachings. Chief of all these is Arius, the one who started the heresy of Arianism. In this heresy, those who adhere to its false teachings contended that Jesus was not God, but only mere Man.
For them, the nature of Jesus is as a created being, no different from that of all the other creatures. They did not see Jesus as the Son of God, and therefore much less, as the Divine Word incarnate into Flesh. They refused to believe that He is God, from the beginning until the end and unto all ages. They thought in their feeble minds, that it is impossible for God to bear a Son in Jesus.
And therefore the Church, having recognised the falsehoods of Arius and his followers, a confusion set by the devil himself, set on its way to counter and to fight back this false teaching and vicious heresy. As a result, during the very first Ecumenical Council convened in Nicaea in the year 325 AD, the nature of Christ as the Son of God was established and finalised, and all those who refused to believe in this truth, were cast out as heretics.
And by that virtue, in the later Ecumenical Council, namely the Ecumenical Council held at Ephesus in the year 431 AD proclaimed Mary as the Theotokos, as the Mother of God (Theos). Previously there were also many who believed that Mary is the mother of Jesus, the Man, and as the mother of Christ but no more. There were also those who believed that because Christ is the Lord, both Man and God at the same time, even though Mary His mother was a human being, but by the virtue of being the mother of Jesus Christ, she is also the Mother of God.
This fact cannot be separated from the earlier part of the struggle between the Arians and the faithful Christians, on the nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, whether He is just a Man, or whether He is both God and Man at the same time. If Jesus is just a mere Man, as the Arians had believed, then Mary is no more than just a mother of a great Man and nothing else.
Yet, we all believe in the Motherhood of God, in Mary as the Theotokos, because her Son Jesus is not just a Man, but also God at the same time. He is both fully God and fully Man at the same time, and the two natures, God and Man, while distinct, cannot be separated from each other and they are bound together in perfect hypostatical union in Christ, in perfect love.
This is why I said that this belief in Mary as the Mother of God is central to our faith, and without which I can say that our hold onto our faith is tenuous and weak. And it is also important to take note that this does not make Mary into a deity or a goddess herself. Rather, if we compare it to an earthly analogy, in a kingdom, a king’s mother is honoured even though she does not rule the kingdom as the mother of the king.
Similarly therefore, as God is the King of kings and the Ruler of all the universe, it is by the virtue of His great Kingship that His earthly mother is also honoured in the same way. This is why Mary as the Mother of God had such a special position in our faith and for all of us too. Why is this so? We have to look no further than the Sacred Scriptures in the Gospels themselves.
Firstly, all of us have been entrusted by our Lord to her, just as He entrusted her to all of us. When Jesus was crucified and about to die, He spoke to both His mother Mary and John His beloved disciple, and He entrusted Mary His mother to him, while at the same time He also entrusted him to His mother. In this manner, He had also entrusted all of us to her care, and He entrusted His own mother to be our intercessor and helper.
In the wedding at Cana, where Jesus performed His first miracle of turning water into wine, a miracle we all surely are familiar with, it was because of Mary’s urging and pleas that eventually Jesus allowed Himself to perform His first miracle despite His unwillingness and earlier rejection to help the wedding couple in distress. Mary never gave up in trying to help them, as she knew that the couple was in great trouble if they were to gain no help.
In the same way therefore, Mary is the one who can also help us on our way to the Lord, and whenever we are lost and in trouble, it is to her that we can also turn in order to help ourselves to escape from our predicament. It was said that the best way to reach out to our Lord Jesus is through His mother Mary, and indeed this is true. For Mary, being the closest to the throne of her Son, lies the closest to Him and her prayers are the ones that her own Son will not overlook.
Today, we also celebrate the World Day of Prayer of Peace, as we embark on this new year, let us all pray for world peace, that mankind will no longer seek to destroy and bring pain and suffering to one another, but instead live in harmony and true peace with each other. Let us all ask for the intercession of our Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, that these prayers we make will come to the ears of our Lord, and may He bless us with His peace.
O Lord Jesus, listen to us Your children and Your people, and let us all live in peace, love and harmony, and through Your blessed Mother Mary, who prays for our sake without cease, let peace reign on earth forevermore. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day all of us are asked to reflect on the joy which we have and with which we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ in this Christmas season. Each of us should reflect on today’s Scripture readings in order to understand in greater depth how significant this celebration of Christmas is for all of us.
This reading used to be read at the end of every Mass as what is known as the Last Gospel, for the very purpose that, the whole Mass itself, the entire celebration of our Faith and the whole purpose of the Church, and the very fact why we rejoice in this Christmas and have a hope in God and the eternal life which He promised us, is because of what had been written and revealed in that passage from the first chapter of the Gospel according to St. John.
Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour was not created by God, and neither should He be counted to be among the created ones of God. Even though He is fully and completely Man, but He was not created by God, as He is different. He has existed before everything was made, and indeed, He existed before the world and before the beginning of time, for He is God, and He was God, and He will be always God.
He is the Word of God, the Word of Creation, the one and inseparable aspect of the Lord, which in our understanding, exists as one and only God, but with Three distinct Godheads or Aspects, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, all of Whom are united in perfect love and harmony, such that although they are distinct from each other, but they cannot be separated from each other without diminishing the fullness of God’s greatness and glory.
The Word of God has made Himself into Flesh, the Flesh of Man. He was the Word that was with God, Who is God, and through Whom God created this world, all of creation, all of us mankind and everything that ever was, is, and will ever be. And it is the same Word, Who had come into this world, assuming the flesh of Man, and through the intermediary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, His mother, He was born into this world, an event we celebrate as Christmas.
This is very important as, before He came into this world, He is intangible, untouchable and distant, but God Who loves us all greatly and tenderly, desired for all of us to be reunited with Him and to be with Him in the union of perfect love, and therefore, through Jesus, He made Himself tangible, touchable, and now we can see in Him, the fullness of His love, and indeed, of our own future of happiness and eternal life together with Him.
Through Jesus our Lord, we have seen the very personification of God’s love and mercy. He has provided us this act of ultimate mercy, giving us the new and perfect opportunity to be reconciled with God. He has done everything for our sake, that all of us may be rescued from the abyss of darkness and damnation in hell. Shall we not therefore give our love and devotion to Him as well then?
Let us today reflect on the examples of the faithful servant of God, whose feast we are celebrating today, namely Pope St. Silvester I, the Bishop of Rome and leader of the Universal Church who lived and reigned as Pope during a time of great change in the Church and in the world. Pope St. Silvester I was among the first Popes to have led the Church after the official toleration of the Faith by the Edict of Milan in the year 313 AD, and he led the Church through a time of great renewal.
Pope St. Silvester I led the Church through a time of great building of many churches and basilicas, and many people flocked to the Church as never before. Many professed the faith and became believers, and Pope St. Silvester I and his good leadership and role model in faith helped ensure more and more souls being saved through the good works God had done through His Church.
As we all embark on this last day of the old year and as we rejoice in welcoming the beginning of the new year tomorrow, let us all also follow in the examples of Pope St. Silvester I and the other holy saints of God, so that we may usher in the beginning of a new year to be filled with the fullness of God’s love and our faith in Him. This is the time for us to make our new year’s resolution, that is to abandon our old ways of sin and wickedness, and embrace fully the ways of the Lord.
May Almighty God bless us all, and may He bless our coming new year, so that His blessings may fill that year with much grace, and all of us may look up to the coming of the new year of hope, and be ever more faithful and be more devoted to our Lord and God. God be with us all. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of the Sacred Scriptures speaking to us about the Lord Who has been revealed to the world at the Temple through the servants of God, Simeon and Anna the prophetess. These two faithful servants proclaimed the Messiah in the sight and presence of many, and perhaps many heard their words and believe.
And all of us brothers and sisters in the same faith in God, all are gathered here because we all believe in Him, believe in His saving help, the rescue that He had given us through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, His own Son, Whom He sent into the world, taking up our own humble flesh, that through that act, and by offering Himself as the perfect offering for our sake, He had redeemed us from our sins and brought us into a new hope for eternal life.
Brothers and sisters, as we continue to go on through this Christmas season or Christmastide, all of us should indeed reflect on this joyous fact, the very fact that our Lord and God had decided to become our Saviour, and He had done that by emptying Himself and becoming a Man like us, that by uniting all of us through Himself, and by giving all of us His own Body and Blood, we who share in His Body and Blood may receive eternal life.
This is the testimony of God’s great and eternal love for us, and His love always endures, despite all of the rejections and the wickedness we have shown for Him, all the rebukes, the refusal to change and the lack of willingness to commit ourselves to His ways. God is always faithful, even if we are unfaithful. He always extends His mercy to cover us and to be with us, until the moment when it is too late for us because we continue to reject Him and refuse to follow Him.
Let this fate not be ours, lest we fall into eternal damnation. If we wait until that had happened, then there is no hope for us, and we will suffer for eternity in hell and in the pain of the total and complete separation from God, and forevermore we shall suffer in ultimate agony and anguish. This is what our Lord did not want to happen to us, and therefore, He sent us a new hope, a Deliverer and a Saviour to bring us into the opportunity to be reunited with Him and thus enjoy forever instead, an eternity of bliss, joy and happiness with Him in heaven.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we all have known God and all that He has done for us. We recognise His love, and all the blessings that He had graced us with. He loves all of us tenderly, and in all things He had granted us He has brought us free from our afflictions. But we all have to realise that there are still many out there who have not known yet about the Lord or heard about Him.
Yes, there are still many who are either ignorant or unable to know the truth about God, and there are still also those who have left the Lord and abandoned Him for the goodness and the pleasures of this world. And it is in our responsibility and duty as one of those who are faithful to God, to be the bearers of His Good News and truth to those who have not heard or known these yet.
This is another meaning of Christmas, that is because Christmas cannot be commemorated or celebrated without understanding the whole big picture in the history of salvation. Without what we celebrate during the Holy Week and Easter, what we celebrate in Christmas will be meaningless. On the other hand, what we celebrate in the Holy Week and Easter would not have been possible without the occurrence of Christmas.
For our Lord came into this world as a Man, and yet a great and almighty King, because of the love which He had for us all. He came so that by His life and by His works, culminating in His own self-sacrifice on the cross, He might become the bridge and intermediary between us and the Lord, that through Him He had redeemed us, absolved us from the taints of original sins, and therefore, bring us into salvation in Him.
Therefore, on this day, let us all commit ourselves anew to the Lord and to the evangelisation of His people with the truth which He Himself had shown us. Let us all spread the Word of God to the many peoples of the nations. May God’s salvation extend to the nations, and may His love for us mankind will be ever more and more enduring and great. God bless us all. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about the Lord Jesus Who was presented at the Temple of God at the time when He was just eight days old, as He was the Firstborn Son of Mary, which according to the Law and the commandments of God, all the firstborn sons of Israel and his descendants should be presented to the Lord after their birth as a sign of the renewed covenant between God and His people.
This can be linked to what had happened in the past during the time of Abraham, when God made a covenant with him, and established the promise which He had vowed to Abraham, the faithful servant of God, that He would make him and his descendants to be a great nation. But one day, God asked Abraham to bring the son God had promised him, Isaac, to a mountain and sacrifice him as an offering to Him.
We can just imagine what kind of thoughts and emotions that ran through Abraham’s mind at that time. Imagine that the Lord had given you such a great promise, and then suddenly it seemed as if He wanted to take that promise away from him by taking the one whom he had been expecting for a long time, that is a son to be his heir and to be the predecessor of the great nation promised to him.
Yet, if we see how Abraham reacted to the Lord’s request, we can immediately see how he was thoroughly committed to God and obeyed Him without question. He was ready to give up his son to the Lord, as his attitude was likely to be such as, whatever God has given me, God may take again from me. Yes, this is because He is the Lord and Master of all, and it is certainly within His power and authority to decide on the fate of all things.
And therefore, just as Abraham had been willing to give even his own beloved son, the promised son that would be his seed and a great nation, therefore, in this Christmas season, God also would not hold back Himself from giving His own Beloved Son, the Firstborn of all things, not created but Who was with Him since before the beginning of time.
Yes, God gave us none other than His own Beloved Son, the Divine Word of God Who was made Man, one of the Holy Trinity and inseparable part of the Lord, Who came down as a humble Man in Jesus, born of a carpenter and a young virgin, and consecrated to God as all other firstborns of Israel were, so that through Him, this world and all of God’s people might be saved.
This is the essence of Christmas, its true meaning, and which all of us should understand, that the love that God has for all of us is so great, His dedication and commitment to us is so great that He is willing to do all these just so that we may be reunited with Him in perfect love. This is the commitment that God has given to His part of the covenant that He had established with us. But a covenant is a two-way process, and thus we too need to give our part to the covenant.
How do we do this, brethren? Perhaps we should look at the examples of the saint whose life is a good barometer and example to follow in this regard, namely St. Thomas Becket, or St. Thomas of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury and therefore the Primate of England who lived and worked at about eight hundred years ago, at the time of the Medieval age Europe.
St. Thomas Becket was once the Chancellor of the Realm, the highest political office equivalent to that of today’s Prime Minister and also a good friend of the king of England at that time, king Henry. For a long time, St. Thomas Becket lived a life of privilege, of honour and worldly glory, with all the things that were made available to him because of his esteemed position.
All this changed when the king appointed him as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest position in the Church within the realm of the English king, with jurisdiction over the other English bishops, priests and also all of the laity. Such an esteemed position was bestowed on St. Thomas Becket by the king with the hope that he would be able to rein the Church that the king will gain better cooperation from a Church controlled by his own confidant.
Yet, St. Thomas Becket received the revelation of the Faith as he embarked on his new duty, and he wholeheartedly devoted himself to the mission he had been entrusted with. He took his new position of responsibility very seriously, and instead of championing the cause of the king as the king had intended when he appointed St. Thomas Becket as the Primate of England, the fact was completely contrary to the desires of the king.
He opposed the king and the nobles in many occasions, defending the rights of the Church and the faith, and also chastised certain nobles for their wicked ways and called for their repentance. Not even opposition and threats from the nobles and all those who had been negatively affected by St. Thomas Becket’s works could stop him from devoting himself completely to God’s works.
In the end, the nobles with the complicity from the king murdered him in a cold-blooded assassination when St. Thomas Becket celebrated the Mass in his own chapel. The assassination was immediately condemned by the Church and by the people, and those involved had to undergo painful penitential efforts before they were allowed to return to the Church, and St. Thomas Becket was universally recognised as a saint for his hard works and efforts.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us should be inspired by his examples, and we should redouble our efforts and commit ourselves anew to the Lord. May all of us be able to give ourselves more and more to God our Lord and Father, and may He bless us and keep us always in His love. God bless us all. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate the feast of the Holy Innocents, the holy martyrs and amongst the first of those who were martyred for the sake of the Lord. The Holy Innocents were those infants of Bethlehem, who were those below the age of two, who were mercilessly slaughtered by Herod, the king of Judea at the time, because of his fear of the One Who was prophesied to be the King of the Jews.
We heard in the Gospels how the king Herod of Judea, upon hearing from the three Magi or the three wise men from the East that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, became jealous and refused to stand down and pay obeisance and honour the King of kings Who had come into the world. Instead, he plotted in his minds and in his heart, thinking of destroying the King in an act of jealousy, to conserve his own rule and authority, and to prevent his kingdom to be usurped.
We see in today’s Scripture readings the great danger of succumbing to vanity and personal desires, and to jealousy and hatred of others. We see the kind of things and atrocities that mankind was able to do to one another in order to selfishly preserve themselves and gain good things only for themselves. This is the ugly and real extent of our selfishness, the desire and the tendency to think only about ourselves.
We have seen what Herod was prepared to do in order to defend himself, in order to preserve himself and keep his position. He slaughtered innocent children and all those infants below the age of two without mercy and without hesitation in order to hopefully eliminate the King before He is to come to His glory and power. But while men try their best to preserve themselves, as we can see, God has His own plans.
Why do we call the martyrs today the Holy Innocents? That is because we believe that even though we mankind have been tainted by sin, but at a certain age before we are able to reason for ourselves and think for ourselves, and before we are tainted by the many concerns of the world, such as power, desires, jealousy and all of those things that had precisely afflicted Herod, the children of mankind are innocent and blameless.
And it was these pure and blameless beings, powerless and weak who were slaughtered by the king Herod in his futile quest to prevent the King of kings born into this world from claiming and getting His rightful throne, as the King over all of Israel, and as King over the whole world. In the end, the will of God will always triumph, and the proud man is left with none, as king Herod went to his death and certainly he is to be held accountable for all of his sinful deeds.
But one then may ask, that if God is so good, then why could He not have helped and prevented the children from being massacred in the first place? Was He not loving and merciful? If He is so, then how could He have allowed such an atrocity to take place? Surely these are the very questions that are likely to be in our minds as we heard the passages from the Scripture readings today.
In this we all have to realise that even though God indeed, as I have just mentioned, has His will and desire, but He does not oppress us by imposing upon us His will. We also have our free will granted to us by God, a free will to choose and to follow a path that we have chosen. Indeed, for Herod, he has a choice, either he should humbly accept the reality of his position, and give honour and glory to the one true King as the three Magi had, or he could choose to satisfy his own greed and pride, and try his best to remove his enemy.
Thus, all of us today are brought to reflect and to understand the importance of the implications of what we have heard and discussed today for our own sake, and for our own salvation. Should we follow Herod’s path? If we look at our own lives, I am sure we will realise that there are likely quite a few occasions in which we have acted in the same way as Herod had done, in how we interacted with our friends and even to those who are strangers to us.
Let us from now on, then, no longer be selfish and be too self-serving in our actions. On this feast of the Holy Innocents, let us all ask these holy martyrs to pray for our sake, that God will open our hearts and minds so that we will be better able to listen to Him and obey Him in all things, and so that we may grow lesser in our pride and desire, and stronger in our humility, for our own sake, and for our own salvation.
May God bless us and keep us, and may He strengthen us all in everything that we do, and empower us all to be ever more faithful children of God. O, Holy Innocents pray for us sinners and intercede for us before the Lord our God. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate on this Sunday after the Solemnity of Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus our Lord, Mary His mother and Joseph, His foster father. On this day we honour that sacred family into whom our Lord and God had been born into this world. This is a model family from which all of our families should model after, and we should indeed heed their examples to be practiced in our own.
As we are still in the midst of the joy of the Christmas season, surely all of us are quite aware of the stories and all the things that are related to Christmas, when our Lord Jesus Christ was born into this world. It all began from the time when the Archangel Gabriel came to Mary and broke the news to her that she would be with a Child, bearing the Saviour in her womb and thus becoming the Vessel and Ark of God’s salvation for men.
And then Joseph, the man to whom Mary had been betrothed to, found out about her pregnancy, and thought that she had been unfaithful to him and committed an adultery, and even so, he tried to salvage her reputation by trying not to publicly denounce her or shame her with the revelation of her seemingly out of order pregnancy. But, when the Angel of God appeared to him in his dreams and revealed to him the truth, he faithfully devoted himself to God’s plans through Mary.
And this continued even so difficulties and challenges faced them together, beginning from the time when Mary was about to give birth to our Lord Jesus. She and Joseph had to travel the treacherous and long distance journey from their house in Nazareth in Galilee to the city of David, Bethlehem in Judea, a distance and journey that certainly no heavily pregnant woman should undertake.
But Joseph followed on very faithfully and helped to get Mary to a place where she could deliver her Child, even in a stable. He protected the newborn Child and His mother, and when the king Herod the Great, who heard of the coming of the Messiah who was prophesied to be the King of the Jews and who was jealous of Him tried to kill Jesus, Joseph guided by the Angel of God in his dream led his family into Egypt until all those who sought the death of Jesus were gone.
And Mary herself loved her Son and her husband equally well, and they together lived on in peace in Nazareth upon returning from Egypt, and as we witnessed in the Gospels, they went together to Jerusalem when Jesus was twelve years old, in order to bring Him to the Temple of God in Jerusalem and join in the festival that was occurring there. We can be sure that they prayed together and worshipped the Lord together.
Indeed, it is likely that it was Mary and Joseph who had taught Jesus how to pray and how to live a life devoted to the Lord and to His commandments. Both Mary and Joseph were devout servants of the Lord, who practiced their faith in all their words, deeds and actions. This is a reminder to all the parents out there that it is their responsibility to teach the faith to their children and to teach them about the Lord.
And we should also note how Jesus, even though He purposefully stayed behind in the Temple of Jerusalem, and arguing with his parents that He had to be in His Father’s house, knowing His true identity as the Son of God and the Divine Word made Man, but He still obeyed His mother and His foster father, followed them and obeyed them as He grew up in the reckoning of man’s years.
This reminds us that children should listen to their parents and learn the right things that they teach them. And this also shows that a family that lives in harmony and love will persevere and prosper. This is very important for us to note, as we now live in a time where the respect and the honour given to the institution of family and the values associated with family life has become lessened and lessened ever more over time.
Yes, we should all be aware how family values and the importance of families became eroded over time, and became increasingly so these days, where people could just mock the institution of families, and family life which was once sacred, had been seen by many people as merely a formality and as even a form of archaism and backwardness.
There are many who sought to destroy the fabric of families, and not least, one of the perpetrators is we ourselves. We have not understood what is the importance of families and how relevant is having a good family to us all. In particular, do we all know that families are the basic units of our faith and the Church? And why is this so, brothers and sisters in Christ?
That is because, as I have just mentioned earlier on, it is usually through the family that someone hears about the faith and the Lord. It is the responsibility of the parents and or godparents, as the vow which all of them had spoken at the time of the baptism of their child, which charged them to bring these little children in good faith and understanding of their Lord’s love and will.
A strong family grounded in good faith will be the foundation of a strong Church, and a strong Church in turn will safeguard its many souls from the attacks of the evil one and from the temptation to turn into sin and wickedness. It is the basic unit of the Church, of our faith, and the family is at the frontline of our regular and constant struggle against the devil and the darkness.
And indeed, the devil knows this, and it is one of the primary objectives of the devil to strike at the heart of the family, for if the family is destroyed, then the souls of the faithful will be in great risk indeed. This is why, on this great feast of the Holy Family, let us all uphold our faith through our family. Let us restore the strength and the harmony within our families, so that together as families blessed by God, each of our family members will be able to resist the devil and his assaults.
May the Lord Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, Who loved and obeyed His earthly parents and listened to them, and Mary, the Mother of God, whose faith and devotion were exemplary, and St. Joseph, foster father of our Saviour in his commitment and hard works inspire us all to do the same with our own families. God bless us and our families, now and forever. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we mark the celebration of the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr or the Protomartyr of the Church and the Faith, which means that he was officially recognised to be the first to lay down his life for the sake of God and for the sake of his faith after the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
St. Stephen, if we read the Acts of the Apostles, was one of the seven holy servants of God whom had been chosen by the Apostles themselves to be a new order of those who have been chosen to distribute the graces, goods and blessings of the faithful to those who have less, the poor ones and the less fortunate ones. He was one of the seven original deacons of the Church.
He served the people of God faithfully and the Holy Spirit was with him, and filled with the Holy Spirit, he was filled with courage and strength to proclaim the good works of God’s salvation to the people, and to testify courageously and without fear the truth which had been revealed through Jesus Christ, the Lord and Saviour of the world. And yet, we also heard of those who sought to destroy the faithful and the Church, those who refused to believe in the truth.
Yes, and these persecuted the faithful people of God, and St. Stephen was the first to bear the brunt of their attacks and their wrath. He suffered and was persecuted, and yet if we see his great testimony in the first reading today and in the Acts of the Apostles, then we all should know how courageous and fearless he was as he spoke in the defence of his faith to the Lord, the true faith in the Lord Jesus, our Lord and Saviour.
He did not even fear for his life or be discouraged by the whole multitudes of those who sought to silence him and destroy him, the whole assembly of the Sanhedrin, the elders of Israel and the Pharisees. Instead, just as our Lord had spoken in the Gospel today, the Holy Spirit gave St. Stephen the strength, the inspiration, the courage and the eloquence of words to preach the Good News of God’s salvation to them.
And he led an exemplary Christian life to the end, and imitated Jesus our Lord Himself in what He had done on the cross. That is when he had been tortured and brought to die by stoning, he forgave his accusers and enemies, just as Jesus had done Himself, and he surrendered himself completely to God Who had guided him and protected him all those while.
One may then wonder how come we are talking about martyrdom and death, the death of a faithful servant of the Lord on the day just after the revelry, the merrymaking and the joy of the Christmas day? Indeed, as the peak of the Christmas celebrations last for a week, this is still right in the middle of the Christmas celebration and joy. Therefore, why is this so, brethren in Christ?
That is because, the nature of Christmas and its reality cannot be separated from what we remember today in what St. Stephen and also the many other martyrs of the Church had done. These holy men and women were those who had dared to stand up for what they believe in the Lord God Who came down to us in the form of Man, and Who had given up Himself to be crucified and to be our sacrifice for our salvation.
Despite the opposition, the ridicule and the enormous pressures being meted out against them, and the threat against their own safety and their very own lives, these holy men and women, and chief of all represented by the very first one to be counted among them, St. Stephen, all of them had shown the resolve and the desire to remain faithful to the Lord despite all odds.
And let us ask ourselves, that if God had loved us so much and gave us so many blessings and graces, to the point of even giving Himself for our sake, to suffer and to die for us, shall we not do the same for us as well? God does not require long prayers or commitment of the flesh and the words, but what He truly desired from us is our love and complete dedicatiod to Him. May Almighty god strengthen our resolve to live our lives ever more devoted and commited to Him in every way conceivable.
Therefore, remembering the examples of these holy martyrs, and chief of all, St. Stephen, let us all remember what we have rejoiced for on Christmas day yesterday, and as we continue to glorify the Lord and rejoice in this Christmas season, let us all remind ourselves of the need to be courageous and to be willing to defend the same thing that we believe in, if we are to resist the temptation of sin and of the world, and remain true to the calling which God had given us through Christ, our Lord. God bless us all. Amen.
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 