Friday

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Friday, 19 June 2015 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Philip Minh, Priest and Companions, Martyrs (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Matthew 6 : 19-23

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “Do not store up treasures for yourself here on earth, where moth and rust destroy it, and where thieves can steal it. Store up treasures for yourself with God, where no moth or rust can destroy it, nor thief come and steal it.”

“For where your treasures is, there also your heart will be. The lamp of the body is the eye; if your eyes are sound, your whole body will be in the light. If your eyes are diseased, your whole body will be in darkness. Then, if your light has become darkness, how dark will be the darkest part of you!”

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Friday, 19 June 2015 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Philip Minh, Priest and Companions, Martyrs (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Psalm 33 : 2-3, 4-5, 6-7

I will bless the Lord all my days; His praise will be ever on my lips. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the lowly hear and rejoice.

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

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

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Friday, 19 June 2015 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Philip Minh, Priest and Companions, Martyrs (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

2 Corinthians 11 : 18, 21b-30

As some people boast of human advantages, I will do the same. But if others are so bold, I shall also dare, although I may speak like a fool. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? (I begin to talk like a madman) I am better than they.

Better than they with my numerous labours. Better than they with the time spent in prison. The beatings I received are beyond comparison. How many times have I found myself in danger of death! Five times the Jews sentenced me to thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with a rod, once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked, and once I spent a night and a day adrift on the high seas.

I have been continually in hazards of travelling because of rivers, because of bandits, because of my fellow Jews, or because of the pagans; in danger in the city, in the open country, at sea; in danger from false brothers. I have worked and often laboured without sleep, I have been hungry and thirsty and starving, cold and without shelter.

Besides these and other things, there was my daily concern for all the churches. Who is weak that I do not feel weak as well? Whoever stumbles, am I not on hot bricks? If it is necessary to boast, let me proclaim the occasions on which I was found weak.

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Friday, 12 June 2015 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, World Day of Prayer for the Sanctity of Priestly Life (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate one of the great feast days of the Church, where we commemorate one of the great aspects of our Lord, namely that of His most loving Heart, which He has for all of us. The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus our Lord is filled with perfect love, just as God Himself is Love, and this love is the perfect and unconditional love which our Lord had for us, so much so that He was willing to lay down His life for us sinners and bring us by that to our salvation.

On this day, we celebrate the love of God which had been made evident through Christ. The crucifixion and its aftermath as we heard in today’s Gospel reading is the culmination in God’s everlasting love and good works for us. But since the beginning of time we have seen how great is the love that God has for us His people. It all began with our creation, when God created us and gave life to all of us.

Indeed, for God to show such great love for us, in creating us and giving life to us is already a love great enough, and yet, when we fell into sin, He continued to show even more love and compassion for us, by giving us chance and mercy after He had punished our ancestors for their sins. When Cain murdered his brother Abel, God punished him by having him pursued all his life for having committed such a sin, but He also gave him help by preventing others from killing him.

When mankind have sinned greatly against Him, He did not destroy them outright, but He tried to find the good in mankind. That was how He rescued Noah in the Ark that He commanded Noah to build, so that what is good in mankind, could be preserved. And when mankind sinned in their pride by building up the Tower of Babel, He scattered them and confused their languages, and yet, He also planted the seed of reunion and salvation through His chosen one, Abraham, whom He called out of the nations to be His own.

He did this so that He may one day bring all of His peoples back to Himself and reunite them once again as one people. He blessed Abraham and his descendants, and brought them to great blessings. When they suffered in Egypt in slavery, He heard them and showed forth in might His power to liberate them and brought them to the Land which He had promised to their ancestors.

And when they disobeyed and walked away from His covenant and His love, He punished them hard, and made them to wander in the desert for forty years, causing almost an entire generation of sinners to pass on, before their descendants were finally found worthy to enter into the Promised Land. But God also showed them mercy and love by feeding them with the bread from heaven and the food of angels, with water that is sweet and crystal-clear from the earth itself, even in the middle of the desert.

And despite their continuous and constant disobedience, God remains ever obedient and loving. He shows His mercy from time to time, by rescuing His people through the means of His prophets and messengers, whom He had sent into the world in order to reveal to them the path to salvation in God. This He had done again and again, until the point of time when He truly revealed the fullness of His Heart’s intentions through Christ.

For the Heart of God is filled with so much love and compassion for us that He was willing to come Himself and give us the ultimate hope for rescue and redemption. Through Christ He had established the unshakeable and permanent bridge between Him and ourselves. So that all who believe in Him and in His Most Sacred Heart filled with love for us, may be saved and be brought into our everlasting life and happiness.

The devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is a clear reminder for us all, of the love which God had shown us, the ultimate and perfectly selfless love through His suffering and death on the cross. And indeed, we pray to Him and trust in His Most Sacred Heart, that God in His unfailing love will not cease to love us and forgive us our sins when we repent and change our ways.

There is still time, brothers and sisters in Christ, for us all to accept the love of God and be forgiven. If only that we all realise how much God has loved us and how He is willing to cast aside our sins and allow us to begin anew again. The problem is that many of us do not realise this fact. We are either too proud to admit our sins and faults, or we are too fearful to approach the Lord.

We must not be either of this. We have to realise how loving God is, and therefore not to be afraid to seek His forgiveness, as He will not punish us without good reason. Our punishment comes because we have not turned from our ways and continued to repeatedly sin against Him, just as what the people of Israel had done in the past, by repeatedly refusing to repent, and by continuing to disobey His Laws and commandments.

At the same time, we must also realise that we cannot also be too proud to admit our sins. Many of us are not willing to admit that we have committed sin or made mistakes because we think that we are always in the right. Let us all make the effort to throw away our hubris and pride, and to open our hearts with humility, to approach the throne of our Lord’s merciful love.

Today on this Solemnity of our Lord’s Most Sacred Heart, let us all remember the love which His Heart had poured down unto us throughout the ages, both to us and to our ancestors. Let us all find the courage to approach His loving and sacred Heart, to entreat and move Him to show mercy to us when we have gone astray and sinned before Him and men alike.

Let us all also grow stronger in our trust to the Lord, as all who put their trust in Him shall never be disappointed. Remember that the Lord said to His disciples and to the people, “Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest? This is exactly what will be ours if we keep our faith and devotion to His Most Sacred Heart alive and strong.

If we adhere strongly to the Most Sacred Heart of our Lord, then His love will be with us, and all of us will be strengthened and encouraged by knowing that He is always there with us and for us. No matter what evil or challenges we are going to encounter, we will always keep true to Him, and if we do our part faithfully, in the end, God and His love will bless us and give us the eternal inheritance He had promised us.

Let us never cease to entreat and look upon the Sacred Heart of Jesus, knowing that our Lord who have saved us with His life, had generously offered us His salvation, shown by the outpouring of the blood mingled with water when His Heart was pierced with a lance after His death. This is a symbol of God’s love, that by His death, He purifies us with His living water and His Blood, and that as God and Man united in Jesus, He made us all worthy, and as the Paschal Lamb of sacrifice, His offering to redeem us has been accepted.

May our Lord continue to love us as He has always loved us so far, and may He forgive us our trespasses day by day, as we commit ourselves ever more strongly to Him and to His ways. May Almighty God in His Most Sacred Heart always find the good in us so that we may be found worthy and receive the fullness of His grace. O Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us! Amen.

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Friday, 12 June 2015 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, World Day of Prayer for the Sanctity of Priestly Life (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 19 : 31-37

At that time, as it was Preparation Day, the Jews did not want the bodies to remain on the cross during the Sabbath, for this Sabbath was a very solemn day. They asked Pilate to have the legs of the condemned men broken, so that the bodies might be taken away.

The soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man and of the other man, who had been crucified with Jesus. When they came to Jesus, they saw that He was already dead, so they did not break His legs. One of the soldiers, however, pierced His side with a lance, and immediately there came out blood and water.

The one who saw it, has testified to it, and his testimony is true; he knows he speaks the truth, so that you also might believe. All this happened to fulfill the words of Scripture : Not one of His bones shall be broken. Another text says : They shall look on Him whom they have pierced.

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Friday, 12 June 2015 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, World Day of Prayer for the Sanctity of Priestly Life (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Ephesians 3 : 8-12, 14-19

This grace was given to me, the least among all the holy ones : to announce to the pagan nations the immeasurable riches of Christ and to make clear to all how the mystery, hidden from the beginning in God, the Creator of all things, is to be fulfilled.

Even the heavenly forces and powers will now discover through the Church the wisdom of God in its manifold expression, as the plan is being fulfilled which God designed from the beginning in Christ Jesus, our Lord. In Him we receive boldness and confidence to approach God.

And now I kneel in the presence of the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth has received its name. May He strengthen in you the inner self through His Spirit, according to the riches of His glory; may Christ dwell in your hearts through faith; may you be rooted and founded in love.

All of this so that you may understand with all the holy ones the width, the length, the height and the depth – in a word, that you may know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled and reach the fullness of God.

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Friday, 12 June 2015 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, World Day of Prayer for the Sanctity of Priestly Life (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Isaiah 12 : 2-3, 4bcd, 5-6

He is the God of my salvation; in Him I trust and am not afraid, YHVH is my strength : Him I will praise, the One who saved me. You will draw water with joy from the very fountain of salvation.

Praise to the Lord, break into songs of joy for Him, proclaim His marvellous deeds among the nations and exalt His Name.

Sing to the Lord : wonders He has done, let these be known all over the earth. Sing for joy, o people of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

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Friday, 12 June 2015 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, World Day of Prayer for the Sanctity of Priestly Life (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Hosea 11 : 1, 3-4, 8c-9

YHVH said, “I loved Israel when he was a child; out of Egypt I called My Son. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; yet little did they realise that it was I who cared for them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with leading strings of love, and I became for them as One who eases the yoke upon their neck and stoops down to feed them.”

“My heart is troubled within Me and I am moved with compassion. I will not give vent to My great anger; I will not return to destroy Ephraim for I am God and not human. I am the Holy One in your midst and I do not want to come to you in anger.”

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Friday, 5 June 2015 : 9th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Boniface, Bishop and Martyr (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard about the healing of Tobit, who had long suffered from blindness. The Lord had mercy on him and blessed him through His agent, the Archangel Raphael. He sent Raphael to bring about healing to both Sara who was afflicted by the demon Asmodeus who killed her seven husbands, and to Tobit, to open his eyes so that he might see again.

Just as in the story of Job, the suffering but faithful servant of God, this shows that God is ever faithful and ever loving, and He always cares for us and loves us all tenderly. He will never leave behind all those who are faithful to Him. His gift and grace will be ours if we are able to faithfully cling to Him and devote ourselves to His ways. And He showed this by the promise which He had made to His people and which He fulfilled through Jesus, His Son, whom He sent into the world.

The Gospel reading which we heard today does not mean that Jesus repudiated or rejected the fact that He is the Heir of David and the One whom God had revealed to the world as the promised Messiah. It rather shows that because the people associate the Messiah with merely human terms of power and kingship, that He would rule in the kingdom of His ancestor David, and nothing more.

They thought that He would renew the kingdom of Israel, again in earthly and worldly terms, but the Lord Jesus our Messiah is much more than that, for just as He is Man, the Son of David, Heir to the kingdom which His ancestor had established and made firm, thus He is also the Son of God, the One who was to come into the world in order to save it.

Thus, Jesus would make it clear to the people, that His nature is both Man and Divine. This is what we believe in our faith as well. We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Word of God made Flesh, had incarnated Himself as one of us while at the same time retaining His full divinity. This is important to be taken note of, especially considering what our Lord Jesus has done for our sake.

For what Christ had done is by suffering in our place, the suffering which all of us should have suffered from, that is the just punishment for our sins. We should have suffered death for our rebellion and disobedience against God, but through Christ who died for us, we will indeed die as a mortal being, but while once death had been the gateway to eternal darkness and suffering, now death is the new beginning of a new life in God, and it is not something that we should fear any longer.

This is because Jesus our Lord, Son of Man and Son of God, had shown us that He has the key to break free from the hold of death, that by His resurrection after His death, He showed us all how there is life to come after death for the faithful. Thus, all of us who keep our faith in God have nothing to fear, since if we continue to be faithful, God will remember our faith in Him and bless us richly.

If Christ is only Man, then His sacrifice would be in vain since no amount of mortal blood and sacrifice is going to be enough to redeem the fullness of mankind’s sins and faults. It is because of the great Divinity who chose to lay down His life that the whole human race may be healed and forgiven from their sins, since He assumed the very flesh of our beings, that by His death and resurrection, we too may follow in His ways.

Today we also celebrate the feast of St. Boniface, who was a bishop in what is now Germany, renowned for his many works in advancing the faith, preaching it and teaching it to many people. He was also renowned for his enforcement for the true practices of the faith against the evils of the world that had encroached even against the Church and the faithful at the time.

He was involved in many preaching and evangelisation missions, which brought him to many lands still inhabitant by pagan peoples and nations. He preached to all these people and hearkened them to listen to the word of God, repent and change their ways. And even when the people refused to turn their hearts to God, he kept trying and continued to persuade the people by his teachings, until one day when he was ambushed by armed robbers who struck at him and his followers.

Until the end of his life, he remained truly faithful to God, forgiving his assailants and telling his followers not to engage in violence to fight against violence. His example, together with the example of many other saints and holy people of God, highlighted the glory and rewards which God will give all those who have devoted themselves to Him. They are now in the glory of heaven because of their fatihful devotion to the Lord who have loved them first.

Let us all therefore devote ourselves completely to the Lord our God, throwing aside all distractions and distortions of the evil one, inspired by the examples of the holy saints, particularly that of St. Boniface whose examples and memory we celebrate on this day. May God be with us always, and may He bless us and heal us from all of our afflictions. Amen.

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Friday, 5 June 2015 : 9th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Boniface, Bishop and Martyr (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Mark 12 : 35-37

At that time, as Jesus was teaching in the Temple, He said, “The teachers of the Law say that the Messiah is the Son of David. How can that be? For David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, declared : The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, until I put Your enemies under Your feet!'”

“If David himself calls Him Lord, in what way can He be His Son?” Many people came to Jesus, and listened to Him gladly.