Feast of St. Joseph

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Monday, 20 March 2017 : Solemnity of St. Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Matthew 1 : 16, 18-21, 24a

Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and from her came Jesus Who is called the Christ – the Messiah.

This is how Jesus Christ was born : Mary His mother had been given to Joseph in marriage, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her husband, made plans to divorce her in all secrecy. He was an upright man, and in no way did he want to discredit her.

While he was pondering over this, an Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, descendant of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. She has conceived by the Holy Spirit, and now she will bear a Son. You shall call Him ‘Jesus’ for He will save His people from their sins.”

When Joseph woke up, he did what the Angel of the Lord had told him to do.

Alternative reading
Luke 2 : 41-51a

Every year the parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover, as was customary. And when Jesus was twelve years old, He went up with them, according to the custom of this feast. After the festival was over, they returned, but the Boy Jesus remained in Jerusalem, and His parents did not know it.

They thought He was in the company, and after walking the whole day they looked for Him among their relatives and friends. As they did not find Him, they went back to Jerusalem searching for Him, and on the third day they found Him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions. And all the people were amazed at His understanding and His answers.

His parents were very surprised when they saw Him, and His mother said to Him, “Son, why have You done this to us? Your father and I were very worried while searching for You.” Then He said to them, “Why were you looking for Me? Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house?” But they did not understand this answer.

Jesus went down with them, returning to Nazareth, and He continued to be subject to them.

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Monday, 20 March 2017 : Solemnity of St. Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Romans 4 : 13, 16-18, 22

If God promised Abraham, or rather his descendants, that the world would belong to him, this was not because of his obeying the Law, but because he was just and a friend of God through faith.

For that reason, faith is the way and all is given by grace; and the promises of Abraham are fulfilled for all his descendants, not only for his children according to the Law, but also for all the others who have believed.

Abraham is the father of all of us, as it is written : I will make you father of many nations. He is our father in the eyes of Him Who gives life to the dead, and calls into existence what does not yet exist, for this is the God in Whom he believed. Abraham believed and hoped against all expectation, thus becoming father of many nations, as he had been told : See how many will be your descendants.

This was taken into account for him to attain righteousness.

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Monday, 20 March 2017 : Solemnity of St. Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 88 : 2-3, 4-5, 27 and 29

I will sing forever, o Lord, of Your love and proclaim Your faithfulness from age to age. I will declare how steadfast is Your love, how firm Your faithfulness.

You said, “I have made a covenant with David, My chosen one; I have made a pledge to My servant. I establish his descendants forever; I build his throne for all generations.”

“He will call on Me, ‘You are my Father, my God, my Rock, my Saviour.’ I will keep My covenant firm forever, and My love for him will endure.

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Monday, 20 March 2017 : Solemnity of St. Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
2 Samuel 7 : 4-5a, 12-14a, 16

But that very night, YHVH’s word came to Nathan, “Go and tell My servant David, this is what YHVH says : When the time comes for you to rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your son after you, the one born of you and I will make his reign secure. He shall build a house for My Name and I will firmly establish his kingship forever. I will be a Father to him and he shall be My son.”

“Your house and your reign shall last forever before Me, and your throne shall be forever firm.”

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Sunday, 19 March 2017 : Third Sunday of Lent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as we progress through the third Sunday of this season of Lent, today we are reminded of God’s love and grace, which He had given us all so generously to all of us His people from time to time, and through which He had granted us the grace of salvation by sending none other than His own Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, into this world, so that all who believe in Him may be saved and have eternal life through Him.

In today’s first reading, we heard about the rebelliousness of the people of Israel who grumbled and complained against God and His servant, Moses, complaining that they would suffer to death from hunger and thirst in the desert. They were angry against Moses and God for having brought them out of the land of Egypt, where they had suffered for over four hundred and fifty years in slavery, but in that instance, many of them wondered that if they had stayed in the land of Egypt, then they would at least have food to eat and water to drink.

They doubted God’s love and providence, even after they had seen how God had liberated them with His mighty power, bringing down the proud Pharaoh and the Egyptians, humbling them with His ten plagues over Egypt, and even after He had opened the Red Sea before them, allowing them to walk barefoot through the seabed, and crushed their enemies before them by allowing the sea to go back to its place as the Egyptian chariots passed through.

They doubted His love even after He had taken care of them for very long during their journey through the desert, even after He had fed them daily with the sweet manna, bread from Heaven itself, and also gave them large birds and fowls every evening to eat. He also gave them water even from the rocks, the clearest and finest quality water to drink in the middle of the desert, where nothing should have existed, not even water and food.

But they were not thankful to God, and instead, they grumbled and complained, and even wanted to kill Moses. They also raised even a golden idol, precisely a golden calf to be god over them when they were impatient waiting for Moses who went up the mountain of God at Horeb for forty days and forty nights. These are just among the many things which showed the disobedience of Israel throughout their time in the desert.

They have placed the desires of their flesh ahead of their faith in God. They placed the demands of their stomachs and bodies beyond their obligation and responsibility to worship the Lord and remaining true to Him in all things. They abandoned God just because they were not able to restrain the demands of their flesh, the desire to eat and drink, and of all other worldly things, which had tempted them to sin.

In this time of Lent, all of us are called by God to reevaluate our lives, our priorities and all of our actions. Let us all ask ourselves, what is it that we are living for in this world? Many of us have spent many hours working and indeed, toiling hard worrying about how we are to eat and drink everyday, and what we are going to do with our lives, with our wealth and possessions, worrying about our hard-earned wealth and even desiring more of what we already had.

This is what many of us mankind often do, and we are so preoccupied with our daily living that we are unable to see that in all of our pursuits for these things, we have lost the focus of our lives, and we are looking for the wrong things in life. What do I mean with this, brothers and sisters in Christ? It means that while we seek to build for ourselves worldly treasures, we often forget that all the things we now possess will not last forever.

Whatever we have now, can be gone in just a flash of a moment. We are concerned with the demands of our flesh and our bodies, much as the Israelites had done in the past, but we forgot that while we worry about this and that, in reality, we do not really need all of these. Many of the things we now enjoy in this world are illusions and diversions that keep us away from finding the true joy that can be found in God alone.

That is because, even though we worry about many things in life, all that we need in life have been taken care of by none other than the Lord our God Himself. He has provided us all that we need, the life we have, which is a gift from Him, and also all the other times that He had blessed us with all the good things in life, but which we did not notice to be the grace given to us from God.

Like the people of Israel, who have been blessed bountifully by God, many of us often do not realise that God had done so much for us. We often take God, His love and grace for us for granted, and when we are in trouble, we often complained that God has not been there for us, which is exactly as what the Israelites had done, and like what we often do as well. How often is it that we feel angry at God for not giving us what we want?

This is where we must realise that what we want is often not God truly willed for us. We have always sought for things of this world, for food, for sustenance, for money, for pleasures of the flesh and the body, for sexual gratification, for recognition among the people, for fame and renown, and for all other things which we often crave and desire for, but which cannot satisfy us.

For we all should know that all of these worldly things bring no lasting satisfaction because when we have a taste of these things, we will desire and crave for even more. Such is the extent of our human greed and desire. And that is why in the Gospel today, when Jesus was speaking to the Samaritan woman, He pointed out that she had had five husbands, and the current one that she had was not even her husband!

When we mankind are unable to restrain ourselves, and place our trust in the things of this world, in our wealth, in our money, in our appearances and bodily pleasures, that is when we start to slide into the quicksand of sin which pulls us steadily deeper and deeper until we are unable to escape, unless we make the conscious effort to stand up and say no to sin and to our weaknesses.

Jesus said that those who believe in Him will be able to draw living water from Him, for He is the Living Water, the source of all life and satisfaction, which refers also to the time when Israel was in the desert and God gave them all that they need. If only that they placed their complete trust in God, instead of grumbling and complaining because they could not get what they wanted, they would have been perfectly happy living in the grace of God.

Now let us all ask ourselves, is God at the centre of our lives? Is He the reason why we continue to do our work and our action in this life, from day after day? If God is not at the centre of all the things we say and do, we will soon realise that whatever we are doing are meaningless and mundane, and that is when we begin to lose faith in God and in our life. Do we want to be like those who are never able to be satisfied, constantly seeking something better for themselves, or do we rather want to be with God, and enjoy His grace and love?

Brothers and sisters in Christ, in this blessed time and season of Lent, all of us are called to repent from our sins and turn from our worldliness, from all the things that have kept us away from God and His love. We are called to let go of our human pride, from our desires, from our selfishness, all the things that have become serious obstacles on our path to God’s grace.

Let us reorientate our lives completely, so that Jesus our Lord is at the heart of our very being and existence. Through our penance and repentance, let us humbly seek forgiveness for all the times that we have been angry at Him, thinking that He had ignored us and our pleas. Let us all realise just how much He had loved us all, and through understanding of God’s love, let us show the same love to each other, through our almsgiving and kindness to those who are less fortunate than us.

Let us realise that because God lives in us, and because He is with us, we can do all things in He Who strengthens us, which is the words spoken by St. Paul in praise of God, the source of our life and our strength. May this time of Lent become the time for our redemption and for us to rejuvenate our faith in the Lord, that as we grow ever stronger in our faith, we may draw strength to persevere in this life and be ever righteous to the end. May God, the source of our life, the eternal Spring of Life, be with us always, now and forevermore. Amen.

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Sunday, 19 March 2017 : Third Sunday of Lent (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
John 4 : 5-42

At that time, Jesus came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well is there. Tired from His journey, Jesus sat down by the well; it was about noon. Now a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” His disciples had just gone into town to buy some food.

The Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan and a woman, for a drink?” (For Jews, in fact, have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift of God! If you knew Who it is, Who is asking you for a drink, you yourself would have asked Me, and I would have given you living water.”

The woman answered, “Sir, You have no bucket, and this well is deep; where is Your living water? Are You greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank from it himself, together with his sons and his cattle?” Jesus said to her, “Those who drink of this water will be thirsty again; but those, who drink of the water that I shall give, will never be thirsty; for the water, that I shall give, will become in them a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to Him, “Give me this water, that I may never be thirsty, and never have to come here to draw water.” Jesus said, “Go, call your husband, and come back here.” The woman answered, “I have no husband.” And Jesus replied, “You are right to say, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you said is true.”

The woman then said to Him, “I see You are a Prophet; tell me this : Our ancestors came to this mountain to worship God; but you Jews, do you not claim that Jerusalem is the only place to worship God?” Jesus said to her, “Believe Me, woman, the hour is coming when you shall worship the Father, but that will not be on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.”

“You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is even now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for that is the kind of worshippers the Father wants. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit, and truth.”

The woman said to Him, “I know that the Messiah (that is the Christ) is coming. When He comes, He will tell us everything.” And Jesus said, “I Who am talking to you, I am He.”

At this point the disciples returned, and were surprised that Jesus was speaking with a woman, however, no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are You talking with her?” So the woman left her water jar and ran to the town. There she said to the people, “Come and see a Man Who told me everything I did! Could He not be the Christ?” So they left the town and went to meet Him.

In the meantime the disciples urged Jesus, “Master, eat.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” And the disciples wondered, “Has anyone brought Him food?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the One Who sent Me, and to carry out His work.”

“You say that in four months there will be the harvest; now, I say to you, look up and see the fields white and ready for harvesting. People who reap the harvest are paid for their work, and the fruit is gathered for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. Indeed the saying holds true : One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap where you did not work or suffer; others have worked, and you are now sharing in their labours.”

In that town many Samaritans believed in Him when they heard the woman who declared, “He told me everything I did.” So, when they came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them, and Jesus stayed there two days. After that, many more believed because of His own words, and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you told us: we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is the Saviour of the world.”

Alternative reading (shorter version)
John 4 : 5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42

At that time, Jesus came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well is there. Tired from His journey, Jesus sat down by the well; it was about noon. Now a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” His disciples had just gone into town to buy some food.

The Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan and a woman, for a drink?” (For Jews, in fact, have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift of God! If you knew Who it is, Who is asking you for a drink, you yourself would have asked Me, and I would have given you living water.”

The woman answered, “Sir, You have no bucket, and this well is deep; where is Your living water? Are You greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank from it himself, together with his sons and his cattle?” Jesus said to her, “Those who drink of this water will be thirsty again; but those, who drink of the water that I shall give, will never be thirsty; for the water, that I shall give, will become in them a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to Him, “Give me this water, that I may never be thirsty, and never have to come here to draw water. I see You are a Prophet; tell me this : Our ancestors came to this mountain to worship God; but you Jews, do you not claim that Jerusalem is the only place to worship God?” Jesus said to her, “Believe Me, woman, the hour is coming when you shall worship the Father, but that will not be on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.”

“You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is even now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for that is the kind of worshippers the Father wants. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit, and truth.”

The woman said to Him, “I know that the Messiah (that is the Christ) is coming. When He comes, He will tell us everything.” And Jesus said, “I Who am talking to you, I am He.”

In that town many Samaritans believed in Him, so, when they came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them, and Jesus stayed there two days. After that, many more believed because of His own words, and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you told us: we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is the Saviour of the world.”

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Sunday, 19 March 2017 : Third Sunday of Lent (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Romans 5 : 1-2, 5-8

By faith we have received true righteousness, and we are at peace with God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Through Him we obtain this favour in which we remain and we even boast to expect the Glory of God.

And hope does not disappoint us because the Holy Spirit has been given to us, pouring into our hearts the love of God. Consider, moreover, the time that Christ died for us : when we were still helpless and unable to do anything.

Few would accept to die for an upright person; although, for a very good person, perhaps someone would dare to die. But see how God manifested His love for us : while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

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Sunday, 19 March 2017 : Third Sunday of Lent (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Psalm 94 : 1-2, 6-7, 8-9

Come, let us sing to the Lord, let us make a joyful sound to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before Him giving thanks, with music and songs of praise.

Come and worship; let us bow down, kneel before the Lord, our Maker. He is our God, and we His people; the flock He leads and pastures. Would that today you heard His voice!

Do not be stubborn, as at Meribah, in the desert, on that day at Massah, when your ancestors challenged Me, and they put Me to the test.

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Sunday, 19 March 2017 : Third Sunday of Lent (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Exodus 17 : 3-7

But the people thirsted for water at Rephidim and grumbled against Moses, “Why did you make us leave Egypt to have us die of thirst with our children and our cattle?”

So Moses cried to YHVH, “What shall I do with the people? They are almost ready to stone me!” YHVH said to Moses, “Go ahead of the people and take with you the elders of Israel. Take with you the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you on the rock at Horeb. You will strike the rock and water will flow from it and the people will drink.”

Moses did this in the presence of the elders of Israel. The place was called Massah and Meribah because of the complaints of the Israelites, who tested YHVH saying, “Is YHVH with us or not?”

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Saturday, 19 March 2016 : Solemnity of St. Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate the great feast of St. Joseph, the Spouse and husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that makes him the foster-father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the legal and adoptive father of our Lord, because of his marriage to Mary, and he is a very essential figure whose actions were crucial in keeping the young Baby Jesus and Child Jesus safe through the world.

And it was also likely that an honourable man and servant of God as he was, he would have contributed greatly to the responsible upbringing of our Lord, guarding Him as He grew up as a Child, and providing for Him as all fathers had done. And in St. Joseph we saw the very important values of responsibility, of commitment, of devotion to God and to the works he has been entrusted to, which are some of those that we ourselves can apply to our own lives.

St. Joseph was an upright man who held righteousness and justice in highest esteem, and he has always lived in accordance to this principle, even though materially, he was just a simple and humble carpenter, making his work as a way to earn a living for his family. And from what information we can gather from the Gospel, it is evident that the people at that time did not respect much such a profession, which they likely thought to be menial and humiliating in nature.

But St. Joseph did not care about all that, he lived responsibly and with faith in the Lord, and he cared deeply for his family, and even most importantly for Jesus, as even though He was not his biological son, but St. Joseph treated Jesus as his own, and he protected Him from all dangers of the world when He was still young and defenceless. He brought his whole family to Egypt when king Herod, jealous and worried about Jesus, tried to kill Him by killing all the newborns in Jerusalem.

St. Joseph cared for his family as a father should have done, and he loved them with all of his heart, and truly, he is a role model to all fathers, and to all families. And as I have mentioned, his life and his works are also inspirations for us all to follow, in how we ought to live our lives as faithful brothers and sisters in our Lord. He did not cheat, or do anything that is wicked for the pursuit of worldly comfort, wealth and influence, and instead he was content with living a quiet and honest life with his family in Nazareth, as he helped to bring up Jesus with Mary.

As we celebrate the solemnity of this special day, the feast of St. Joseph our Lord’s foster father and the spouse of His mother Mary, all of us ought to remember whatever he had done, and all the things he had done in righteousness and justice, and endeavour to model ourselves after him. He was among the greatest of the saints because of his closeness to our Lord and Saviour, and there is much for us to learn from him.

Let us all ask ourselves, how often is it that we all have forgotten our duties and responsibilities to our own families? To our own neighbours and those whom we have been entrusted with? How many of us actually have done what we have been expected to do, and not to take shortcuts or take measures that benefit ourselves and disadvantaged others? Let us reflect on this and think about our actions, all that we have done.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us approach the Holy Week next week with a clear mind, and with a clear and renewed focus as we reflect on St. Joseph and his life, and in whatever things he had done in life, and in how he devotedly cared for his adopted Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us model our lives after him, rejecting all forms of worldliness, greed and all desires that lead to selfishness and destruction.

And one more thing, that as St. Joseph guarded Jesus, he therefore also guards the whole Holy Church of God, which God Himself also likely entrusted to his intercession and protection. In the same way as he had cared for the Lord when He was young, St. Joseph is also concerned about the Church his adopted Son had established on earth, and about us all who believe in Jesus and are members of that Church.

Therefore, let us all today ask for the intercession and protection of St. Joseph for the whole Church, and let us also ask him to intercede for our sake, that all of us sinners may find our way to his adopted Son through his guidance and protection, and that he will inspire many of us, especially our young ones, to live our lives with faith, with responsibility and with hard work to reach out to God and to be worthy of Him in all things.

May God bless us all and strengthen our faith, and may He through the intercession of His foster-father, St. Joseph, be with us always and protect us and the whole Church at all times. God bless us all. Amen.