Friday

by

Friday, 10 January 2014 : Friday after the Epiphany (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we see the power and authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour of the world. Jesus needs no fame or human praise, because in Him lies all the glory and all praise, as the Lord of all. He sought not popularity or human praise, by doing His miracles, but He did them because of His love for us all, for all mankind.

Yes, brethren, in the past few days we have heard from the Scriptures how Jesus fed the multitudes of more than five thousand men not counting women and children, and how Jesus healed the sick, the lepers and those with illness, restoring them to full health and show the love that God has for them all. He did these to show mankind that He cared for them, and wanting them to be perfectly cured of their maladies, most important of which, is the malady of the soul.

Yes, sin, the malady of the soul. Sin tainted mankind with impurity and unworthiness, which separated us from God. Sin made us unable to comprehend God’s love for us. And it is sin that our Lord came down to us, in order to correct and address this problem, this darkness that prevented us from seeing and living in the Light of God.

The Lord had no need of advertisement to promote Himself, for the Holy Spirit testified for Him, and the people could see that He is One with authority and power. It is clear enough that no one is like Him, and He is not a mere man or a mere prophet of God, for He is the Son of God Most High endowed with power, and with the authority over all diseases and illnesses, as well as over all the forces of this world.

Yet many people continued to refuse to believe in Him or doubt in His presence. They put their trust more in human and worldly powers rather than in the Lord. The devil is hard at work everyday to convince the people that his way is better and more appealing than that of the Lord, Jesus Christ.

And yet, the path of the evil one is death and destruction, while the path of the Lord is life and true joy. Only in the Lord can we find the source of life, just as St. John the Evangelist told us in his letter. True life and hope for life is not in us if we do not believe in God and His Son, or put our trust in Him, the Lord of life. Jesus made it plainly enough throughout His teachings.

Jesus repeated the words eternal life very often in His ministry, and a lot of His teachings revolved on, and focused on the fact that whoever believes in Him and has Him in themselves, shall not suffer death or the consequences of death, but will gain the eternal reward of life with God. He did not make this promise lightly, for He truly imparted to all of us, as He had promised, with His own Body and Blood, sacrificed for our sake and offered freely to us.

Yes, those of us who receive the Lord in the Most Holy Eucharist and believe in Him wholeheartedly, is assured of life in God. Brethren in Christ, it is important that while we live in this world, that we do not get too engrossed with the world and forget what the Lord had asked of us. Yes, because believing in God is not merely just making promises or empty proclamation of the faith. If we believe in God, we must show it concretely through our actions, words and deeds.

Therefore brethren, let us now truly profess our faith in the Lord, that we show Him true faith and dedication, not just in words but also in action. Let the Lord see that we are truly His faithful and loving children, and that we reject the lies of the evil one. May the Lord therefore, then bless us with the abundance of blessings and graces, that in Him, we may find the joy of eternal life in true happiness. God bless us all. Amen.

by

Friday, 10 January 2014 : Friday after the Epiphany (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Luke 5 : 12-16

One day, in another town, a man came to Jesus covered with leprosy. On seeing Jesus, the man bowed down to the ground, and said, “Lord, if You want to, You can make me clean.”

Stretching out His hand, Jesus touched the man and said, “Yes, I want to. Be clean.” In an instant the leprosy left him. Then Jesus instructed him, “Tell this to no one. But go and show yourself to the priest. Make an offering for your healing, as Moses prescribed; that will serve as evidence for them.”

But the news about Jesus spread all the more, and large crowds came to Him, to listen and to be healed of their sickness. As for Jesus, He would often withdraw to solitary places and pray.

by

Friday, 10 January 2014 : Friday after the Epiphany (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 147 : 12-13, 14-15, 19-20

Exalt the Lord, o Jerusalem; praise your God, o Zion! For He strengthens the bars of your gates and blesses your children within you.

He grants peace on your borders and feeds you with the finest grain. He sends His command to the earth and swiftly runs His word.

It is He who tells Jacob His words, His laws and decrees to Israel. This He has not done for other nations, so His laws remain unknown to them. Alleluia!

by

Friday, 10 January 2014 : Friday after the Epiphany (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 John 5 : 5-13

Who has overcome the world? The one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus Christ was acknowledged through water, but also through blood. And the Spirit, too, witnesses to Him for the Spirit is truth. There are then three testimonies : the Spirit, the water and the blood, and these three witnesses agree.

If we accept human testimony, with greater reason must we accept that of God, given in favour of His Son. If you believe in the Son of God, you have God’s testimony in you. But those who do not believe make God a liar, since they do not believe His words when He witnesses to His Son.

What has God said? That He has granted us eternal life and this life is in His Son. The one who has the Son has life, the one who do not have the Son of God do not have life.

I write to you, then, all these things that you may know that you have eternal life, all you who believe in the Name of the Son of God.

by

Friday, 3 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time, Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Jesus (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Today we glory in Jesus Christ, and we praise Him with the greatest exaltation we can give. Indeed, we ought to do that every single day of our lives without ceasing, with every single breath that we take. For it is through Christ that we have life, and it is also through Christ that we have hope for a new and everlasting life in joy and happiness.

Why is Jesus so special? And why is He so important to all of us? That is because as we all know, He is God Himself, and yet He is not a distant and unloving God who lords Himself over us as gods typically do, in our understanding of the term divine. Instead, Jesus is the Word, who is God and who is with God since the very beginning of all, begotten of the Father not created, and who emptied Himself of His glorious divinity, so that He might be born into this world, as one of us, a lowly human.

His coming had been prophesied by the prophets and the messengers of God for many millennia, and His coming had been expected and awaited by the people of God. God was known as the God named I am who I am, or YHVH in short. His Name is holy, and as one of the Ten Commandments stated, that the people of God must treat this Holy Name with the greatest respect.

We who are the most beloved ones of the Lord’s entire creation, had sinned against Him and rebelled against His will and commands, preferring to trust in Satan rather than in the power of the One and only True God. Yet, God is Love, and in us, He saw that there were good in us, just as all of creation was once perfect in goodness.

Everything was good then, until rebellion, pride and jealousy entered into the heart of Satan, who rebelled against Him and boasted that he would sit at the throne of God, only to be cast down, away from heaven. From there, Satan tricked and lied to our ancestors, that they were deceived and sin entered into the hearts of mankind. Ever since then we had been made dirty by the presence of sin in us, and yet in each one of us good is still present.

That is why God decided to come down upon this world in order to save us all from our fate that is death. He came to us, through the intermediary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, His mother, who bore Him as He remained in her womb for nine months after He, by the power of His own Spirit, entered into the world of mankind

And just like all of us, He has a Name, and a Name was given Him, that is Jesus, which in the original Aramaic is Yehosuah in approximation, containing the Name of YHVH, that is the Lord. Yes, that is in conjunction with the other name that Jesus is known, that is Emmanuel, or God-is-with-us. Yes, the very Name of Jesus is Holy and great, for it is the Name of God Himself, and not just any gods, but the One and only True God who dwells with us, by being born into the world, in order to be our Saviour.

He came into this world and began His ministry, of healing, of teaching, of feeding the people of God. He gave a great revelation on the nature of God and His love. Indeed, as we all know, that God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, so that all who believe in Him will not perish in death, but gain eternal life, which was promised to us by the Lord Himself.

Jesus came into this world with power and authority, and not just any kind of authority or power, but the true authority, out of whom all authorities came about. There can be no power or authority that does not have its source in Jesus. Even the devil, Satan, who had reigned mercilessly upon us as our jailor in the slavery by sin, and who had exercised power and control over us, was powerless and is powerless, and will ever be powerless before Jesus.

The evil spirits feared Him, and said His Holy Name aloud to the people to hear, that is Jesus, the Holy One of God, the Christ Himself. They trembled with fear upon hearing His Name, knowing the fate that they will suffer at the hand of God’s justice. They were once beautiful angels in heaven, but they followed the devil, once Lucifer, the brightest and greatest angel into his rebellion as I mentioned earlier. Ever since then, they were doomed, and destined to suffer for eternity by God’s justice.

The Lord’s authority is over everything, every single matter that exists in our universe and beyond. He is the Lord of all things visible and invisible. That is why even at the utterance of His Name, every knee and every beings shall bow down, genuflect, even flat to the floor! Yes, every beings, everything created by God, be it angels, mankind, animals, plants, or even the demons, the evil spirits, and Satan the great enemy of all himself.

Yet, brethren, sadly, many of us these days seem to take lightly upon this Most holy Name of all names. They made fun of His Name and disrespected His glorious Name. They did not respect the Name of the Lord, through whose sacrifice on the cross, we have been made whole once again, and gained the hop e of life eternal in Him. We instead prefer to deal with the devil, just as our ancestors had done, and glorify him instead of glorifying the Lord in Jesus.

This must not be the way we live our lives, brethren in Christ! We have to seek a total and complete change of our wayward ways, and seek to rectify the impropriety we had done upon the Lord. Keep the Lord’s Name sacred and glorified, just as He had commanded us in the Ten Commandments He gave to Moses. We cannot mock or disdain the Holy Name of Jesus.

Remember, brethren, the power of the Holy Name is powerful. If we are faced with a great power of evil, and we recite this great Name with faith, that is with true faith, and if we are upright in our lives, then no power, no matter how great or how evil it may be, can assail us. God Himself will come to protect us, and those who are against us will flee in fear, because they know that God is with us, Emmanuel! Jesus indeed! The One whose Name is exalted above every other names!

Yes, let us all give glory to our Lord Jesus, and glorify His Name from now on if we have not done so. Come Lord Jesus, be with Your people, and with Your children, and deliver us from the evil one, with the might of Your hands and with the glory of Your Name!

by

Friday, 3 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time, Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Jesus (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 1 : 29-34

The next day John saw Jesus coming towards him, and said, “There is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! It is He of whom I said : A Man comes after me, who is already ahead of Me, for He was before me. I myself did not know Him, but I came baptising to prepare for Him, so that He might be revealed in Israel.”

And John also gave this testimony, “I saw the Spirit coming down on Him like a dove from heaven, and resting on Him. I myself did not know Him, but God, who sent me to baptise, told me, ‘You will see the Spirit coming down, and resting, on the One who baptises with the Holy Spirit.'”

“Yes, I have seen! And I declare that this is the Chosen One of God!”

 

Alternative Reading (Mass of the Most Holy Name of Jesus)

 

Luke 2 : 21-24

On the eighth day the circumcision of the Baby had to be performed; He was named Jesus, the Name the angel had given Him before He was conceived. When the day came for the purification according to the law of Moses, they brought the Baby up to Jerusalem, to present Him to the Lord.

As it is written in the law of the Lord : “Every firstborn male shall be consecrated to God.” And they offered a sacrifice, as ordered in the law of the Lord : a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.

by

Friday, 3 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time, Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Jesus (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 97 : 1, 3cd-4, 5-6

Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done wonders; His right hand, His holy arm, has won victory for Him.

The farthest ends of the earth all have seen God’s saving power. All you lands, make a joyful noise to the Lord, break into song and sing praise.

With melody of the lyre and with music of the harp. With trumpet blast and sound of the horn, rejoice before the King, the Lord!

 

Alternative Reading (Mass of the Most Holy Name of Jesus)

 

Psalm 8 : 4-5, 6-7, 8-9

When I observe the heavens, the work of Your hands, the moon and the stars You set in their place – what is man that You be mindful of him, the son of man, that You should care for him?

Yet You made him a little lower than the angels; You crowned him with glory and honour and gave him the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet.

Sheep and oxen without number and even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and all that swim the paths of the ocean.

by

Friday, 3 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time, Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Jesus (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 John 2 : 29 – 1 John 3 : 6

You know that He is the Just One : know then that anyone living justly is born of God. See what singular love the Father has for us : we are called children of God, and we really are. This is why the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

Beloved, we are God’s children and what we shall be has not yet been shown. Yet when He appears in His glory, we know that we shall be like Him, for then we shall see Him as He is. All who have such a hope try to be pure as He is pure.

Anyone who commits a sin acts as an enemy of the law of God; any sin acts wickedly, because all sin is wickedness. You know that He came to take away our sins, and that there is no sin in Him. Whoever remains in Him has no sin, whoever sins has not seen or known Him.

 

Alternative Reading (Mass of the Most Holy Name of Jesus)

 

Philippians 2 : 1-11

If I may advise you in the Name of Christ and if you can hear it as the voice of love; if we share the same Spirit and are capable of mercy and compassion, then I beg of you make me very happy : have one love, one spirit, one feeling, do nothing through rivalry or vain conceit.

On the contrary let each of you gently consider the others as more important than yourselves. Do not seek your own interest, but rather that of others. Your attitude should be the same as Jesus Christ had :

Though He was in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking on the nature of a servant, made in human likeness, and in His appearance found as a Man.

He humbled Himself by being obedient to death, death on the cross. That is why God exalted Him and gave Him the Name which outshines all names, so that at the Name of Jesus all knees should bend in heaven, on earth and among the dead, and all tongues proclaim that Christ Jesus is the Lord to the glory of God the Father.

by

Friday, 27 December 2013 : Feast of St. John the Evangelist, Apostle (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Brothers and sisters in Christ, if yesterday we celebrate the feast of St. Stephen the protomartyr, the first of the martyrs of the faith, then today we celebrate the feast of one of the four writers of the Holy Gospels, that is St. John the Evangelist, the youngest of the disciples of the Lord and the only one who did not die of martyrdom.

St. John the Evangelist was the brother of St. James the Lesser, another of the Twelve Apostles. They were the sons of Zebedee, and they were once fishermen at the Lake of Galilee. They were called from their former lives and profession by Christ, to be His followers, and were selected to be among the Twelve He had made to be His Apostles.

St. John the Evangelist was one of the closest disciples to Jesus besides that of St. Peter and his own brother, St. James. They were the three who went up the mountain with Jesus and witnessed His glorious Transfiguration. St. John the Evangelist was also the one whom the Lord entrusted His own mother, Mary, to his care. He was the first to believe in the resurrection after Mary Magdalene had reported to the disciples that the tomb of the Lord was open and the Body was missing. That was the Gospel we had heard today just now.

St. John the Evangelist was the one whom Jesus mentioned that he would not ‘die’ before he saw all the things that the Lord had told His disciples, about the things that are about to happen. The disciples were annoyed at this because they failed to understand what the Lord had truly meant with what He said. Jesus said that to foretell what St. John would do to bring glory to God, that is through the Revelation he was to receive.

It was in that revelation, about what is going to happen at the end of everything, when the Lord will come again in His Second Coming, to judge the living and the dead, that John saw all that Jesus had foretold, and he died after he had seen all these visions, and shared them to all of us through his writings, both in the Book of the Revelation and in the Gospel that he wrote.

The Gospel of John is different from the other three Gospels in that it is unique in terms of its mystic and spiritual nature, with more difficult concepts and mystery as compared to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, which spoke in more historical terms and in a more chronological way, unlike the Gospel of John. But if we are able to read and understand what was written by John in his Gospel, our faith and our lives will be made considerably richer.

That is because John had been endowed with the gift of great faith, and when he wrote the Gospel, he did so with great zeal for the Lord and showed the faith to us, in all of its complexity, and yet at the same time bared the entire truth of the Lord to us. He started his Gospel with none other than the centre of the very Creed of our faith, that Jesus is God, and He is the Word of God incarnate into flesh, and He came in order to dwell among us, and bring us to complete perfection in Him.

Indeed, for those who lack the faith and who had not practiced the faith, these may seem very difficult to understand, to the point of impossibility. But that was what John made clear in his own Gospel, that the Lord is Lord, and He has one, singular mission in this world, that as we celebrate Christmas at the moment, we must never, ever forget.

That Christ who was Divine incarnate into Man, was born into this world that He might die for the sake of us all, that He might bear all the burdens of the sins of the world, the sins and taints of our rebelliousness against the will of God. Christ is the Lord, and He alone has the power and authority, to be able to liberate us from the enthrallment under sin and the power of Satan. This is what John made clear throughout his Gospel, by showing what Jesus had done, and His ultimate purpose on the cross.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we too have been given with the gifts of faith, and we have made the profession of the faith, that we believe in our Lord and Saviour, whose birth into this world, we are celebrating this Christmas. But to reiterate again the points I have often raised during this period of festivities, I want to remind all of us gathered, that we must never forget about Christ in our lives.

We cannot take out Christ out of the equation of our lives, for He is the One who provided us with basically, everything we have. Without Him, we are nothing. Therefore, brethren, let us use this time, this chance, and this opportunity, to profess our faith, as clearly as St. John the Evangelist had, showing it not only through words but also through our actions. Most importantly, as Christians, we cannot say that we are Christians if we do not base our actions on love, for God is Love.

St. John the Evangelist had shown us the virtues of faith, and how important faith is for all of us. We all have been granted faith, and we have faith in the Lord, but we cannot remain idle. As Christians, that is as the followers of God, we are expected to go out and show our love to others, particularly those who lack them, and even unto those who hate and persecute us.

Let us all, from today onwards, follow in the footsteps of St. John the Evangelist, and proclaim the truth about our faith to all. Profess and proclaim it through our tongues, our hands, and our legs, yes, through our words, actions, and deeds, rooted deeply in the faith in God and in the love for the Lord, as St. John had once did.

May the Lord born unto the world on Christmas, bless us, strengthen us, and make us into the instruments of His will, just in the same way as St. John the Evangelist had been. God bless us all. Amen.

by

Friday, 27 December 2013 : Feast of St. John the Evangelist, Apostle (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 20 : 2-8

Mary of Magdala ran to Peter, and the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and she said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid Him.”

Peter then set out with the other disciple to go to the tomb. They ran together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down and saw the linen cloths lying flat, but he did not enter.

Then Simon Peter came, following him, and entered the tomb; he, too, saw the linen cloths lying flat. The napkin, which had been around His head, was not lying flat like the other linen cloths, but lay rolled up in its place.

Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in; he saw and believed.