forefathers

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Thursday, 12 September 2013 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Mary (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Psalm 150 : 1-2, 3-4, 5-6

Alleluia! Sing to the Lord a new song, sing His praise in the assembly of His saints. Let Israel rejoice in His Maker, let the people of Zion glory in their King!

Let them dance in praise of His Name and make music for Him with harp and timbrel. For the Lord delights in His people; He crowns the lowly with victory.

The saints will exult in triumph ; even at night on their couches. Let the praise of God be on their lips, and in their hands two-edged swords.

Alternative Psalm (From the Mass of the Most Holy Name of Mary)

 

Luke 1 : 46-47, 48-49, 50-51, 52-53, 54-55

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit exults in God my Saviour!

He has looked upon His servant in her lowliness, and people forever will call me blessed. The Mighty One has done great things for me, Holy is His Name!

From age to age His mercy extends to those who live in His presence. He has acted with power and done wonders, and scattered the proud with their plans.

He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up those who are downtrodden. He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty.

He held out His hand to Israel, His servant, for He remembered His mercy, even as He promised to our fathers, to Abraham and his descendants forever

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Tuesday, 30 July 2013 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Scripture Reflection)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we listened to Jesus explaining the meaning behind the parable of the weeds and the sower which He had told to His disciples and the people of Israel. He told them that the fate awaiting the wicked ones is death and eternal suffering in hell, while the fate awaiting the righteous ones is eternal joy and bliss in heaven, with our Lord, reunited in perfect goodness and glory of God.

The seeds of the weeds spread by the devil is the evil and corruption he had spread in this world to lead mankind astray from their path towards the Lord. The seeds of evil are greed, wrath, hatred, lust, jealousy, despair, arrogance, and pride. They are our weaknesses that made us prone to fall into the damnation reserved for the devil and his fallen angels, the fate of the weeds. This is because, as we all know, weeds are dangerous, because they compete with the healthy plants for nutrition, and when the weeds grow large, they also may likely strangle the healthy plants and kill them.

The same therefore is bound to happen to all of us, if we do not take precautions against the devil and his mischievous tools, all the tools in the world that he possesses to be employed against us, the beloved children of God. The devil is the sower of the evil weeds of sin, that if we are not careful, will grow within us and around us, and choke the good that is in us, turning us from the path of salvation into the path towards doom.

Our Lord and God, as Moses had said in the first reading we heard today, is a merciful and loving God, One who is slow to anger and rich in kindness and compassion. He is sure to welcome us back into His embrace if we are to be repentant and truly regret our sins and our wrongdoings before Him. We must not be shy to admit that we have sinned before God, because He is our loving Father, and He wants to rescue us from certain death.

But He is also a jealous God, a God who is just and against any form of sin. That is because He is perfect goodness and sin is corruption that had marred our perfection ever since the times of Adam and Eve, when Satan tricked Eve into eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and disobeyed the Lord in the process. It is because of our disobedience that we deserved death, and Adam and Eve deserved death and annihilation, and yet God showed them mercy and although they were punished to live in great difficulty on earth, they were not annihilated.

Death did claim them and our ancestors in the end, but death would not have the final say. That was because the Lord Himself gave His all so that we may have a new hope for eternal life in Him, to return us to our true inheritance, as what God had originally intended for us at creation. He did not desire us to suffer or die, but He wants us all to live, forever with Him in the bliss of heaven, to spend all our time in the beautiful Gardens of Eden.

He sent us His only Son, Jesus Christ, to be the fulfillment of His long-awaited promise, that He would send a redeemer to all mankind. The ultimate proof of His love and care for us. So great is His love that He is willing to suffer in our place, to die in our place, and to be our light of hope. He is the light of hope and salvation, because He did not remain in the land of the dead, but by the power of the Lord, He broke free the chains of sin and death that had held us for generations, and risen from the dead He became the source of salvation for all who believe in Him.

We must sow the seeds of faith, of hope, and of love in our hearts, brothers and sisters in Christ, so that we will be ever ready to combat the seeds of evil that Satan and his cronies always try to sow within our hearts. Do not be afraid, for he no longer has any power or authority over us, ever since Christ broke that bond that enthralled us to the evil one. We must however remain ever vigilant and ever careful, lest the devil successfully subvert our thoughts and our hearts to be against the Lord and His will.

Let us strive to be the wheat and not the weeds, and may the seeds of faith, hope, and love that is within us grow strong, that they become the nutrients and fertiliser that help us, the wheat to grow strong and bear much fruits, that the Lord who sees us, will be pleased and He will then tell His angels to come and collect us from amongst the weeds and bring us to Him, to enjoy forever His grace, His blessings, and His loving embrace.

Today, brothers and sisters, we also commemorate the Feast of St. Peter Chrysologus, who was made a Bishop of Ravenna in the ending years of the Roman Empire during the early Church. He was well known for his inspiring speeches and preaching, that called all Christians to be faithful to God and defend themselves against any form of heresies that threatened to corrupt their soul and their true faith in God.

At the time of St. Peter Chrysologus, at the heyday of the Roman Empire, there existed numerous heresies of the faith, many of which were really serious threat on the unity of the Church and the faithful, and some of them had ideas diametrically opposite to the truth of the Apostolic Fathers, the truth that is of Christ. Many of them, corrupted by the seeds of evil, the weeds planted by the evil one, subverted the words of the Lord and the message of salvation to serve their own ends, and ultimately, serve the cause of evil.

Many people fell victim to the corrupting nature of these heresies, which attacked the truth about our faith in the Lord, in the Lord Himself, and even His Blessed Mother, Mary. St. Peter Chrysologus, as the then Bishop of Ravenna in today’s Italy, was faced with the same problems and challenges that faced the Church of his time. Yet, he did not waver nor did he become afraid to confront those challenges. Instead, he faced them courageously, and with great zeal and inspiration, through his sermons, he converted the faithful back to the truth of Christ, getting rid of the weeds that choked the life out of the faith of the people of God.

Today, my brothers and sisters in Christ, the need is ever greater for more people like St. Peter Chrysologus, in defending our faith and ourselves, from the corruption that comes from Satan. We must be courageous in standing up for the Lord in the face of the devil and bluntly reject all his approaches and his temptations to us. We must stand up for the Lord and His love, His compassion for us. Never let go of the Lord and embrace evil, no matter how difficult the challenges of life are. We must always be strong, as St. Peter Chrysologus had been.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us today renew our commitment to God, to the Lord who loves us, to God who cares for us every day of our life, and commit ourselves to glorify His Name among men, and to never give in to the allures of the evil one, and be courageous to reject all of his approaches. May the Lord who is love and who is mercy, forgive us our sins, purify us and make us whole once again. St. Peter Chrysologus, pray for us sinners and intercede for us before the Lord our God. Amen.

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Wednesday, 26 June 2013 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters, we are warned today by the Lord of the presence of false prophets who would certainly try to lead us astray from the path of salvation and wrest us away from God’s hands, through their numerous devious and insidious means to corrupt us and our beings that we become unworthy of the Lord our God.

Do not be led astray by these false prophets and their lies, dear brothers and sisters in Christ! Remember that no man or angel can be as truthful and faithful as our Lord and God in His promises, the covenant He had made with Abraham, which we heard this day in the first reading, which He renewed with all of us through the Blood of the Lamb of God, that is Christ Jesus our Lord.

We have to keep faithful to our faith in the Lord Jesus, that we will remain in God’s grace and remain in His love. Put our full trust in the Lord, and believe in Him. Do not fear, for God will always remain with us, as long as we keep Him in us. If we keep faith in the Lord, the Lord will dwell within us, and He will recognise us, because we will shine with the light of God that is within us.

What matters is that we keep God’s commandments that is love, that we love one another as Christ had commanded us, and love our God with all our hearts, our minds, and our beings. In doing so, we also do the will of God, and the Lord who loves us will reward us with His love and eternal life.

If we do not keep our faith in God, then the fruits of the Holy Spirit that God gave us cannot grow, and we will bear rotten fruits just like the bad trees that are barren and useless. That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, we should remain always in God’s favour and love, through our own words, actions, and dedication to the Lord and His people.

Holy Spirit grants us much gifts, the gifts of love and hope. It invigorates our hearts that it strengthens those who are downtrodden and in despair. The flames of the Holy Spirit bears much fruit when we do things rooted in love, compassion, and acts of mercy, in accordance with the Lord’s will. This gift of the Holy Spirit is granted to us freely, and we should indeed utilise them and not waste them. If we do things out of evil and darkness, we too will bear the fruits of darkness, and the gifts of the Spirit will be wasted.

Our forefather Abraham himself was rewarded for his faith in the Lord, simply because he is an upright person, and someone who kept true his faith in the Lord, and who kept strong the love of God within him. This was reflected in his actions, that he gave all he has to the Lord, without condition, even to the point of giving up Isaac, his precious son, son of the Lord’s promise, to be sacrificed for the Lord.

God who loves us had sent us His Son, Jesus, that He could renew the covenant that He made with Abraham, but broken by the evils and rebellions of our forefathers, that is Abraham’s descendants. God has given us another chance through Christ, that with the new covenant sealed by the Blood of the Lamb of God. Through His death, Christ offered us His salvation and His new covenant. Would we then waste this brilliant opportunity? Surely we won’t want it, do we?

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us pledge ourselves to the Lord, from now on, that we will truly be faithful and loving to Him, and give our best, all of our hearts to Him. Let us bear fruits, the fruits of love and the Holy Spirit. May God be with us, and guide us in our path. God bless us all! Amen.

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Sunday, 23 June 2013 : 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we listen to the word of the Gospel, in which Jesus asked His disciples about His true identity. And we heard how Peter, the leader of the disciples, proclaimed the truth about Jesus, that He is indeed the Messiah sent by the Lord for the salvation of this world. The truth however, is not known to many, as the people, in their ignorance, thought Him merely just as another prophet sent by God, or a holy men. There were even those like the Pharisees, the elders, and the chief priests who rejected Him outright and saw Him as a rival to their teaching authority.

Christ our Lord is indeed the Messiah, and He is also the Son of God, one of the Holy Trinity, and therefore, is the Supreme King of all Creation, of all the Universe. He is the most powerful being in all creation, and yet, He lowered Himself by descending from His glory in heaven, to be like us, to be born of a humble virgin, in a stable. A king, yet born in a stable. That is also why Christ, though He is a king, He did not flaunt His power or authority, but remain humble through His service to others, to His disciples, and most importantly to the people who needed His help and mercy.

That was also why He strictly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone on the truth that Peter has shared with all of them, that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and God Himself. That is because, the mission of Jesus was not to be glorified in this life on earth and become like a king, but indeed, to suffer, through rejection, pain, and even more suffering, so that He could fulfill the mission that was entrusted to Him by His coming into this world, that is to save all mankind from their fate of death, through His own death, and the shedding of His blood.

Too long mankind had waded in the depths of darkness, in the depth of evil without the light of God, ever since creation, when they rebelled against the love of God by choosing to follow the words of Satan instead of the will of God. Although mankind seemingly prosper with wealth and affluence that they gained from their ownership of this world, but the pleasures of the flesh and the body cannot satisfy what mankind truly wants. They were hungry and thirsty, for the one thing that could solve all of their desire, that is the love of God.

God loves us, and that is why He wants to save us, save us from death that is our fate and punishment because of our forefathers’ rebellion against Him, and by our constantly sinful ways and evil doings in this world, that brought ever greater evil stain on our own souls. He came down into this world to show His ultimate love for us, to be one of us, save without sin. He lived among us, and we knew Him as Jesus Christ, and the people of Israel at that time too recognised Him through the great many miracles He had performed during His earthly ministry.

His death is the last piece of the plan of salvation that God had crafted ever since mankind left His embrace that day long ago in the Garden of Eden. The death of Christ and the shedding of the blood of the Lamb of God unites us to Christ, because He then became for us, the unending stream of the fountain of life, which water nourishes and satiates all kinds of thirst. His Blood cleanses and purifies us from our sins. If we accept Him and believe in Him as our Lord and our Saviour, just as Peter had done, He would be with us, and we would be with Him.

That is because upon accepting our Lord Jesus Christ, we become His, and He becomes ours. Through our unity with the Lord, we are made whole again, and we are once again worthy of our God and our Creator. Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, profess our faith in the Lord, just as Peter had done, but do not just stop there, but go further and make our faith truly alive, by practicing it through our love and our service to our neighbours in need, just as Christ had done during His ministry in this world.

Let us never be separated again from our Lord and our God, and let us be transformed by His love, that we will emerge from the depths of darkness we were in, and become truly the children of light. God be with us all, forever and ever. Amen.

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Wednesday, 29 May 2013 : 8th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, to follow Christ means to suffer with Him and to carry our own crosses alongside the cross He carried on the way to Calvary. To be with Christ means to drink the same cup of suffering that He has drunk, that all of us may be saved. This cup of suffering for Christ is so great that He actually, in His agony in the garden, wanted to avoid it, but because He was perfectly obedient to His Father that He accepted that cup.

That cup of suffering, my brothers and sisters, is linked with all of us, all of us who has ever sinned and rebelled against the love of God. That cup of suffering is none other than the combined weight of our sins and those sins committed by our forefathers and our ancestors since Adam and Eve, the first to sin in this world created by God. There had been many billions if not trillions of men living and lived since creation, and you can just imagine the weight of all their sins combined together.

Sin is what has caused the wounds of Christ, and the suffering that He suffered on the way to Calvary, and on the cross itself. Yes, the cross, the physical cross is heavy, but it is nothing compared to the spiritual weight of all our sins combined, as we are truly sinful and filthy creatures who have sinned for ages since the early days of creation.

Wars, violence, hatred, prejudice, malice, and many other things that man had done in this world, that caused evil and destruction, and hurting other people and creatures, and even to the extent of causing death, has made our sins to accumulate like a mountain, and this mountain is the mountain of sin that our Lord Jesus Christ carried on His way to Calvary.

Our pride and arrogance in particular had become our greatest obstacles in achieving salvation by accepting the salvation that God has offered through Christ, His Son, whose death and resurrection had redeemed all mankind, but the gift of salvation is only ours if we truly accept Christ as our Lord and Saviour. Pride and arrogance, in our own powers and abilities has prevented us from accepting the truth that is in Christ, preferring to trust men over God.

That is why men has sinned so much, because we trusted ourselves more than we had trusted God. We give in easily to our basic instincts, greed, lust, pride, and so much other evils that had been within us. It is so much easier to follow the world and the devil because it seems to be a much easier and a better way! Following the Lord is never easy, brothers and sisters in Christ.

We have to strive to carry our own crosses with the Lord every day, brethren, that we too share in the suffering of Christ, and through His death, we too are dead to our past lives, and reborn in a new life with Him through His glorious resurrection. This too was what happened at our own baptism, when we are welcomed into the Church of God, either as an infant or as an adult.

Remember our own baptism, brothers and sisters, when we are truly baptised like Christ had been in the Jordan, when we are sealed in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, just like Jesus, the Son of God, was baptised by John in the presence of the Father in His voice, and the dove which is the Holy Spirit. When we are baptised, we belong to Christ and will no longer be separated from Him, as long as we remain faithful to His commandments and the mission that He has entrusted to all of us.

May God be with us in all our dealings and in our lives, that He will transform us into beings of love, no longer be prideful nor arrogant, and placing the love for God above any other thing, enabling us to love God with all our hearts, our minds, and our souls, placing Him above every other things. God bless us all. Amen.

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(Easter Sunday) Sunday, 31 March 2013 : Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, Holy Week, Easter Octave (Scripture Reflection)

Alleluia! The Lord is Risen! He had conquered death through His glorious Resurrection, and victory over death. He triumphed over Satan, who had tried to end His mission on this world by condemning Him to death through the people and crucifying Him, but all to no avail. Satan failed to realise that in crucifixion lay the very key to our redemption by Christ, who became our Paschal Lamb, through whom we are made whole and worthy of God.

Yes, just as the lamb was sacrificed and the blood marked the doorposts of the people of Israel in Egypt, Christ had shed His blood on the cross, and this blood marked all of us as His chosen people, whom He would protect against certain death, and bring into life in Him. For the blood marked the people of Israel apart from their Egyptian masters, so that the angel of the Lord passed over them when they killed the firstborn sons of the Egyptians, animals and humans alike.

Therefore, in Christ, lie our new Christian Passover, for all of us deserved death for our sins and our sinful ways, and through the rebellion of our forefathers, since the days of Adam and Eve, who disobeyed the Lord and ate the fruits of the tree of knowledge. But although we deserved death, God loves us so much that, He could not bear us to face death and separation from Him.

That is why, God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who became man like us, and was born in the flesh through Mary, His mother. He is the Lamb of God, that became the Paschal Lamb, that is the lamb of sacrifice for our sins, but not like any other lamb. Being divine, and yet lowering Himself as a human, He alone is worthy to redeem all mankind from their sins. His Precious Blood that flowed down from the cross washed down evil and sin in those who believed in Him, and who has faith in Him and believe in His Resurrection.

Let us firmly reject Satan and his lies, and reject his temptations on us with worldly goods and desires, just as our Lord rejected his approaches in the desert. Remain true to our mission just as Christ was obedient unto death on the cross. That through our faith we will be rewarded with resurrection into life just as Christ was resurrected. Let us renew our commitment to serve the people of God and make the Holy Spirit that God had given us through baptism and confirmation to bear much fruit in both ourselves and in our fellow men.

Let us strive to become truly the people of God in this blessed Easter season. Let us make full use of this season of Easter, both in our great joy in the resurrection of our Lord, and as well as to share this joy that we have, with others around us, that they too will learn of the great joy of all Christians, that is the Lord crucified had been risen from the dead, and through that resurrection, all of us are saved, and had our life restored to us.

Therefore, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us keep on praying that God will continue to bless us everyday of our lives, and may He guide us as we embark on the new year after this Easter season, that from today onwards till the next year when we celebrate Easter again, we can make this year a truly fruitful and blessed year. Also in the spirit of the Year of the Faith, let us also strive to strengthen our faith in the remaining half a year of the celebration of this Holy Year.

I wish everyone a happy and blessed Easter, and may the Risen Christ our Lord shine His face upon all of you, to share in the glory of His Resurrection. Amen!

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(Holy Thursday) Thursday, 28 March 2013 : Mass of the Lord’s Supper – Cena Domini, Holy Week (Scripture Reflection)

Jesus showed us that to be a leader, one must be ready to be a servant. For a leader is not appointed for the sake of the leader, but rather for the sake of the people over whom the leader is appointed for. Therefore, Christ too, who is the Lord and Master of all things, are also in service to all those things He is Master of, that is all the mankind and all those children of God to whom He come.

No better form of service that our Lord had rendered to all the people, other than the gift of Himself, the Lamb of God, as the lamb of sacrifice in the manner of the lambs of the Passover, since that first Passover in Egypt, when the Lord told Moses to celebrate the Passover to mark the salvation of the people of Israel from the slavery of Egypt.

In Christ, there is a new salvation indeed, not just salvation from physical bonds, but indeed, the most important of all, the breaking of the bonds that had bound us since the time of our forefathers, from the time of Adam and Eve, the first mankind, when they rebelled against the Lord under Satan’s instigation and sinned. Thereafter, sin enslaved mankind, and made them do plenty of immoral things and things evil in the sight of God.

Yet Christ, the Son of God, who came into this world, out of the perfect love that God has for all of us, became the new Adam, who renewed mankind’s bonds with the Lord, by acting as the one and only bridge through which mankind, banished since the time of Adam onto the wild earth, to return back to God who loves them like a father loves his children. Christ broke the bonds of sin, and released mankind from slavery of sin, that is the spiritual slavery of the soul, much worse than any physical slavery.

For as long as we are enslaved by sin and the evil one, we have no hope of life in God, and we are doomed to death eternal with Satan and his fallen angels, to suffer the separation from the love of God for eternity. Christ ensured that this does not happen to us, as long as we are also welcoming of Christ’s love and redemption, that He offered freely to all mankind.

Christ poured out His Blood and His Body for all to eat and drink, through the bread and wine transformed into His Divine Presence in the Eucharist. Just like the unblemished lamb, whose flesh was eaten by the people of Israel, and whose blood marked the doorposts as a sign of salvation to God, that whoever marked by that blood, belongs to Him and deserves no death.

Therefore, similarly, Christ marked us through His Blood, and through His flesh, His Body. For no lamb is greater and more perfect than the Lamb of God Himself, and no blood or sacrifices are ever more worthy of redeeming one’s sins than that of the Blood of the Lamb itself. He gave Himself that we all may have hope of life, in Him! Such is the sacrifice and the service that He, who is Lord and Master, had rendered to all His people whom He loves.

Just like Christ who washes the feet of His disciples, He washes them clean from impurities, therefore the Blood of Christ too washes our sins away. Remember that in the Book of Revelations, John saw the large multitude of saints and martyrs who had washed their robes white in the Blood of the Lamb, that they be made holy and pure through their willingness to die for the sake of their Lord, and in defense of their faith.

Therefore, just like the martyrs and the saints, we too should wash ourselves clean through the Blood of the Lamb, which He freely gave to us. We are already cleaned externally as long as we bathe and ensure that all hygienic steps are taken, but what is much more difficult to clean is that of our interior, our heart, our mind, and our soul.

This is why we should bring the Lord into us, and we can do that by receiving worthily the Precious Body and/or Blood of our Lord. Just as the Church teaches us that either the Body or the Blood is already complete in itself, so it does not mean that if we only receive the Body then we receive the incomplete Lord.

No! This is not the case, and the most important things is to keep sacred the Temple of the Lord that is our being, our body, and our soul, that we make ourselves to be a worthy vessel, a worthy Temple, and a worthy Tabernacle in which our Lord resides. He who resides within us, through the Holy Spirit, and through his cleansing Blood, will purify us from our sins, if we are truly repentant and wish to be rid of such impurities.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, in the commemoration of this year’s Maundy or Holy Thursday, let us renew our commitment to the Lord, in order to receive Him into ourselves, and to partake in His Body and Blood, and welcome Him in our hearts, and humbly accepts His cleansing of our being and our soul, just as how He washed the feet of His disciples.

Let us all strive to be more faithful and be more loving, just as Christ had loved us to the point of death. May He shine over us and bless us with His grace, that we may have a great time in our celebration of the Easter Triduum, and will truly become the children of God, who values service to others, and to embody service in our leadership if we are chosen as leaders, and also to show God’s love through our actions, daily and even to the smallest of things that we do, that we show love in them. Amen.

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Wednesday, 20 March 2013 : 5th Week of Lent (Scripture Reflection)

Sin and the evil that comes with sin and rebellion against God has indeed enslaved us, even when many of us don’t realise that we are being enslaved. That is also because we adopt a rather open attitude at sin, and even embrace sin and evil, to the point that we are indeed almost glad at being slaves of sin and evil. We have been enslaved by sin as our forefathers were, since the days of rebellion of Adam, the first man, and Eve, the first woman.

Sin is evil, and is a state of rebellion against the love and authority of God. That is why God, who loves us so much, being the greatest of His creations, would want to send His own Son in order to save us. For slavery under sin is costly indeed, for anyone who want to liberate those slaves, that is us, from that mountains of sin. Imagine the amount of sin that we accumulate daily, not even counting yearly, or even our whole lives!

Imagine the weight of sin that Christ had to bear on Golgotha, that is Calvary, and on His journey towards there. When we do devotions especially in the form of the Stations of the Cross this Lent, indeed we would have heard and would have been reminded of the physical sufferings and burdens that Christ had to carry, with His heavy cross onto Calvary from Jerusalem. Yet, the heaviest weight, is not that of the visible and physical, but in fact, those that are invisible, and these were the mountains of our sins, all of us, past, present, and future.

Yes, in order to free us from our slavery, as Christ had mentioned in the Gospel today as what He wanted, a perfect and worthy sacrifice and exchange is necessary. No amount of animal blood and sacrifices will ever be worthy or enough to alleviate our sins, no matter how many times they were offered to God, as per the Law of Moses.

It is the very Precious Body and Blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, that is worthy of cleansing us from our sins and ‘purchasing’ us to free us from the slavery of sin. He has to die on the cross for that to happen. And yet so many people wished for His death, not because they want to be freed from their sins, but because they had grown so comfortable in sin, that they did not want sin to end enslaving them, but continue to dominate them in perpetuation.

So blinded were the people that they failed to see the freedom that God had brought them. Remember the rebellion of Israel against Moses and God at Massah and Meribah? When they grumbled that God had led them to the desert to die? That the life under slavery in Egypt were much better and much more suitable to them? That is the same, but now the Lord, through Jesus Christ had come to liberate all mankind, not just Israel, from the slavery of sin, but yet, there were still those who rejected our Lord just like at Massah and Meribah.

God offers His salvation and liberation of all of us from sin for free, for the price of His Body and Blood, which we receive regularly at the Mass, as the result of the Sacrifice offered by the priest, in union with the Sacrifice on Calvary. It is readily offered and available for us, if only our heart and our being are open to this freedom by the Lord.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us pray, that we will remain strong in our faith and in our conviction to remain in the Lord, and be free from sin and the chains of slavery it brings. May we remain in God’s love and remember always His love and sacrifice on the cross for our sake. God bless us all. Amen.