freedom

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Friday, 19 July 2013 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Exodus 11 : 10 – Exodus 12 : 14

Moses and Aaron had worked all these marvels in the presence of Pharaoh, but YHVH had made Pharaoh obstinate and he would not let the people of Israel leave his country.

YHVH spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt and said, “This month is to be the beginning of all months, the first month of your year. Speak to the community of Israel and say to them : On the tenth day of this month let each family take a lamb, a lamb for each house. If the family is too small for a lamb, they must join with a neighbour, the nearest to the house, according to the number of persons and to what each one can eat.”

“You will select a perfect lamb without blemish, a male born during the present year, taken from the sheep or goats. Then you will keep it until the fourteenth day of the month. On that evening all the people will slaughter their lambs and take some of the blood to put on the doorposts and on top of the doorframes of the houses where you eat.”

“That night you will eat the flesh roasted at the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat the meat lightly cooked or boiled in water but roasted entirely over the fire – the head, the legs, and the inner parts. Do not leave any of it until the morning. If any is left till morning, burn it in the fire.”

“And this is how you will eat : with a belt round your waist, sandals on your feet and a staff in your hand. You shall eat hastily for it is a passover in honour of YHVH. On that night I shall go through Egypt and strike every firstborn in Egypt, men and animals; and I will even bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt, I, YHVH!”

“The blood on your houses will be the sign that you are there. I will see the blood and pass over you; and you will escape the mortal plague when I strike Egypt. This is a day you are to remember and celebrate in honour of YHVH. It is to be kept as a festival day for all generations forever.”

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Thursday, 18 July 2013 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, come to Christ our Lord whose yoke is light, and come to the Lord who had liberated us from the yoke of sin and death. He has liberated all of us from our fate that is death through His own death on the cross, and His resurrection give us all new hope of life, in the eternal bliss of heaven.

Yes, following the Lord has its own crosses, that is difficulties, because this world that is filled with evil will certainly oppose us with all of its might, that they will try to destroy us just as they had tried to destroy our Lord Jesus Christ by condemning Him to death, the humiliating death on the cross. Yet, Christ had triumphed, and not even death could hold Him captive, but He gloriously turned hell upside down, releasing the souls of the faithful from the slavery in hell and death.

For Christ is like the new Moses, whom the Lord had sent to liberate all the people, all mankind, all of creation, instead of just the people of Israel. If Moses was sent to liberate the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt under the Pharaohs, Christ was sent to liberate everyone, without exception from our slavery under sin, with Satan as the jailer.

Following Christ will be difficult, and there will be lots of oppositions from those in the world, particularly from the allies of evil. But this is nothing if compared to the suffering and difficulties that we will face for eternity, if we do not follow Christ and choose to follow the devil instead. That is also to represent how light is the yoke of Christ, compared to the yoke of the devil, because while the yoke of Christ leads eventually to eternal happiness, and only a temporary suffering, the yoke of the devil leads to never-ending eternal death and suffering, from the complete separation of man from God.

But yet, many people seem to prefer the heavier yoke of the devil than the lighter yoke of Christ, why? That is because the yoke of the devil looks more attractive in our hearts. It looks better and also feels better than the yoke of Christ. The yoke of the devil looks sweeter, better, and more promising, and the devil had also sweetened it further with all the pleasures and offerings this world can give, whereas in the yoke of Christ, we can only see suffering, although it is a suffering accompanied by the love of God.

That was why the same had happened to the people of Israel, when they followed Moses through the desert towards the Promised Land. They rebelled and rebelled constantly against the leadership of Moses and against God Himself. They saw the desert as the sure place of death, while their life in Egypt, under slavery, they deemed to be better than the nomadic life in the desert. Yes, even in slavery! They were glad to remain in slavery rather than be free, so that they could enjoy their ‘good’ life in Egypt.

That good life in Egypt, my brothers and sisters, is truly equivalent to our current life in the state of sin. Because sinning is actually enjoyable, and the devil put no stops to ensure that we remain in our state of sin and indifference towards the merciful God. We constantly rebel against the will of God and the teachings of His prophets and apostles, as we have always done, just like the people of Israel themselves had done in the desert. They complained of their temporary suffering, as we does now, but they failed to realise that true happiness lies at the end of that suffering. Remember, the yoke of Christ is light, and it leads to salvation, while the yoke of the devil leads only to death and eternal suffering.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, do we resolve now to take up our crosses while following He who was crucified? That is to take up the Cross of Christ? Or do we slacken and let the devil has the better of us and lead us to eternal damnation? If we are to follow Christ, as He Himself had said, we must be ready to take up our crosses and suffer the rejection by evil and the world. But that is nothing, compared to if we are rejected by our Lord Himself, in which, then, there will be no hope left.

Let us resolve to follow the Lord and be ready to face all the consequences of following Him, facing it with faith, courage, and devotion, without ever going out of our way or being led astray. May the Lord who is merciful look kindly upon us, and help us during this journey of the faith, and guiding us through the persecutions and sufferings that will be inflicted upon us.

May the Lord bless us all and protect us, so that all of us will persevere, and fall not into eternal damnation in hell, but achieve eternal life in bliss in heaven, with our Lord who loves us. Amen.

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Thursday, 18 July 2013 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Matthew 11 : 28-30

Come to Me, all you who work hard and who carry heavy burdens, and I will refresh you. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest. For My yoke is good, and My burden is light.

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Thursday, 18 July 2013 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Psalm 104 : 1 and 5, 8-9, 24-25, 26-27

Give thanks to the Lord, call on His Name; make known His works among the nations. Remember His wonderful works, His miracles and His judgments.

He remembers His covenant forever, His promise to a thousand generations, the covenant He made with Abraham, the promise He swore to Isaac.

The Lord made His people fruitful and much stronger than their foes, whose hearts He turned to hate His people, to deal deceitfully with His servants.

Then He sent Moses His servant and Aaron whom He had chosen. They performed His signs among them, His miracles in the land of Ham.

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Thursday, 18 July 2013 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Exodus 3 : 13-20

Moses answered God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them : ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ they will ask me : ‘What is His Name?’ What shall I answer them?”

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO AM (YHVH). This is what you will say to the sons of Israel : ‘I AM sent me to you.” God then said to Moses, “You will say to the Israelites : ‘YHVH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me.’ That will be My Name forever, and by this Name they shall call upon Me for all generations to come.”

“Go! Call together the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘YHVH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob appeared to me and said : I have seen and taken account of how the Egyptians have treated you, and I mean to bring you out of all this oppression in Egypt and take you to the land of the Canaanites, a land flowing with milk and honey.'”

“The elders of Israel will listen to you and, with them, you shall go to the palace of the king of Egypt and say to him : ‘The God of the Hebrews, YHVH, has met with us. Now let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to YHVH our God.’ I well know that the king of the Egyptians will not allow you to go unless he is forced to do so. I will therefore stretch out My hand and strike Egypt in extraordinary ways, after which he will let you go.”

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Wednesday, 17 July 2013 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Brothers and sisters, today we heard the story of Moses, how he was called from his exile in Midian, from his job as a shepherd, to be the liberator of the people of Israel, how God appeared to him through the means of a burning bush that remained untouched by the fire. God called him to be the shepherd of His people, Israel, and to guide them as a leader to lead them to the promised Land that God had given to Abraham and his descendants.

The same happened to us, because Christ had called all of us to follow Him, to follow Him out of the land of our slavery, that is our world of sin and evil. He called us out of the land of sin, just as He had once called His people, the people of Israel, whom He had chosen among the nations, out of the land of Egypt and the slavery under the Pharaohs.

Just as He had brought freedom to the people of Israel from the yoke of the Egyptians, so He had brought liberation to us suffering from the yoke of Satan, that is the yoke of sin. He opened the gates of salvation just as He had opened the sea for the people of Israel to walk through in the past. He led His people to safety in His love and care for all those who belong to Him, because we are His sheep and He is our shepherd.

The Lord revealed the truth through His Son, to all of us, as we had heard them through the teachings passed down directly from the Apostles themselves, who listened to the words of the Lord, when He still walked on this earth. He hid the knowledge from the haughty and the prideful, those who trusted their wisdom better than the true wisdom of the Lord. It does not mean that God hates those who are learned and knowledgeable or wise, but in fact, the Lord wants us to focus on Him and not on ourselves, and that is why He rebuked those who thought highly of themselves and their wisdom, because they did not honour God and give due glory to Him, who is the source of all wisdom, but give glory to themselves.

Those who put their trust in human wisdom and achievements often did not give due glory to God, because without God, mankind is nothing, and they will not have wisdom, if it has not been instilled by the Holy Spirit. Only through Jesus and His disciples that the teachings they took can be passed down to us in revelation.

In our pride and natural sense of arrogance, in our human achievements and brilliance, we like to glorify ourselves upon our successes, and did not give proper thanks to the Lord who had actually made it possible for us to gain those successes. In our world of knowledge today, we tend to think that we have found what we need to know about literally everything, and begin to shun the Lord whom we think as inexistent.

But the Lord is real, brothers and sisters, as real as His death for us, for our sake that we do not have to suffer death, but gain a new life in Him. Our wisdom does help us, brothers and sisters, as our intelligence is given by the Lord, but if we do not use it correctly, our wisdom can become a trap, in that it prevents us from reaching out to the Lord, because in our wisdom, we can succumb to our sense of pride, that we would close ourselves, our hearts from the Lord.

To us, God has given wisdom and knowledge, so that we can use them for the sake of ourselves and the world around us. It is not for us to be proud in ourselves and shut ourselves from God’s love. He came so that we can be saved, from the tyranny of sin, evil, and thus, death. Just as He had lifted up the people of Israel from the slavery in Egypt and brought them to the Promised Land of milk and honey, so He did bring us up from this slavery of sin, into a new life, and eventually the eternal bliss of everlasting life in happiness in heaven.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us reaffirm our faith in our God, the source of our wisdom, our intelligence, and of course, our salvation. It is from the Lord Jesus Christ that we received this new life, filled with hope, and the wisdom that came from the Holy Spirit. It is because of our Lord Jesus Christ that we no longer need to fear death, because He has taken away our sins through His sacrifice in death, that all of us who remain faithful in Him, will be free from the tyranny of sin, forever, just as the people of Israel had been liberated from the yoke of the Pharaoh.

May the Lord be with us, protect us, and empower us, that we will remain strong against the challenges of life, the yoke of suffering that is bearing down with us, and together with Christ, let us carry our crosses, walking towards the Lord our God, who loves us, and who wants us to be reunited with Him.

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Wednesday, 17 July 2013 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Psalm 102 : 1-2, 3-4, 6-7

Bless the Lord, my soul; all my being, bless His Holy Name! Bless the Lord, my soul, and do not forget all His kindness.

He forgives all your sins and heals all your sickness; He redeems your life from destruction and crowns you with love and compassion.

The Lord restores justice and secures the rights of the oppressed. He has made known His ways to Moses and His deeds to the people of Israel.

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Monday, 15 July 2013 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we reflect on the readings, which began from the opening of the Book of Exodus from the Old Testament, which told us the story of the people of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the chosen people, in Egypt, during their time of stay there. The people of Israel had been blessed by the Lord and grew exponentially in wealth and in their number, such that the Egyptians truly might have feared that the Israelites might overwhelm them in their own country.

Thus began the persecution of Israel, led by the Pharaoh, king and ruler of Egypt, who felt the threat created by the people of Israel in his lands. He oppressed them and tried to bring them under control, and therefore begun the slavery of Israel, the years of suffering in Egypt, when the people of Israel laboured under the yoke of the Pharaohs and many died. Yet, the Lord remained with His people, and He continued to bless them, and thence, they multiplied still even more.

But the Lord did not leave His people to suffer, because He cared for them and wished for their safety, and that was why He sent them a liberator, through Moses, the son of Israel lifted from the water of the River Nile by the daughter of the then reigning Pharaoh. Through Moses, the prayers of Israel were heard, and the Lord brought His people out of Egypt on eagle’s wings, with the ten plagues He sent to Egypt to punish them for mistreating the people of Israel and keeping them enslaved in suffering.

The Lord saved Israel from the slavery in Egypt, and He brought them through the Red Sea to the land of flowing milk and honey, the Promised Land of Canaan. The Lord God brought the people through the desert to Canaan, so that they can enjoy the promise that the Lord had made to Abraham, their forefather, that they, as his descendants, will enjoy the fruits of God’s blessings which had been given to Abraham and his descendants for eternity.

But the journey was not easy, and was full of trial and suffering, just as the people of Israel had endured suffering during their time in Egypt. That is because to become the disciples of the Lord is not easy, and is not straightforward. Much sacrifices had to be made, and indeed, as Christ had told His disciples, we have to take up our crosses and follow Him, otherwise we would not be worthy of Him.

That is because there is much evil in the world, ever since the beginning of time, when the evil one came and corrupted mankind and creation, with the evils that did not belong to God. Terrible things such as hatred, jealousy, greed, lust, and many other evils that had marred the perfection of God’s creations and all of His works.

But Christ would not let us suffer alone in this darkness, and that was why He came, to be the Light that rescues all from the grip of darkness. Instead, He bear all our sufferings, caused by our disobedience, so that He would blamed instead of us, punched and received blows instead of us, and died instead of us, a death on the cross.

The cross was, at the time of Jesus, the Romans’ favourite way to deal with criminals, particularly those seen as great threat to the Romans and to the society itself. Death of the cross for Jesus was to be a sure condemnation of His memory and a completely humiliating death for the so called ‘Messiah’, according to the chief priests.

Yet, the Lord prevailed, through His death, and then, most importantly, His Resurrection, the first to be Risen from the dead by His own power. The Risen Lord turned the humiliating cross, a symbol of shame, into a glorious sign of victory and triumph. The cross reminds us always that we have been victorious against the devil, and have also been triumphant in the struggle against sin and evil, because through that cross on Calvary, we had been made whole once again, and be made worthy in the presence of God.

That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, we must be proud to show that we are the people who belongs to God, a people of the Lord, marked by none other than by the sign of the victorious cross. Through even simple gestures like making the sign of the cross before meals would signify our pride and faith in the triumphant cross, the Lord who had brought us up from the mire of sin, and like the Israelites of old, brought with the power of God’s hands out of Egypt, thus we have been brought out of our slavery of sin, into a new, free life in Christ.

Do not be afraid to show that we are Christians, and we also should not attempt to hide it whenever we make the sign of the cross, before meals, before prayers, and in many other occasions. Behold the symbol of our salvation, our pride and faith in God, the cross, to remember our Lord who had died for us, endured suffering that should have befallen us, just so that all of us may live, and not just a life that is temporary, but eternal life in heaven.

Today we also commemorate the memorial of St. Bonaventure, who was a religious and a well-known theologian, preacher, and scholar who lived in the early part of the last millenium, living just after the time of St. Francis of Assisi. He and his works advanced the theology and teachings of the Franciscans, which he was a member of, and his great contribution made the Pope elevated him to the Cardinalate.

St. Bonaventure in his hard works, ensured that the Franciscans would be known for its depth in understanding God’s teachings and also excellent oratory skills. He had laboured hard for Christ and God’s people, and He upheld the cross that was his, and he did not shirk from the duty to carry that cross. Instead he embraced it, and carried his cross alongside Christ.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, inspired by the zeal and devotion of St. Bonaventure and other great saints, holy men and women of God, let us renew our commitment and faith to the Lord, the One who saved us from certain death, death that awaits us sinners and evildoers, but which had been voided by the power of Christ, through the outpouring of His Blood on the cross.

Let us bear our own crosses, and help one another to bear one another’s cross, and walk our way through the path to salvation, to Christ. It will not be an easy journey, as often there will be temptations and oppositions, especially by the world, but if we remain strong, and carry our crosses faithfully, we will reach the end, and we will reach Christ, our Lord who loves us. It is up to us, brothers and sisters in Christ, whether we end up in hell or in heaven. Let us be proactive in living out our faith, that our faith will not die, but blossom with love.

God bless us all, and let us ask St. Bonaventure for his intercession for us sinners. Pray for us St. Bonaventure. Amen.

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Monday, 15 July 2013 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Psalm)

Psalm 123 : 1-3, 4-6, 7-8

Had not the Lord been on our side – let Israel say – had not the Lord been on our side, when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us alive; such was their anger against us.

A bit more and the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, the raging waters would have swept us away. Blessed be the Lord, who did not let us be devoured.

Like a bird our soul escaped from the snare of the fowler; the snare was broken and we were freed. Our help is in the Name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

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Sunday, 7 July 2013 : 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today the Lord challenges all of us, to be His disciples and His followers, and what we are expected to do, when we choose to become His servants, the extensions of His will in this world. For to become the followers of Christ does not mean an easy life to us, or a leisurely work. Indeed, becoming the followers and disciples of Christ, mean that we die to this world, and abandon all the pleasures and the good that is in the world, for the sake of Christ.

There will be those who accept us, and there will likely be even more who will reject us, sometimes may not even be in a friendly manner. That is because not all people attune themselves to the Lord and His message, and many prefer to live in the ignorance provided by the world and all its temptations. To be a servant and disciple of Christ therefore means to struggle against the world and fight in this uphill battle for the sake of the Lord.

However, we must not give up, for certainly the Lord Himself did not give up on all of us. He still keeps up hope on us, and still continue to love all of us. Indeed, He embraced all of us, gave us all the love that He has in Him, that is infinite, and treat us like His own children. Nothing less indeed than giving us His own life, through His death on the cross, that we may have eternal life ourselves, those of us who believe in Him and accept Him as our Lord and Saviour.

God cares for all of us and He will bless us if we stay true to Him and follow Him as His disciples, particularly for those of us who have been called by the Lord to be His servants and serve His people. He will provide for all of us, and even if we face difficulties and opposition, as we surely will, the Lord will always be with us, and we should not need to worry at all.

The problem with our world today is that there are so much things that are good and enticing to men, and there are so much things that tempt us away from the Lord and His call. It is not that we should ignore or shun all of the world’s goodness, but we must know the limit to such goodness, otherwise we would succumb to our natural weakness of desire and greed. If we can understand self-control, we would be able to prevent the world from corrupting our hearts and blocking our path towards the Lord.

Our world has become very materialistic and secular in nature, that many people no longer place God as first in their hearts, and even no longer has the Lord in their hearts. In God’s place came in all the greed that is of the world, for material wealth, possessions, luxury, comfort, and excesses. The crazed search for more money and wealth is just one of the many examples of how our world had changed for the worse.

Especially it is increasingly becoming very difficult for the Church to find new priests today, and new servants of the Lord. Even the numbers of religious brothers and sisters have also dropped significantly, a sign in tandem with the increasing secularism of the world, and the increasing temptation of the world on us mankind.

In the past it is easy for the Church to find new priests and religious members because God still lives strong in many people’s hearts, and many willingly give up everything they have in life for the sake of the Lord, and serve His people through the Church, be it as priests, brothers, nuns, or even as lay worker. However, as I had mentioned and all of you knew, that times had changed. Now, many people are too fixated on their material possessions that they are increasingly unwilling to abandon all of them for the sake of God and His people.

However, internal reasons are not the only reasons, though it does play a very important part in why we have a great decline in the number of people in our seminaries today. The other reasons are external, from our friends, our society, and ultimately, our own families. In many parts of the world, success in life had increasingly been equated with monetary and economic success, and educational achievements, both linked to each other in such a way that, our life becomes more like an investment than a life.

Yes, as you know, in our modern world, raising a child increasingly become more and more expensive as years go by. Every year, inflation brings all living costs higher and higher, and consequently it becomes ever more difficult to raise a child, with soaring expenditures and declining income relative to those expenditures. Education, in particular, became so expensive, that educating a child in our society today becomes something like a chore.

That is why, coupled with the increasingly stronger link between education, its achievements and success in life, made so many parents becoming more and more reluctant to let their children go, when they reveal to them about their intentions in life. You see, God chooses whom He wants to be His servants, and He calls them all, through subtle means. Not many would take up that offer and that call, but many did answer and treasure the calling.

Yet, parental objections often stood in the way of the Lord’s call, because the parents thought of priestly life and a life dedicated to the service of the Lord and His people is a wasted life, a shameful life, and indeed, an investment wasted, because we gradually see our lives less as a life that we truly should see it, but merely more and more as an investment, about money and material possessions.

Friends and society also play a great deal in shaping one’s calling, because peer pressure and objections in the society do prevent one’s calling from being realised, especially when coupled with parental objection. These are in fact, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, some of the crosses that we must bear if we are to follow the Lord. This is exactly because the world does not love Christ, and neither does it welcome Him. The world follows its own ways, and those are not the ways of the Lord.

The purpose of today’s readings however is not to attack or put down parents, just because they rejected or opposed their children’s calling, but rather, to remind all of us that, life is not just about our possessions, or about how much money we have in the bank, or how big is the salary we receive in a month, or even, how many cars and other utilities we have. Life is indeed about Christ, and about loving Christ and our fellow brethren.

We Christians who believe in our Lord Jesus Christ must be brave and courageous, in defending our faith against the assaults of the world and its temptations, and must be ready at all times to take up our crosses, to walk alongside Christ in His suffering. These crosses mean to take an active part in our participation in the Church, according to our own calling, that is for those called and chosen to serve the Lord in divine priesthood, to be brave in embracing one’s calling and rejecting the voices that try to prevent one’s call from being realised; and for those in religious orders, to be faithful in prayer and service; and lastly, but not least, for the laity themselves, that they will take up a more active participation in the Church and groom themselves for better understanding of their faith.

In doing so, brothers and sisters in Christ, we have done God’s will, to be His disciples and preach the Good News to all of the world, including to our fellow brethren and ourselves. Therefore, now, let us pray that the Lord will give us strength and courage to face all the troubles in life, and also give us the understanding of the nature of God’s call and vocations, and bravely defend the faith of the Church in all of our deeds.

May the Lord give us His Holy Spirit, that we will always ever persevere, amidst the difficulties and challenges in this world, in showing God’s love to all, and also to preach the Good News of the Lord to all nations. God bless us all. Amen.