First Week of Lent

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Thursday, 26 February 2015 : 1st Week of Lent (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 137 : 1-2a, 2bcd-3, 7c-8

I thank You, o Lord, with all my heart, for You have heard the word of my lips. I sing Your praise in the presence of the gods. I bow down towards Your holy Temple and give thanks to Your Name.

For Your love and faithfulness, for Your word which exceeds everything. You answered me when I called; You restored my soul and made me strong.

With outstretched arm, You save me from the wrath of my foes, with Your right hand You deliver me. How the Lord cares for me! Your kindness, o Lord, endures forever. Forsake not the work of Your hands.

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Thursday, 26 February 2015 : 1st Week of Lent (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Esther 14 : 1, 3-5, 12-14

Seized with anguish in her fear of death, Queen Esther likewise had recourse to the Lord. Then she prayed to the Lord God of Israel : “My Lord, You who stand alone, come to my help; I am alone and have no help but You. Through my own choice I am endangering my life.”

“As a child I wanted to hear from the people of the land of my forebears that You, o Lord, chose Israel from among all peoples, and our fathers from among their ancestors to be Your lasting heritage; that You did for them, all that You have promised.”

“Remember us, Lord; reveal Yourself in the time of our calamity. Give me courage, King of gods and Master of all power. Make my words persuasive when I face the lion; turn his heart against our enemy, that the latter and his like may be brought to their end. Save us by Your hand; help me who am alone and have none but You, o Lord.”

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Wednesday, 25 February 2015 : 1st Week of Lent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard about the story of Jonah, who was famously eaten by a whale and dwelled in its stomach for three days and nights, when he tried to escape from the mission which God had entrusted him, that is to warn the great city of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, of the impending doom and destruction God was bringing upon it for its sins and wickedness, the sins of its people.

We see through the readings, how God forgives, rescues and helps His people, who had been lost to sin, wickedness and the darkness of the world, through the means of the sending of His own Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is part of Himself, the Divine Word of God, who proclaimed the doom of the wicked and destruction of the haughty and sinful ones, who refused to repent from their sins, and yet, at the same time also assured those who were willing to repent and change their ways, the promise of eternal life and salvation.

God did not desire the destruction of His beloved people, as much as He hated their sins and disobedience. He wants them to be saved and reconciled with Him, and the way to do this is through genuine repentance and changing of our ways, that we would no longer sin but be righteous people and servants of God from now on. This was just like the people of Nineveh who sincerely repented from their sins and wickedness, and humbled themselves before the Lord.

But if we read further on in the Book of the prophet Jonah, we would realise that Jonah became angry with God, who forgave the people of Nineveh and did not carry out the punishment He intended for them. He refused to listen to God’s explanation for His mercy and he was deep in his anger, and when a plant that grew and sheltered him became parched and died, he burst out in anger against the Lord for that.

God chastised Jonah, by saying that, if the life of a single plant mattered so much for him to the point of being angry for its death, then the people of Nineveh, which number more than a hundred thousand were even more important for the Lord, for every single one of them are significant in the eyes of the Lord, and the Lord cared for each one of them.

That was why He tried to show them His love and mercy, by sending Jonah to them, and the same was repeated when the Lord Jesus came, and this time, not just for the people of Nineveh or for a group of people, but instead for all of mankind, past, present and future, including all of us. But, for this to happen, that is for forgiveness to occur, we must play an active role in seeking for that forgiveness, and that means, to be humble and to lower ourselves before the Lord, as the people of Nineveh, and to dispose of all forms of pride, anger and others from ourselves.

Many of us are like Jonah, who thought that because he was the messenger of God’s will, then he could look down upon the people of Nineveh as condemned people and people destined for annihilation. He misinterpreted the will of God, and ended up dwelling in his pride, prejudice and hubris, thinking that he alone is worthy and not the people of Nineveh. Thus, his ego welled up inside of him.

The same also often happens to us. We are often too caught up with our ego and pride such that we fail to see our own sinfulness and inability to seek God’s forgiveness because of that ego and pride. As long as we refuse to bend down our knee, acknowledging that we are all also sinners, before the presence of God, it will be difficult for us to be forgiven for our numerous sins and therefore receive God’s salvation.

May all of us be awakened to the reality of our sinfulness, and be aware of how much God loves us and how great is the care which He wants to show us all, the desire which will bring us much happiness and grace, if only we follow the path of the people of Nineveh, who repented from their sins and in their humility begged for God’s mercy and forgiveness. May God be with us all. Amen.

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Wednesday, 25 February 2015 : 1st Week of Lent (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Luke 11 : 29-32

At that time, as the crowd increased, Jesus began to speak in this way, “People of the present time are troubled people. They ask for a sign, but no sign will be given to them except the sign of Jonah. As Jonah became a sign for the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be a Sign for this generation.”

“The Queen of the South will rise up on Judgment Day with the people of these times and accuse them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and here there is greater than Solomon. The people of Nineveh will rise up on Judgment Day with the people of these times and accuse them, for Jonah’s preaching made them turn from their sins, and here there is greater than Jonah.”

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Wednesday, 25 February 2015 : 1st Week of Lent (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 50 : 3-4, 12-13, 18-19

Have mercy on me, o God, in Your love. In Your great compassion blot out my sin. Wash me thoroughly of my guilt; cleanse me of evil.

Create in me, o God, a pure heart; give me a new and steadfast spirit. Do not cast me out of Your presence nor take Your Holy Spirit from me.

You take no pleasure in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, You would not delight in it. O God, my sacrifice is a broken spirit; a contrite heart You will not despise.

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Wednesday, 25 February 2015 : 1st Week of Lent (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Jonah 3 : 1-10

The word of YHVH came to Jonah a second time : “Go to Nineveh, the great city, and announce to them the message I give you.”

In obedience to the word of YHVH, Jonah went to Nineveh. It was a very large city, and it took three days just to cross it. So Jonah walked a single day’s journey and began proclaiming, “Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed.”

The people of the city believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. Upon hearing the news, the king of Nineveh got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth and sat down in ashes.

He issued a proclamation throughout Nineveh : “By the decree of the king and his nobles, no people or beasts, herd or flock, will taste anything; neither will they eat nor drink. But let people and beasts be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call aloud to God, turn from his evil ways and violence. Who knows? God may yet relent, turn from His fierce anger and spare us.”

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, He had compassion and did not carry out the destruction He had threatened upon them.

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Tuesday, 24 February 2015 : 1st Week of Lent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard about how Jesus taught His disciples how to pray properly, by showing them the perfect prayer, which He prayed to the Father, as a way of communicating with Him. He showed the people, that prayer ought not be a long litany of words and requests or petitions, but instead, prayer should be direct in its meaning and purpose, or else, we end up losing the true essence and meaning of prayer itself.

Prayer is not a litany of demands or a way for us to extort what we want from God. Many of us have the misconception that because God is loving and gracious then He will fulfill everything that we ask of Him. We misinterpreted the meaning of the words of Jesus when He said, “Ask and you shall be given.” That is why when we do not get we want from our Lord through our prayers, then we often become disappointed or even angry against God, because we think that He does not care for us by not answering and fulfilling our prayers.

God knows every single thing that we need, from the least and smallest things to the biggest and most important things. There is no need to worry about anything but rather, we must have the courage and humility to ask Him to provide us with what we need in life. That is why Jesus in His prayer mentioned the part on ‘Give us today our daily bread’. It is meant to ask the Lord to provide us with what we truly need and not what we, in our endless desires, want.

The essence of prayer is for us to be able to communicate with the Lord our God, that we may speak with Him and He may also speak with us as well. As we can see, it is a two-way conversation between us and God, and not just a unidirectional conversation, as we all often did, by bombarding the Lord with requests, desires, demands, or even curses and anger when we did not get our prayers fulfilled as we wanted them.

Jesus taught us how to pray, and indeed, the Pater Noster or the Our Father, and also known as the Lord’s Prayer because it was Jesus who prayed it, is a perfect prayer. It begins with not a request or demand or wish, but with the glorification of the Lord and submission to the will of God. ‘Holy is Your Name’ and ‘Your will be done.’, indeed these are proof of our understanding that whatever we want, ultimately, it is not our will that will be done, but God’s will. Mary, the mother of our Lord also showed this when the Archangel Gabriel showed up to her and proclaimed that she was to be the Mother of God.

And as mentioned, the prayer asks for the grace enough for one, in what one needs in life. There is indeed no need for excess, as we are by our nature very difficult to satisfy. Our desire and want is such that, once we have what we want, we have the tendency to have more of it. We really have to wake up to the realisation that while there are many things that we may want to have, and while temptation is truly difficult to resist, but the Lord will show the way to us.

And this prayer also pointed out what we have to realise, especially in this season of Lent, that we are all sinners and therefore we deserve to be destroyed, and yet God in His rich mercy and forgiveness had forgiven all of us our sins, and if only that we are to put our complete faith and trust in Him, we shall receive His full grace and blessings. But if God had forgiven us our sins, then we too have to forgive those who sinned against us.

The parable of the ungrateful servant will highlight the importance of this. In that parable, a servant was forgiven from his great and huge debts by his master and lord, who had pity on him and forgave him all the debts even though he initially wanted the servant to be severely punished. But after that, the servant did not forgive another servant who had some debts to him, although those debts was far smaller than what the lord had forgiven the first servant.

As a result, the lord and master punished the ungrateful servant, who did not forgive even a small fault while his much greater fault had been forgiven by his lord. That servant was punished even greater than before, and the mercy shown to him was withdrawn. From this, we should learn that, whatever our brethren and people around us had done to us, be it something hurtful or malicious in nature, we have to learn to forgive them, and forgive one another our sins to each other.

For our sins are very, very great, the collection of the wickedness we have committed throughout our respective lives. Yet, if we are willing to abandon them and believe fully in the Lord our God, He is ready to forgive all of them and welcome us into His glory, but if we cannot even forgive our friends and others who had sinned against us, incomparable as they are to the sum of our wickedness, then it is also difficult for our Lord to forgive us our sins then.

Therefore, let us today reflect on what we have discussed and also heard from the Holy Scriptures. We have to bring ourselves closer to the Lord, firstly by fortifying our own prayer life, communicating and conversing with God, allowing not just ourselves to speak to Him, but even more importantly, that is to allow Him to speak in our hearts. If we have done so, then certainly, we will be able to know better what God wants from us, and that is our love, devotion and ability to love one another in the same way as we have loved ourselves.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all renew our faith to the Lord, not just by mere words but also through deeds. We have to love each other and forgive each others’ faults and sin to one another. And only then, we can be really called truly the children of God, and our Father who is in heaven, as Jesus had introduced Him to us, shall reward us with the gift of eternal life. God bless us all. Amen.

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Tuesday, 24 February 2015 : 1st Week of Lent (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Matthew 6 : 7-15

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “When you pray, do not use a lot of words, as the pagans do, for they believe that the more they say, the more chance they have of being heard. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need, even before you ask Him.”

“This, then, is how you should pray : Our Father in heaven, holy be Your Name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, just as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us. Do not bring us to the test, but deliver us from the evil one.”

“If you forgive others their wrongdoings, your Father in heaven will also forgive yours. If you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive you either.”

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Tuesday, 24 February 2015 : 1st Week of Lent (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 33 : 4-5, 6-7, 16-17, 18-19

Oh, let us magnify the Lord, together let us glorify His Name! I sought the Lord, and He answered me; from all my fears He delivered me.

They who look to Him are radiant with joy, their faces never clouded with shame. When the poor cry out, the Lord hears and saves them from distress.

The eyes of the Lord are fixed on the righteous; His eats are inclined to their cries. But His face is set against the wicked to destroy their memory from the earth.

The Lord hears the cry of the righteous and rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves the distraught.

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Tuesday, 24 February 2015 : 1st Week of Lent (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Isaiah 55 : 10-11

YHVH said, “As the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return till they have watered the earth, making it yield seed for the sower and food for others to eat, so is My word that goes forth out of My mouth : it will not return to Me idle, but it shall accomplish My will, the purpose for which It has been sent.”