feast day

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Sunday, 5 January 2014 : Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Matthew 2 : 1-12

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in Judea, during the days of king Herod, wise men from the East arrived in Jerusalem. They asked, “Where is the newborn King of the Jews? We saw the rising of His star in the East and have come to honour Him.”

When Herod heard this he was greatly disturbed, and with him all Jerusalem. He immediately called a meeting of all high-ranking priests and scribes, and asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In the town of Bethlehem in Judea,” they told him, “for this is what the prophet wrote : ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, you are by no means the least among the clans of Judah, for from you will come a Leader, the One who is to shepherd My people Israel.'”

Then Herod secretly called the wise men and asked them the precise time the star appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem with the instruction, “Go and get accurate information about the Child. As soon as you have found Him, report to me, so that I too may go and honour Him.”

After the meeting with the king, they set out. The star that they had seen in the East went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was. The wise men were overjoyed on seeing the star again. They went into the house, and when they saw the Child with Mary His mother, they knelt and worshipped Him. They opened their bags and offered Him their gifts of gold, incense and myrrh.

In a dream they were warned not to go back to Herod, so they returned to their home country by another way.

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Sunday, 5 January 2014 : Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord (Second Reading)

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.

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Sunday, 5 January 2014 : Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 71 : 2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13

May the King rule God’s people justly and defend the rights of the lowly.

Justice will flower in His days, and peace abound till the moon be no more. For He reigns from sea to sea, from the River to the ends of the earth.

The kings of Tarshish and the islands render Him tribute, the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts, all kings bow down to Him, and all nations serve Him.

He delivers the needy who call on Him, the afflicted with no one to help them. His mercy is upon the weak and the poor, He saves the life of the poor.

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Sunday, 5 January 2014 : Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Isaiah 60 : 1-6

Arise, shine, for your Light has come. The Glory of YHVH rises upon you. Night still covers the earth and gloomy clouds veil the peoples, but YHVH now rises and over you His glory appears.

Nations will come to Your Light and kings to the brightness of Your dawn. Lift up Your eyes round about and see : they are all gathered and come to You, Your sons from afar, Your daughters tenderly carried.

This sight will make Your face radiant, Your heart throbbing and full; the riches of the sea will be turned to You, the wealth of the nations will come to You. A flood of camels will cover You, caravans from Midian and Ephah. Those from Sheba will come, bringing with them gold and incense, all singing in praise of YHVH.

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Saturday, 4 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we hear about the call that Jesus made to His first disciples, when St. John the Baptist announced to the people, the truth about Jesus, that is the Lamb of God. One may ask, why Lamb of God? To answer this, we have to look at the role of the lamb in the society of Israel and the faith that they had, that is following the laws of God as given through Moses.

The lamb is one of the few animals mentioned at the Book of Leviticus, used in the offerings to God, which in this book, were used for various purposes. The most important of these sacrifices were the sin and burnt offerings to God, in which the animals were slaughtered and their blood on the Altar of God represent the cleansing of the sins of God’s people, and the purification of their souls.

But these offering of lambs and other animals as sin offerings, were only temporary. They did not completely erase the sins of the people, nor did they justify the people in God. The people were only given a breather in their sinful daily lives, and they have to offer the sacrifices again and again to keep themselves worthy of the Lord.

That is because, even though unblemished lamb supposed to be used, they are not perfect, not in the way that the Lamb of God is perfect in all aspects. Then, to add to the point of the truth about the Lamb of God, we have to also remember about what happened when God saved His people Israel from their slavery in Egypt. God asked the people through Moses, to find unblemished lamb, and slaughter it so that its blood could be used to mark the houses of God’s people.

The blood let it known to the angels of death sent by God to kill the firstborn of the Egyptians, that the houses marked by the blood belong to God. Yes, death passed the houses of the faithful who obeyed the Lord, and the people of Israel were saved and liberated by the Lord who loved them. In this light therefore, we too, should see the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God.

For indeed we can define the role of Lord Jesus Christ in these two characteristics. First that Jesus is the Lamb of sacrifice, the most worthy of all, to be the offering for all of our sins. As Jesus is Himself God incarnate, He is perfect and indeed the only One perfect to redeem us from our sinfulness, and to make worthy again all the people of God.

Then secondly, Jesus is the Lamb whose Blood becomes the mark of all the faithful ones in God, that when the Day of Judgment comes, God will know those who belong to Him, and those who had remained faithful and true to His ways. Remember that Jesus in the Last Supper gave His own Body and Blood in the transformed bread and wine for His disciples to eat and drink.

This is very much in the same way as the lamb of the Passover, where the lamb was slaughtered, and it was eaten by the family of the people who slaughtered it, and the blood used to mark the houses of the faithful. Jesus is our Passover Lamb, or more precisely the Paschal Lamb of sacrifice, who brought with Him the joy and hope of Easter. In this perfect sacrifice of Christ, which He made on the cross, He reunited mankind to the Lord, and made the whole creation to be filled once again with hope.

Jesus did not come into this world for leisure or without a clear purpose. He had a clear aim, that is to liberate mankind from their slavery to sin and evil, ever since mankind were sundered from God after they had sinned. Jesus laid Himself freely for us, as a lamb led to the place of slaughter, just as He went through grievous scourging and suffering during His Passion and way towards the cross. All these, He did for our sake, that we may be free forever from the dominion of sin and evil.

Yet, as we all know, brethren, many of us still live in darkness and prefer to be in the darkness rather than to be in the light. We turn ourselves away from the Lamb. He offered us freely the graces He had poured onto us with His sacrifice, and yet we still prefer to rebel against Him and reject His offer of salvation and eternal life.

We prefer to live in our sinfulness and our current way of life, instead of seeking the Lord in the way that the disciples had done. Remember what happened when John the Baptist proclaimed to the disciples, that Jesus is the Lamb of God. The disciples straight away went and follow Him, without questioning and without doubting!

Can we too, brothers and sisters, profess our faith in Jesus in the same way? Jesus offered Himself to us, for our sake, and died for us on the cross, that we will be saved and received new life in Him. He went quietly and obediently to the slaughtering table, so that we ourselves will not have to endure death and its punishment for eternity. We are sinners yes, but we do have the capacity and ability to change ourselves for the better.

Therefore, let us today seek first to know more about our Lord, the Lamb of God, and then learn to love Him and seek Him more and more, that we will be more intimate in our relationship with Him. Let us not be ignorant of His love but instead seek to increase even more the love we have for Him. May the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, free us from the hands of Satan, and bring us into new life eternal. Amen.

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Saturday, 4 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 1 : 35-42

On the following day John was standing there again with two of his disciples. As Jesus walked by, John looked at Him and said, “There is the Lamb of God.” On hearing this, the two disciples followed Jesus.

He turned and saw them following, and He said to them, “What are you looking for?” They answered, “Rabbi (which means Master), where are You staying?” Jesus said, “Come and see.” So they went and saw where He stayed, and spent the rest of that day with Him. It was about four o’ clock in the afternoon.

Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard what John had said, and followed Jesus. Early the next morning he found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means the Christ), and he brought Simon to Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon, son of John, but you shall be called Cephas (which means Rock).”

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Saturday, 4 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 97 : 1, 7-8, 9

Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done wonders; His right hand, His holy arm, has won victory for Him.

Let the sea resound and everything in it, the world and all its peoples. Let rivers clap their hands, hills and mountains sing with joy before the Lord,

For He comes to rule the earth. He will judge the world with justice and the peoples with fairness.

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Saturday, 4 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 John 3 : 7-10

My little children, do not be lead astray; those who do what is right are upright, just as Jesus Christ is upright. But those who sin belong to the devil, for the devil sins from the beginning.

This is why the Son of God was shown to us, He was to undo the works of the devil. Those born of God do not sin, for the seed of God remains in them; they cannot sin because they are born of God.

What is the way to recognise the children of God and those of the devil? The one who does not do what is right is not of God; so too, the one who does not love his brother or sister.

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Friday, 3 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time, Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Jesus (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Today we glory in Jesus Christ, and we praise Him with the greatest exaltation we can give. Indeed, we ought to do that every single day of our lives without ceasing, with every single breath that we take. For it is through Christ that we have life, and it is also through Christ that we have hope for a new and everlasting life in joy and happiness.

Why is Jesus so special? And why is He so important to all of us? That is because as we all know, He is God Himself, and yet He is not a distant and unloving God who lords Himself over us as gods typically do, in our understanding of the term divine. Instead, Jesus is the Word, who is God and who is with God since the very beginning of all, begotten of the Father not created, and who emptied Himself of His glorious divinity, so that He might be born into this world, as one of us, a lowly human.

His coming had been prophesied by the prophets and the messengers of God for many millennia, and His coming had been expected and awaited by the people of God. God was known as the God named I am who I am, or YHVH in short. His Name is holy, and as one of the Ten Commandments stated, that the people of God must treat this Holy Name with the greatest respect.

We who are the most beloved ones of the Lord’s entire creation, had sinned against Him and rebelled against His will and commands, preferring to trust in Satan rather than in the power of the One and only True God. Yet, God is Love, and in us, He saw that there were good in us, just as all of creation was once perfect in goodness.

Everything was good then, until rebellion, pride and jealousy entered into the heart of Satan, who rebelled against Him and boasted that he would sit at the throne of God, only to be cast down, away from heaven. From there, Satan tricked and lied to our ancestors, that they were deceived and sin entered into the hearts of mankind. Ever since then we had been made dirty by the presence of sin in us, and yet in each one of us good is still present.

That is why God decided to come down upon this world in order to save us all from our fate that is death. He came to us, through the intermediary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, His mother, who bore Him as He remained in her womb for nine months after He, by the power of His own Spirit, entered into the world of mankind

And just like all of us, He has a Name, and a Name was given Him, that is Jesus, which in the original Aramaic is Yehosuah in approximation, containing the Name of YHVH, that is the Lord. Yes, that is in conjunction with the other name that Jesus is known, that is Emmanuel, or God-is-with-us. Yes, the very Name of Jesus is Holy and great, for it is the Name of God Himself, and not just any gods, but the One and only True God who dwells with us, by being born into the world, in order to be our Saviour.

He came into this world and began His ministry, of healing, of teaching, of feeding the people of God. He gave a great revelation on the nature of God and His love. Indeed, as we all know, that God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, so that all who believe in Him will not perish in death, but gain eternal life, which was promised to us by the Lord Himself.

Jesus came into this world with power and authority, and not just any kind of authority or power, but the true authority, out of whom all authorities came about. There can be no power or authority that does not have its source in Jesus. Even the devil, Satan, who had reigned mercilessly upon us as our jailor in the slavery by sin, and who had exercised power and control over us, was powerless and is powerless, and will ever be powerless before Jesus.

The evil spirits feared Him, and said His Holy Name aloud to the people to hear, that is Jesus, the Holy One of God, the Christ Himself. They trembled with fear upon hearing His Name, knowing the fate that they will suffer at the hand of God’s justice. They were once beautiful angels in heaven, but they followed the devil, once Lucifer, the brightest and greatest angel into his rebellion as I mentioned earlier. Ever since then, they were doomed, and destined to suffer for eternity by God’s justice.

The Lord’s authority is over everything, every single matter that exists in our universe and beyond. He is the Lord of all things visible and invisible. That is why even at the utterance of His Name, every knee and every beings shall bow down, genuflect, even flat to the floor! Yes, every beings, everything created by God, be it angels, mankind, animals, plants, or even the demons, the evil spirits, and Satan the great enemy of all himself.

Yet, brethren, sadly, many of us these days seem to take lightly upon this Most holy Name of all names. They made fun of His Name and disrespected His glorious Name. They did not respect the Name of the Lord, through whose sacrifice on the cross, we have been made whole once again, and gained the hop e of life eternal in Him. We instead prefer to deal with the devil, just as our ancestors had done, and glorify him instead of glorifying the Lord in Jesus.

This must not be the way we live our lives, brethren in Christ! We have to seek a total and complete change of our wayward ways, and seek to rectify the impropriety we had done upon the Lord. Keep the Lord’s Name sacred and glorified, just as He had commanded us in the Ten Commandments He gave to Moses. We cannot mock or disdain the Holy Name of Jesus.

Remember, brethren, the power of the Holy Name is powerful. If we are faced with a great power of evil, and we recite this great Name with faith, that is with true faith, and if we are upright in our lives, then no power, no matter how great or how evil it may be, can assail us. God Himself will come to protect us, and those who are against us will flee in fear, because they know that God is with us, Emmanuel! Jesus indeed! The One whose Name is exalted above every other names!

Yes, let us all give glory to our Lord Jesus, and glorify His Name from now on if we have not done so. Come Lord Jesus, be with Your people, and with Your children, and deliver us from the evil one, with the might of Your hands and with the glory of Your Name!

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Friday, 3 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time, Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Jesus (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 1 : 29-34

The next day John saw Jesus coming towards him, and said, “There is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! It is He of whom I said : A Man comes after me, who is already ahead of Me, for He was before me. I myself did not know Him, but I came baptising to prepare for Him, so that He might be revealed in Israel.”

And John also gave this testimony, “I saw the Spirit coming down on Him like a dove from heaven, and resting on Him. I myself did not know Him, but God, who sent me to baptise, told me, ‘You will see the Spirit coming down, and resting, on the One who baptises with the Holy Spirit.'”

“Yes, I have seen! And I declare that this is the Chosen One of God!”

 

Alternative Reading (Mass of the Most Holy Name of Jesus)

 

Luke 2 : 21-24

On the eighth day the circumcision of the Baby had to be performed; He was named Jesus, the Name the angel had given Him before He was conceived. When the day came for the purification according to the law of Moses, they brought the Baby up to Jerusalem, to present Him to the Lord.

As it is written in the law of the Lord : “Every firstborn male shall be consecrated to God.” And they offered a sacrifice, as ordered in the law of the Lord : a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.