for the greater glory of God

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Wednesday, 23 September 2015 : 25th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Pius of Pietrelcina, Priest (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Tobit 13 : 2, 3-4a, 4bcd, 5, 8

It is He who punishes and He who has mercy; who makes people go down to hell and rise up again. No one can escape His hand.

Give Him thanks, people of Israel, before all the nations. Though He has dispersed you among them, He now shows you His greatness.

Exalt Him before all the living, because He is our God and Lord, our Father forever.

He punishes us for our wrongdoing but again He will forgive us. He will bring us together again from amongst all the nations among whom we have been dispersed.

I, in the land of my captivity, will return Him thanks and show His strength and greatness to my sinful people. Be converted, you sinners, and live justly before Him, certain that He will be pleased with you and show you mercy.

Alternative reading

Psalm 126 : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

When the Lord brought the exiles back to Zion, we were like those moving in a dream.

Then our mouths were filled with laughter, and our tongues with songs of joy. Among the nations it was said, “The Lord has done great things for them.”

The Lord had done great things for us, and we were glad indeed.

Bring back our exiles, o Lord, like fresh streams in the desert.

Those who sow in tears will reap with songs and shouts of joy.

They went forth weeping, bearing the seeds for sowing, they will come home with joyful shouts, bringing their harvested sheaves.

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Wednesday, 23 September 2015 : 25th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Pius of Pietrelcina, Priest (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Ezra 9 : 5-9

I remained seated and dismayed until the evening sacrifice; and then, at the time for the evening offering, I rose from my fasting, and with my clothes and mantle torn, I knelt down, spreading out my hands to YHVH, my God.

I said, “My God! I am ashamed and confused, my God, I do not dare raise my eyes to You for our sins have increased over our heads and our crimes reach up to the heavens.”

“From the days of our ancestors to this day, our guilt has been great. We, our kings and priests have been given into the hands of foreign kings because of our crimes; we have been delivered to the sword, to captivity, to plunder, and put to shame as on this day.”

“However, for a brief moment, the mercy of YHVH, our God, has been shown to us. He made a remnant of our people survive, and allowed the survivor to settle once again in His Holy Place; He has given us joy and life, though we are in bondage. We are no more than slaves, but in the midst of our slavery, God has not abandoned us, He has extended a merciful hand over us to support us before the kings of Persia. He has revived our life, enabled us to rebuild the House of our God, and to have walls in Jerusalem and in the other cities of Judah.”

Alternative reading

Ezra 1 : 1-6

In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, YHVH willed to fulfil the word He had said through the prophet Jeremiah, so He moved the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, to issue the following command and send it out in writing to be read aloud everywhere in his kingdom, “Thus speaks Cyrus, king of Persia : YHVH, the God of heavens, who has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, has ordered me to build Him a Temple in Jerusalem, in the land of Judah.”

“To everyone belonging to His people, may his God be with him! Let them go up to Jerusalem with the help of their God and there build the House of YHVH, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem. In every place where the rest of the people of YHVH live, let the people of those places help them for their journey with silver, gold and all kinds of goods and livestock. Let them also give them voluntary offerings for the House of YHVH which is in Jerusalem.”

Then they rose up – the heads of the families of Judah and Benjamin, the priests and the Levites, and all those whose spirit God had stirred up – and they decided to go and build the House of YHVH. And all their neighbours gave them all kinds of help : gold, silver, livestock and precious objects in great quantity, besides every kind of voluntary offering.

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Tuesday, 22 September 2015 : 25th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about the restoration of Israel and Jerusalem from the Scripture readings, how the Lord blessed His people once again, whom He gathered from their lands of exile, that they might repossess the land of promise, Canaan, which became their inheritance once again, after the disobedience of Israel had caused them to lose the rights to inhabit that land.

And the Lord also had shown His wrath and displeasure at the wickedness of His people, through the destruction of the First Temple of Jerusalem constructed by King Solomon, which was intended as the glorious dwelling of God on earth, as the place where the Lord dwelled among His people. Yet, their wickedness, their stubbornness and refusal to change their ways after repeated reminders through the prophets, had disgusted the Lord who then departed for a while from His people.

And there happened the years of exile in Assyria and Babylon, as the Israelites were bowed down just as they were many generations before when their ancestors walked through the desert for forty years because of their disobedience and stubbornness as well. God wanted to make it clear that while He loves all of us greatly and while He wants to show us mercy, but our sins, our disobedience and stubborn hearts and minds often came in the way between us and Him.

Yet, God did not stop loving us because of that. What He had done was that He gave us new opportunities, one after another, hoping that we might turn away from sin and embrace His love once again. And that was why through Cyrus, Emperor of the Persian Empire, who crushed the Babylonians, the oppressors of the people of Israel, God liberated His people and ended their long exile, and sent them back to a land that they own once again.

In this also we see how God showed His mercy to all men, who have deserved death and destruction because of our sins and disobedience. God could have easily struck us away from existence because our sins and wickedness is a vile thing that corrupted creation. Yet, God could not deny the love which He has for all of us. The love He has for us enabled Him to give us that one more chance, through Jesus Christ, whom He sent to us to deliver us from our sins.

And through Jesus God made it very clear to us what He is expecting from all of us. What is it that He wants from us, brethren? It is for us all to do His will, just as Jesus had said it in the Gospel today. And what is the will of God? It is love, love that is not discriminating or selfish, but a perfect love that is from the deepest depth of the heart, and given in perfect and selfless giving of oneself in complete dedication to another.

It is this same love that God had shown us, and which He proved to us again and again, and of which there is no better proof for us, other than the ultimate love our Lord showed us when He willingly and selflessly gave Himself up, His very life, flesh and blood, to be shed for our salvation. God has given us everything we need, and now we know that He even provided us with every means to regain our grace in Him and to be able to receive His salvation worthily.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, therefore, today is a reminder for us all, to look deep into our own lives. Have we been faithful and have we loved our Lord as we should? God gave us the best and loved us all so much, and yet many of us were unable to commit at the same level of commitment as what our Lord had given us. The time has come for all of us indeed to reexamine our actions and ensure that in everything, we try our best to fulfil the will of God.

And how do we do this? It is by loving our Lord beyond anything else, beyond all of our selfish needs and desires, and indeed beyond considerations for ourselves. We have to love God at least as much as we love ourselves, and indeed we should love Him even more than that. And then, if we love God, then we would do well to love our brothers and sisters, that is one another, for we know that if God loves us, then He will want us to love each other as well.

Let us now therefore renew our effort to be true and good disciples of our Lord, and let us all commit ourselves in all our actions, words and deeds so that we may help one another to be closer to the Lord our God. May Almighty God bless us all, now and forever, and welcome us into His love and grace. Amen.

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Tuesday, 22 September 2015 : 25th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 8 : 19-21

At that time, Jesus’ mother and His relatives came to Him, but they could not get to Him because of the crowd. Someone told Him, “Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside and wish to meet You.”

Then Jesus answered, “My mother and My brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”

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Tuesday, 22 September 2015 : 25th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 121 : 1-2, 3-4a, 4b-5

I rejoiced with those who said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” And now we have set foot within your gates, o Jerusalem!

Jerusalem, just like a city, where everything falls into place! There the tribes go up.

The tribes of the Lord, the assembly of Israel, to give thanks to the Lord’s Name. There stand the courts of justice, the offices of the house of David.

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Tuesday, 22 September 2015 : 25th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Ezra 6 : 7-8, 12b, 14-20

Let the governor of the Jews together with their leaders build the House of God on its former site. This is the command I give as to what you should do to help those Jewish leaders rebuild the House of God : pay the expenses in full and without delay, with the income from taxes of the province at the other side of the River which is allotted to the king. I, Darius, give this command. Let this be carried out at once.

And the leaders of the Jews continued to make progress in building, encouraged by what Haggai, the prophet, and Zechariah, the son of Iddo, had said; and they finished the work according to the command of the God of Israel and the decrees of Cyrus and Darius. The house was finished on the third day of the month of Adar in the sixth year of the reign of Darius.

The children of Israel, the priests and the Levites, and the rest of those who had returned from exile celebrated the consecration of this House of God with rejoicing, offering on this solemnity one hundred young bulls, two hundred rams and four hundred lambs; and twelve he-goats as a sin offering for all Israel, according to the number of the tribes of Israel.

Then they installed the priests according to their ranks, and the Levites according to their classes, for the service of the House of God in Jerusalem, as it is written in the Book of Moses. Those who had returned from exile celebrated the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month, for the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together, and all of them were clean.

So, they slaughtered the Passover lamb for all who had returned from exile, for their fellow priests and for themselves.

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Monday, 21 September 2015 : Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate the feast of the Apostle and Evangelist St. Matthew, one of the four great Evangelists who wrote one of the Four Gospels in the Scripture. He was called from a humble and most unlikely of origins, as Levi the tax collector who was reviled by many of his own people and treated as a traitor and a sinner by many.

Yet, Jesus called him out of the obscurity and from a life filled with sin and darkness, and into the light, and from where he became a great source of inspiration and salvation for countless souls for his works and writing, in the holy words of the Gospel that he had written with inspiration given to him by the Holy Spirit, the words placed in his heart and then revealed to the world through his hands.

Through this, we can see that the Lord does not despise or abandon those who have sinned before Him. Indeed, had He done that, then none of us mankind would have deserved to be saved, for all of us are sinners in our ways and in our lives, be it in small or great sin that we have in us. God instead wants to help us and He wants us to be redeemed, and that was why He sent Jesus to us, to reveal to us the healing that we can find in Him.

Today as we heard the calling of Levi, the tax collector, and his glorious transformation into such a great tool in the hand of the Lord, we should all realise that no one was born a saint, and no saint had been predetermined to be one, except those whom the Lord had specifically put aside for His plan of salvation like Mary, the mother of our Lord. Thus, saints themselves were once sinners too, and some of them were even great sinners, notorious and unrepentant, but eventually what made a difference was that they repented and changed their ways.

At the time of Jesus, the common perception was that those who have sinned or lived a life of sin were condemned and beyond hope, while those who considered themselves righteous thought that they were beyond reproach, thus explaining the attitude of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who acted condescendingly against the tax collectors and sinners, and who criticised Jesus for mingling with them and eating with them.

But they themselves were hypocrites, and they were blind to the reality of their own sins. They were unable to realise that they too were sinners and were also subject to punishment and judgment for their iniquities. Yet, through their attitude towards sinners around them and all who needed their help, they have condemned themselves, as instead of extending a helping hand where they could have helped, they misled the people and misused their authority and position to condemn those who need the most help.

Thus, the Lord Jesus was very angry and critical against these people, whose faith in Him is nothing but a charade, a charade of selfishness and self-serving attitudes. Yet, even so, if we remember the time of the crucifixion, we should all remember how Jesus forgave those who have betrayed Him and made Him to suffer such grievous pain on the way of suffering and on the cross. He prayed to His Father, that their sins be not placed on them.

Such wonderful and great is the Lord’s mercy for us, and now the question lies in the fact that, God does not impose on us to accept His mercy and forgiveness. The choice lies in us on whether we choose to accept or reject His mercy. We can either be proud and haughty, be filled with arrogance and thinking that we do not need mercy because we are not in the wrong, or we can be humble and accept the truth and reality about ourselves, that we are sick with sin, wicked and corrupted, and the Lord is willing to help us to get out of our sickness and restore us to full health.

Let us help remind ourselves all the time, that saints were not born but raised, and saints were once also sinners, who importantly at one point of time in their lives, they changed and turned from their wicked ways, and as a result, they were made righteous and are worthy of God’s great grace. May all of us follow in the footsteps of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist, turn from our sinful ways, and through our renewed actions in faith, may we all help bring each other closer to the Lord. God bless us all. Amen.

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Monday, 21 September 2015 : Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Matthew 9 : 9-13

At that time, as Jesus moved on from where He cured a paralytic man, He saw a man named Matthew at his seat in the custom house, and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And Matthew got up and followed Him.

Now it happened, while Jesus was at table in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners joined Jesus and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, “Why is it that your Master eats with sinners and tax collectors?”

When Jesus heard this, He said, “Healthy people do not need a doctor, but sick people do. Go and find out what this means : ‘What I want is mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

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Monday, 21 September 2015 : Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Psalm 18 : 2-3, 4-5

The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament proclaims the work of His hands. Day talks it over with day; night hands on the knowledge to night.

No speech, no words, no voice is heard – but the call goes on throughout the universe, the message is felt to the ends of the earth.

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Monday, 21 September 2015 : Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Ephesians 4 : 1-7, 11-13

Therefore I, the prisoner of Christ, invite you to live the vocation you have received. Be humble, kind, patient and bear with one another in love. Make every effort to keep among you the unity of Spirit through bonds of peace. Let there be one body and one spirit, for God, in calling you, gave the same Spirit to all.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God, the Father of all, who is above all and works through all and is in all. But to each of us divine grace is given according to te measure of Christ’s gift.

As for His gifts, to some He gave to be Apostles, to others prophets, or even evangelists, or pastors and teachers. So He prepared those who belong to Him for the ministry, in order to build up the the Body of Christ, until we are all united in the same faith and knowledge of the Son of God. Thus we shall become the perfect Man, upon reaching maturity and sharing the fullness of Christ.