Friday

by

Friday, 8 July 2016 : 14th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Matthew 10 : 16-23

At that time, Jesus spoke to His disciples, “Look, I send you out like sheep among wolves. You must be as clever as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard with people, for they will hand you over to their courts, and they will flog you in their synagogues. You will be brought to trial before rulers and kings because of Me, so you may witness to them and the pagans.”

“But when you are arrested, do not worry about what you are to say, or how you are to say it; when the hour comes, you will be given what you are to say. For it is not you who will speak, but the Spirit of your Father in you. Brother will hand over brother to death, and a father his child; children will turn against parents and have them put to death. Everyone will hate you because of Me, but whoever stands firm to the end will be saved.”

“When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next. I assure you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”

by

Friday, 8 July 2016 : 14th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 50 : 3-4, 8-9, 12-13, 14 and 17

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.

I know You desire truth in the heart, teach me wisdom in my inmost being. Cleanse me with hyssop and I shall be clean, wash me, I shall be whiter than snow.

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.

Give me again the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. O Lord, open my lips, and I will declare Your praise.

by

Friday, 8 July 2016 : 14th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Hosea 14 : 2-10

Return to your God YHVH, o Israel! Your sins have caused your downfall. Return to YHVH with humble words. Say to Him, “Oh You Who show compassion to the fatherless, forgive our debt, be appeased. Instead of bulls and sacrifices, accept the praise from our lips. Assyria will not save us : no longer shall we look for horses nor ever again shall we say ‘Our gods’ to the work of our hands.”

I will heal their wavering and love them with all My heart for My anger has turned from them. I shall be like dew to Israel like the lily will he blossom. Like a cedar he will send down his roots; his young shoots will grow and spread. His splendour will be like an olive tree, his fragrance, like a Lebanon cedar.

They will dwell in My shade again, they will flourish like the grain, they will blossom like a vine, and their fame will be like Lebanon wine. What would Ephraim do with idols, when it is I Who hear and make him prosper? I am like an ever-green cypress tree; all your fruitfulness comes from Me.

Who is wise enough to grasp all this? Who is discerning and will understand? Straight are the ways of YHVH : the just walk in them, but the sinners stumble.

by

Saturday, 2 July 2016 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of our Lady)

Psalm 84 : 9, 11-12, 13-14

Would that I hear God’s proclamation, that He promise peace to His people, His saints – lest they come back to their folly.

Love and faithfulness have met; righteousness and peace have embraced. Faithfulness will reach up from the earth while justice bends down from heaven.

The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its fruit. Justice will go before Him, and peace will follow along His path.

by

Saturday, 2 July 2016 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of our Lady)

Amos 9 : 11-15

On that day I shall restore the fallen hut of David and wall up its breaches and raise its ruined walls and so build it as in days of old. They shall conquer the remnant of Edom and the neighbouring nations upon which My Name has been called.” Thus says YHVH, the One Who will do this.

YHVH says also, “The days are coming when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes overtake the sower. The mountains shall drip sweet wine and all the hills shall melt. I shall bring back the exiles of My people Israel; they will rebuild the desolate cities and dwell in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will have orchards and eat their fruit.”

“I shall plant them in their own country and they shall never again be rooted up from the land which I have given them,” says YHVH your God.

by

Friday, 1 July 2016 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard the story of how Jesus called one of His twelve Apostles from among the tax collectors and sinners, Levi who was then afterwards known as St. Matthew, the Apostle and one of the Four Evangelists. And this calling of St. Matthew was closely linked to what we also heard in the first reading, when in the book of the prophet Amos, God through him denounced all those wicked ones who manipulated the poor and the weak for their own benefits.

It is also related to the behaviours and attitudes of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law during the time of Jesus our Lord. The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law during that time behaved as if they were righteous and just, as great ‘role models’ for all the faithful people of God. They acted as if they were beyond and above all the other people of God, and they thought highly of themselves, thinking that because of all the supposedly good and pious things they have done, they have earned the right to brag about them.

And worse still, it was not just that they have bragged about their faith and being proud of them and the high status which they have received from the people, but they also actively persecuted all those who disagreed with them, or those who openly refused to listen to their demands and orders. They persecuted the people and burdened them with many obligations to the laws and the customs of the Jewish traditions.

And worst of all is the fact that, which our Lord Jesus had mentioned directly to them and to others, is how these people preached and demanded very strict, unbending and even blind obedience to the precepts and the laws of God, and yet they themselves had no God in their hearts and minds. They did not do what they had preached, and their actions were often contrary to what they have said. And as a result, the faith they had was superficial and lacking in real substance.

Thus Jesus rebuked them and warned the people that while they should listen to them, but they should not follow what they were doing or how they observed the laws and precepts that they themselves preached. Thus was the faith of the hypocrites who thought of themselves as better than the others and those whom they deemed as sinners, unworthy of God’s love and grace.

And Jesus broke all of those misconceptions, as He ventured forth to the sinners and to all those whom the society had deemed to be beyond salvation. He called Levi, the tax collector who would then become a great Apostle and a great Evangelist. If we read through the entirety of the Gospel of St. Matthew, surely we will be amazed at the kind and the extent of transformation that had occurred, from a lowly and considered sinner as tax collector, to a great and eloquent writer of the Gospels of the Lord.

But before we then go and claim that all sinners are welcome and can have an easy happy ending in the Lord, we too have to take note that, when Jesus called Levi the tax collector, he had the choice to ignore Him or to listen to His call and follow Him. Certainly he had a choice, and by the conventional wisdom of the world, even at that time, the most logical choice would be to ignore Him and to continue with his life.

But instead, he chose to abandon everything behind, leaving behind all of his wealth and status as the tax collector, whatever advantages and disadvantages these brought to him, and followed Jesus from then on. This therefore is the same thing we must expect from ourselves, and from all sinners who are willing to return to the Lord. God’s mercy is for all, and He loves us all without end, but sincere and genuine repentance is a must.

May the Lord bless us all and help us on our journey. Let us all devote ourselves anew and commit ourselves fully to God and His ways. Let us all not doubt any longer but give ourselves fully to the Lord and do our best to fulfil what the Lord asked of us, not through blind obedience as what the Pharisees and the teachers of the Lord had done, but instead through sincere and true faith. May God be with us all. Amen.

by

Friday, 1 July 2016 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Matthew 9 : 9-13

At that time, as Jesus moved on from the place 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.”

by

Friday, 1 July 2016 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 118 : 2, 10, 20, 30, 40, 131

Blessed are they who treasure His word and seek Him with all their heart.

I seek You with my whole heart; let me not stray from Your commands.

My soul is consumed with desire for Your ordinances at all times.

I have chosen the way of truth; I have set my heart upon Your laws.

Oh, how I long for Your precepts! Renew my life in Your righteousness.

I gasp in ardent yearning for Your commandments that I love.

by

Friday, 1 July 2016 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Amos 8 : 4-6, 9-12

Hear this, you who trample on the needy to do away with the weak of the land. You who say, “When will the new moon or the sabbath feast be over that we may open the store and sell our grain? Let us lower the measure and raise the price; let us cheat and tamper with the scales, and even sell the refuse with the whole grain. We will buy up the poor for money and the needy for a pair of sandals.”

YHVH says, “On that day I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your festivals into mourning and all your singing into wailing. Everyone will mourn, covered with sackcloth and every head will be shaved. I will make them mourn as for an only son and bring their day to a bitter end.”

YHVH says, “Days are coming when I will send famine upon the land, not hunger for bread or thirst for water, but for hearing the word of YHVH. Men will stagger from sea to sea, wander to and fro, from north to east, searching for the word of YHVH, but they will not find it.”

by

Friday, 24 June 2016 : Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate the great feast and solemnity in honour of the great saint and Herald of our Saviour, St. John the Baptist, whom God had sent to walk before Him, in order to prepare the way for His own coming into the world in Jesus Christ. On this day we commemorate the birth of St. John the Baptist, faithful and devoted servant of God Most High, through whom God willed to reveal Himself to the world.

St. John the Baptist was told to be the return of the prophet Elijah to the world, as Elijah was taken up by God with the flaming chariots of God Himself, and just as the prophet Elijah was sent to the people of Israel to call them to repent from their sins and to turn their backs against the wickedness that they and their ancestors have committed, thus, St. John the Baptist also came into the world, called and chosen by God since within his mother’s womb, to be the one to call God’s people to repentance and forgiveness in God.

And God was with him as he grew up and became strong in faith. He wandered in the desert, preparing himself for the ministry to which he was called into, that is the ministry to proclaim the One and only Messiah and Saviour of the world, God Himself Who became Man for the sake of our salvation. He preached to the people, many of whom had been living in ignorance of God and His ways, calling them to repent their sinful ways and return to God in penitence.

Many came to follow him and listened to him. They gave themselves to be baptised by St. John through the baptism of water, that they might prepare themselves for the eventual coming of the Lord and Saviour. He also rebuked the Pharisees, the elders and the teachers of the Law for their hypocrisy in faith and pride, calling them brood of vipers, those who have neglected their duties in guiding the people of God for their own benefits.

But when the people thought that he was the Messiah and Saviour of God, he humbly rejected that opinion, and he told his disciples openly that he was not the Messiah. He told all of them that when the Lord and Messiah came, which would be soon at that time, he who was the greatest of the prophets of God and most honoured of all, would not even be worthy to untie the straps of the sandals of the Lord Who was coming into the world.

In all these examples, we can see the example of a great servant of God, who was devoted and totally committed to the mission he was called to by God, and yet was filled with humility and love for his Lord and Master. When mankind by their nature would give in to pride and to their human desires, and the tendency for them to follow their heart’s wishes, St. John the Baptist showed us all how to be a committed and good follower of our God.

What does this mean, brothers and sisters in Christ? It means that we as Christians must be true disciples of our Lord, in all of our words, deeds and actions. We cannot be calling ourselves as Christians and yet our actions prove to be otherwise. If that is so, then we are causing a great scandal both to our faith and to our Lord Himself.

Let us all today as we reflect on this occasion of the Solemnity of the birth of St. John the Baptist, the Herald of our Lord and Saviour, the one who made it known to all the world that God was coming to save the whole race of mankind, that we may give ourselves to the Lord in the same manner as St. John the Baptist himself had devoted himself to God.

May God help us in our endeavours and in our perseverance and commitment to live by His grace, that we may be inspired to follow and walk in the footsteps of St. John the Baptist, fully committing ourselves to God and remaining humble and loving in His presence. May we all as Christians be light for the world, and reveal the truth about Christ to the darkened world just as St. John the Baptist had once done. May God bless us all, now and forever. Amen.