glory of God

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Saturday, 29 June 2013 : Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles, Great Feast Day of the Church of Rome (Second Reading)

2 Timothy 4 : 6-8, 17-18

As for me, I am already poured out as a libation, and the moment of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness with which the Lord, the just Judge, will reward me on that day; and not only me, but all those who have longed for His glorious coming.

But the Lord was at my side, giving me strength to proclaim the Word fully, and let all the pagans hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will save me from all evil, bringing me to His heavenly kingdom. Glory to Him forever and ever. Amen!

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Saturday, 29 June 2013 : Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles, Great Feast Day of the Church of Rome (First Reading)

Acts 12 : 1-11

About that time King Herod decided to persecute some members of the Church. He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword, and when he saw how it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.

This happened during the festival of the Unleavened Bread. Herod had him seized and thrown into prison with four squads, each of four soldiers, to guard him. He wanted to bring him to trial before the people after the Passover feast, but while Peter was kept in prison, the whole Church prayed earnestly for him.

On the very night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound by a double chain, while guards kept watch at the gate of the prison. Suddenly an angel of the Lord stood there and a light shone in the prison cell. The angel tapped Peter on the side and woke him saying, “Get up quickly!” At once the chains fell from Peter’s wrists.

The angel said, “Put on your belt and your sandals.” Peter did so, and the angel added, “Now, put on your cloak and follow me.” Peter followed him out; yet he did not realise that what was happening with the angel was real; he thought he was seeing a vision. They passed the first guard and then the second and they came to the iron door leading out to the city, which opened of itself for them. They went out and made their way down a narrow alley, when suddenly the angel left him.

Then Peter recovered his senses and said, “Now I know that the Lord has sent His angel and has rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from all that the Jews had in store for me.”

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Friday, 28 June 2013 : Vigil Mass of the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles, Great Feast Day of the Church of Rome (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate one of the greatest feast days in our Church, that is the feast day of the two great Apostles, Saints Peter and Paul, the pillars of the Church. This is because both of them went to Rome and were martyred there in the defence of their faith. They were martyred in Rome and therefore, cemented the position of Rome as the centre of all Christendom, with Peter as the very first Bishop of Rome, and therefore the first Pope, the first leader of the Church, Vicar of Christ on earth.

Despite the greatness of Peter, the chief of the Apostles, and Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, the great apostle through his four missionary journeys across the eastern Mediterranean region, both of them had humble and unworthy origins, and each, as we all should know had their weaknesses in the very beginning, and along their own journeys of the faith.

St. Peter was once a poor fisherman plying his trade in fishing at the Lake of Galilee, leading a simple fisherman’s life, until He was called by the Lord, through His brother, Andrew. He was Simon, son of Jonah, until Christ gave him a new name, that is Cephas, or ‘rock’, which in Greek, ‘Petros’ and in Latin, ‘Petrus’, which eventually give raise to the name Peter, the name of the chief of the apostles that we knew of.

St. Peter did not lead a very faithful life at first, although his faith in the Lord is indeed at the same time firm and solid. We surely remember that he was the one who declared that the Lord Jesus is the Messiah and Lord, when He asked His disciples about His true identity. Only a steadfast and strong faith may recognise such nature in Jesus, that others failed to do.

St. Peter did deny the Lord, by denying Him three times, out of fear of the Jewish authorities, because He did not want to be exposed as a disciple of Jesus, at the time when the Lord was under incarceration by the chief priests. He did it out of fear, not out of any true desire to betray the Lord, and Peter is still indeed faithful to the Lord. He recognised the faults that he had done, and he repented in great sorrow. The Lord knew this and forgave Peter.

That was why, even though Peter had denied the Lord three times, He forgave him three times as well, by asking Peter to profess his love for Him. The true nature of Peter came out in the Gospel reading today, that despite his frailty and fear, he truly loved the Lord, and the Lord knew that, even without asking. He rewarded him for his steadfast faith, like a ‘rock’, by establishing His very Church on the faith of Peter, on the solid ‘rock’ of faith, that no powers of evil and hell can overcome.

St. Paul, the other great apostle, did much for the Lord, by evangelising to the four corners of the world at the time, spreading the words of the Gospel like no other Apostle has done. But he too had his humble and sinful origins, as we all knew that St. Paul was once Saul, the great persecutor of the Church of Christ.

Saul did great sins once and killed many people who believed in God. He would definitely had been condemned into hell and eternal damnation, had the Lord had not actually chosen him to be His tool for bringing the faith into many who still lived in darkness. The Lord appeared to him on the way to Damascus, and transformed him from the great monster that persecuted Christians, into the greatest champion of the faith.

Saul then was transformed into Paul, the great apostle. He did not have an easy life and an easy work. Instead, he faced many persecutions and sufferings, from beatings, lashes, prison, and even many near-death experiences. He was accepted in many places, but there were equally many if not more places that rejected him and his teachings on the Lord. Even within the Christian community, he faced many problems, as they were not of the same mind, and having disparage ideas on the faith and how to believe in the Lord.

St. Paul did not fear death, and faced it openly, believing that the Lord is always with him. He embraced death, and went to Rome, to be judged by the Emperor, Nero at that time. When the Emperor caused fire to certain buildings in Rome in order to secure a place to build his palace, and caused the Great Fire of Rome, he blamed the Christians for the fire, and St. Paul faced his martyrdom there, in the defence of his faith.

The Lord our God called the two apostles from their different origins, living in a world of sin and darkness, and transformed them into the tools for the divine good works. Their story is an inspiration for all of us, to be more like them, to be faithful as they are for Christ, and to be loving for our fellow brethren as they had given their love for the fellow Christians of their time.

May God strengthen our faith, that our faith will be as strong as Peter’s, that is like a rock, and that we will not face any fear, and remain steadfast, just as Paul had done. God bless us all. Amen.

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Friday, 28 June 2013 : Vigil Mass of the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles, Great Feast Day of the Church of Rome (Psalm)

Psalm 18 : 2-3, 4-5

The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament proclaims the work of His hands. Day talks it over with day; night hands on the knowledge to night.

No speech, no words, no voice is heard – but the call goes on throughout the universe, the message is felt to the ends of the earth.

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Friday, 28 June 2013 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Irenaeus, Bishop and Martyr (Gospel Reading)

Matthew 8 : 1-4

When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed Him. Then a leper came forward. He knelt before Him and said, “Sir, if You want to, You can make me clean.” Jesus stretched out His hand, touched him, and said, “I want to, be clean again.”

At that very moment, the man was cleansed from his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you do not tell anyone, but go to the priest, have yourself declared clean, and offer the gift that Moses ordered as proof of it.”

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Thursday, 27 June 2013 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cyril of Alexandria, Bishop (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we learn from the readings, of the need to put our complete trust in the Lord and in His power and authority, instead of placing our trust in the falsehood and facade of the power of man. Not that man does not have any power, but any power that they have with them ultimately came from the Lord, and therefore no man should boast of his or her own abilities and powers, but instead should give due praise and thanksgiving to the Lord, who is the source of all power and authority in the universe.

When man begins to lose trust in the Lord and begins to put their trust in feeble man, that is when problems will rise, and even though initially not that apparent, the problems will certainly and eventually rise to the surface. Such was what happened with the case of Abraham, then Abram, who was kind of desperate of having a son to be his successor and heir to all the wealth he had in his possession.

The Lord promised Abram great wealth and affluence because of his faith and love for Him, but above all, He promised Abram that his descendants will number like the sands on the shores of the sea, and as numerous as there are stars in the sky. Such is the greatness of the descendants of Abram, so numerous that they would indeed fill up the entire earth with their presence. But Abram was growing old, and more importantly so was that his wife, Sarah, then Sarai, was also growing old, and had gone past the child bearing age.

That was when alternative methods were sought and then taken up by Abram, with the suggestion from Sarai, that he took Hagar, Sarai’s slave, to be his wife, and therefore act as a proxy to produce an heir for Abram. For in those times, slaves have little value for themselves, and therefore, the mistress, Sarai, had every right to claim the child birthed by the slave and claimed him as her own. Nonetheless, as we saw in the first reading, we can certainly note that tensions soon arose between Sarai and Hagar, as Hagar felt proud in her achievements in being able to bear a child for Abram, which her mistress could not do herself.

Pride and arrogance quickly become the order of the day if we put our trust in the powers and abilities of man, and do not give proper glory to the Lord, to whom we should give all glory to. The same had happened to Hagar, whom in her pride had brought about division and frictions within Abram’s family, and caused the diversion from the true plan of salvation that God had brought through His promised son to Abram, that is Isaac.

Abram did not wait for the promise of the Lord to reach its perfection and completion, but following the advice of Sarah and succumbed to human weakness, that is to distrust the promise and words of the Lord, and the result is the birth of Ishmael, the son of Abraham and Hagar. Later on, further conflicts between Ishmael and the newborn Isaac, the child of promise, would end up in Ishmael and her mother to be cast away from Abraham and his family. God indeed did not leave them to die, but provided for them and also made Ishmael a great nation, but it is not through him that God would make perfect His covenant with Abraham and mankind, but through Isaac and his descendants.

Today, brothers and sisters in Christ, we celebrate the feast day of St. Cyril of Alexandria, the bishop of the early Church, a Church Father and a Doctor of the Church, who fought ceaselessly against those who denied the divinity of Christ, the Nestorians, led by none other than the Patriarch of Constantinople himself, one of the most senior clergyman at the time. He chastised those who opposed the orthodox faith and those who had embraced the heresies of man.

Yes, just as the theme of today’s readings had indicated, those who rejected God in favour of man will not survive, and they will be condemned, because they did not place their trust in God. Therefore, following the example of St. Cyril of Alexandria, in his courageous defense of the faith in the Lord, let us follow him in defending our love and adoration for the Lord, and reject those who glorify themselves at the expense of the Lord.

May the Lord be with us at all times, and remind us that we belong to God, in the covenant He had made with all of us through Christ our Lord and Saviour. May He remind us that He alone is worthy of praise and glory, and that His love is everlasting and infinite. St. Cyril of Alexandria, pray for us sinners, and help to bring us closer to our Lord and God. Amen.

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Thursday, 27 June 2013 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cyril of Alexandria, Bishop (Gospel Reading)

Matthew 7 : 21-29

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My heavenly Father. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not speak in Your Name? Did we not cast out devils and perform many miracles in Your Name?’ Then I will tell them openly, ‘I have never known you; away from Me, you evil people!'”

“So then, anyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts accordingly, is like a wise man, who built his house on rock. The rain poured, the rivers flooded, and the wind blew and struck that house, but it did not collapse because it was built on rock. But anyone who hears these words of mine, and does not act accordingly, is like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain poured, the rivers flooded, and the wind blew and struck that house; it collapsed, and what a terrible fall that was!”

When Jesus had finished this discourse, the crowds were struck by the way He taught, because He taught with authority, unlike their teachers of the Law.

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Thursday, 27 June 2013 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cyril of Alexandria, Bishop (Psalm)

Psalm 105 : 1-2, 3-4a, 4b-5

Alleluia! Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His love endures forever. Who can count the Lord’s mighty deeds, or declare all His praises?

Blessed are they who always do just and right. Remember me, o Lord, when You show Your favour on Your people.

Rescue me when You deliver them; let me see the triumph of Your faithful, let me share the joy of Your nation, and join Your people in praising You.

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Thursday, 27 June 2013 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cyril of Alexandria, Bishop (First Reading)

Genesis 16 : 1-12, 15-16

Sarai, Abram’s wife had not borne him a child, but she had an Egyptian servant named Hagar, and she said to Abram, “Now, since YHVH has kept me from having children, go to my servant; perhaps I shall have a child by her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said.

Abram had been in the land of Canaan ten years when Sarai, his wife, took Hagar, her Egyptian maid, and gave her to Abram her husband as wife. He went in to Hagar and she became pregnant. When she was aware of this, she began to despise her mistress. Sarai said to Abram, “May this injury done to me be yours. I put my servant in your arms and now that she knows she is pregnant, I count for nothing in her eyes. Let YHVH judge between me and you.”

Abram said to Sarai, “Your servant is in your power; do with her as you please.” Then Sarai treated her so badly that she ran away. The angel of YHVH found her near a spring in the wilderness and said to her, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am running away from Sarai, my mistress.”

The angel of YHVH said to her, “I will so increase your descendants, that they will be too numerous to be counted.” Then the angel of YHVH said to her, “Now you are with child and you will have a son, and you shall name him Ishmael, for YHVH has heard your distress. He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, defiant towards all his brothers.”

Hagar gave birth to a son and Abram called the child Hagar bore him, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael.

 

Alternative Reading (shorter version)

Genesis 16 : 6b-12, 15-16

Then Sarai treated her so badly that she ran away. The angel of YHVH found her near a spring in the wilderness and said to her, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am running away from Sarai, my mistress.”

The angel of YHVH said to her, “I will so increase your descendants, that they will be too numerous to be counted.” Then the angel of YHVH said to her, “Now you are with child and you will have a son, and you shall name him Ishmael, for YHVH has heard your distress. He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, defiant towards all his brothers.”

Hagar gave birth to a son and Abram called the child Hagar bore him, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael.

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Wednesday, 26 June 2013 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Matthew 7 : 15-20

Beware of false prophets : they come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inside they are wild wolves. You will recognise them by their fruits. Do you ever pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? A good tree always produces good fruit, a rotten tree produces bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a rotten tree cannot bear good fruit.

Any tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire. So you will know them by their fruit.