God the Father

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Tuesday, 1 December 2015 : 1st Week of Advent (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Luke 10 : 21-24

At that time, Jesus was filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and made them known to little ones. Yes, Father, such has been Your gracious will.”

“I have been given all things by My Father, so that no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”

Then Jesus turned to His disciples and said to them privately, “Fortunate are you to see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings would have liked to see what you see, but did not see it; and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”

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Thursday, 27 August 2015 : 21st Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Monica (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 Thessalonians 3 : 7-13

What a consolation for us, brothers and sisters, in the midst of our troubles and trials, this faith of yours! It is a breath of life for us when you stand firm in the Lord. How can we thank God enough for all the joy that we feel before God because of you? Day and night we beg of Him to let us see you again, that we may complete the instruction of the believers.

May God our Father and Jesus our Lord prepare the way for us to visit you. May the Lord increase more and more your love for each other and for all people, as He increases our love for you. May He strengthen you internally to be holy and blameless before God, our Father, on the day that Jesus, our Lord, will come with all His saints.

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Saturday, 22 August 2015 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Isaiah 9 : 1-6

The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. A light has dawned on those who live in the land of the shadow of death. You have enlarged the nation; You have increased their joy. They rejoice before You, as people rejoice at harvest time, as they rejoice in dividing the spoil.

For the yoke of their burden, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressors, You have broken it as on the day of Midian. Every warrior’s boot that tramped in war, every cloak rolled in blood, will be thrown out for burning, will serve as fuel for the fire.

For a Child is born to us, a Son is given us; the royal ornament is laid upon His shoulder, and His Name is proclaimed : “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” To the increase of His powerful rule in peace, there will be no end. Vast will be His dominion, He will reign on David’s throne and over all His kingdom, to establish and uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time onward and forever.

The zealous love of YHVH Sabaoth will do this.

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Tuesday, 11 August 2015 : 19th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Clare, Virgin (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Matthew 18 : 1-5, 10, 12-14

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked Him, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Then Jesus called a little child, set the child in the midst of the disciples, and said, “I assure you that, unless you change and become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes lowly like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and whoever receives such a child in My Name receives Me.”

“See that you do not despise any of these little ones, for I tell you : their angels in heaven continually see the face of My heavenly Father. What do you think of this? If someone has a hundred sheep and one of them strays, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hillside, and go to look for the stray one? And I tell you : when he finally finds it, he is more pleased about it than about the ninety-nine, that did not get lost.”

“It is the same with your Father in heaven : your Father in heaven does not want even one of these little ones to be lost.”

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Thursday, 6 August 2015 : Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Daniel 7 : 9-10, 13-14

I looked and saw the following : Some thrones were set in place and One of Great Age took His seat. His robe was white as snow, His hair white as washed wool. His throne was flames of fire with wheels of blazing fire. A river of fire sprang forth and flowed before Him. Thousands upon thousands served Him and a countless multitude stood before Him. Those in the tribunal took their seats and opened the book.

I continued watching the nocturnal vision : One like a Son of Man came on the clouds of heaven. He faced the One of Great Age and was brought into His presence. Dominion, honour and kingship were given Him, and all the peoples and nations of every language served Him. His dominion is eternal and shall never pass away; His kingdom will never be destroyed.

Alternative reading

2 Peter 1 : 16-19

Indeed, what we taught you about the power and the return of Christ Jesus our Lord was not drawn from myths or formulated theories. We ourselves were eyewitnesses of His majesty, when He received glory and honour from God the Father, when from the magnificent Glory this most extraordinary word came upon Him : “This is My Beloved Son, this is My Chosen One.” We ourselves heard this voice from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.”

Therefore, we believe most firmly in the message of the prophets which you should consider rightly as a lamp shining in a dark place, until the break of day, when the Morning Star shines in your hearts.

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Wednesday, 15 July 2015 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Matthew 11 : 25-27

At that time, on that occasion Jesus said, “Father, Lord of heaven and earth, I praise You, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to simple people. Yes, Father, this is what pleased You.”

“Everything has been entrusted to Me by My Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”

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Saturday, 20 June 2015 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

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

Matthew 6 : 24-34

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “No one can serve two masters; for he will either hate one and love the other, or he will be loyal to the first and look down on the second. You cannot at the same time serve God and money. This is why I tell you not to be worried about food and drink for yourself, or about clothes for your body.”

“Is not life more important than food, and is not the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow, they do not harvest and do not store food in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not less worthy than they are?”

“Can any of you add a day to your life by worrying about it? Why are you so worried about your clothes? Look at how the flowers in the fields grow. They do not toil or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his wealth was clothed like one of these. If God so clothed the grass in the field, which blooms today and is to be burned tomorrow in an oven, how much more will He clothe you? What little faith you have!”

“Do not worry and say : What are we going to eat? What are we going to drink? Or : What shall we wear? The pagans busy themselves with such things; but your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. Set your heart first on the kingdom and justice of God, and all these things will also be given to you. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

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Thursday, 18 June 2015 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Matthew 6 : 7-15

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “When you pray, do not use a lot of words, as the pagans do, for they believe that the more they say, the more chance they have of being heard. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need, even before you ask Him.”

“This, then, is how you should pray : Our Father in heaven, holy be Your Name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, just as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us. Do not bring us to the test, but deliver us from the evil one.”

“If you forgive others their wrongdoings, your Father in heaven will also forgive yours. If you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive you either.”

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Tuesday, 9 June 2015 : 10th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Ephrem, Deacon and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Doctors of the Church)

Matthew 5 : 13-16

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It has become useless. It can only be thrown away and people will trample on it.”

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a mountain cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and covers it; instead it is put on a lampstand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way your light must shine before others, so that they may see the good you do and praise your Father in heaven.”

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Sunday, 7 June 2015 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate a very great solemnity, that is the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, or the Most Holy and Precious Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. If last week we commemorate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, celebrating the Triune nature of our God, He who is One but exists in Three distinct Divine Persons : Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then on this day, we commemorate how that same Lord our God had come down upon us and dwells with us even now.

It is also a core and central tenet of our Faith to believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist. What is the Eucharist? It is not just mere bread and wine that we have offered to the Lord during the Mass. Indeed, the Mass itself is a holy sacrifice, which is truly the same Sacrifice which our Lord Jesus Christ had gone through for our sake as He hung from the cross that day on Calvary. It is the exact same sacrifice intended by God to seal His new and eternal Covenant with us mankind, sealed not by any mortal blood, but by the very Blood of the Lord Himself.

As in the first reading we heard how Moses gathered the people of Israel and sanctified them, and offering sacrifices of bulls and goats to the Lord through the priests chosen by the Lord, the blood of the animal sacrifices were collected and then sprinkled on the people, and the blood as the sign of the covenant which God had made with them. The blood is the pact and the seal that validated the whole covenant that God established with Israel.

By the blood of the lambs also God had rescued the people of Israel from their suffering and slavery by the Egyptians. God instructed them through Moses to take the blood of the Passover lambs and mark their houses on the doorposts and lintels with it. The houses marked with the blood of the lambs was then spared by the Lord and His angels of death passing through Egypt that night.

But the blood of mortal animals, lambs, bulls and goats do not last and neither did they constitute a lasting mark and seal on the covenant which God has made. Indeed, the priests chosen by God would have to renew the covenant again and again by constantly offering sacrifices to God. And in time, this became a problem when the people became engrossed with how the sacrifices were done instead of understanding the reasons behind such actions.

Instead of empty meaning of sacrifices done without proper understanding, what God intended was for us all to know that He is Love, and it is truly about His Love that we rejoice. The love of God therefore has been shown clearly in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God Himself who had allowed Himself to take up the humble form of Man, so that He may walk among us and dwell with us, as the ultimate symbol of God’s everlasting love and faithfulness.

For we mankind since the beginning of time had been intended for good things and for greatness. But we have not done our part of the covenant and the promise, and we broke the trust of the Lord by preferring to listen and obey the devil instead of obeying the Lord and His commandments. And even later on, the people of Israel continued to sin and worshipped even the pagan gods and following the pagan customs of their neighbour, in a blatant disregard of the covenant which God had established with them.

God is however ever faithful and He never went back on His words, or on any of His promises. It was always us mankind who betrayed the Lord and followed our own path, often leading up to damnation and distraction. And from time to time again, God forgave us and gave us a new chance, but there were not many who took up this generous offer of mercy. And so many of our kind fell into damnation.

Yet, for all of our disobedience, God wants us all His beloved to be sanctified and consecrated to Him, that we may be marked as His own, just as Israel in our first reading today were consecrated by the blood of the animal sacrifices before the Lord. However, this time round, it is no longer just the people of Israel and the descendants of Jacob only, but the new Covenant that God has established through His Son Jesus Christ encompasses all mankind.

And this new Covenant is perfect, far more perfect than the previous covenants, for God sealed it Himself with His Blood, the Blood of the Paschal Lamb, our Lord Jesus Himself, even as He hung on the cross. It was by His ultimate sacrifice on the cross that on the Altar of Calvary, on the Altar of the earth, He was hung between the heavens and the earth, as the perfect sacrifice and oblation for our sake. And while the blood of lambs, goats and bulls did not offer lasting purification for our sins, but the Blood of Christ our Lord offers eternal liberation from sin for all those who are true to His Covenant.

What is this Covenant? It is a Covenant of Love between God and us mankind, that is we ought to first love the Lord our God, with all of our heart, our mind, our strength and with all the capacity of our beings. And then secondly, we ought to love one another just in the same manner, as we have loved our Lord and just as we have loved and cared for ourselves. It is the Ten Commandments of God, revealed in the entirety of truth by Jesus Himself, that God is love, and His commandments is love too.

And He Himself gave the perfect example, by giving the perfect and most selfless love, by dying on the cross for us. Remember that Jesus said that the greatest love is for someone to die and lay down his life for his friends? It is therefore at that moment of the crucifixion, that Jesus laid down His life for us His beloved ones. And how is this relevant to us all, brethren? That is because it is the same sacrifice that we celebrate again and again every time we celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

At the Last Supper, on the day before He died, Jesus had instituted the Eucharist itself by showing His disciples what they ought to do from then on, in the memory of Him, and not just memory indeed, for what the disciples would do from then on, and from them to our bishops and priests today, in an unbroken chain of peoples consecrated to God, they would become the Alter Christus, or the Christ personified in the person of the priests.

It is because they have been given the authority by the Lord Himself, to change the very substance and matter of the bread and wine which we offer, just as on the Last Supper when the Lord Jesus transformed the bread and wine into His own Body and His own Blood, to be given to us all, so that all of who share in them, may receive the eternal life promised to us.

And that Body is real Body, and real food. The Blood is real Blood, and real drink. Did Jesus not say that to the people of Israel, when He said that His Body and Blood are real food and drink? And how those who did not share in them do not have eternal life in them? And many of His disciples left Him after that, simply because they could not take the fact, and because they failed to understand the truth.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, do not be afraid if others mock us for believing in the Real Presence in the Eucharist, for people have rejected Jesus Himself in the past for stating the same truth. We believe that the bread and wine we see in the Holy Mass are transformed in matter and substance completely to the substance of our Lord Jesus Christ, His Body and Blood, and what we receive at the Holy Communion is not just a memory or a symbol, but the very Real and True Presence of our Lord Himself.

That is why we ought to adore the Most Holy Eucharist and know that it is the Lord Himself who had given Himself to us, so that by receiving Him into us, we may share in His death and resurrection, and receive the keys to the eternal life and happiness that He had prepared for us. That is why also, any profanation or improper treatment of the Real Presence of God is absolutely unacceptable.

And at the same time, let us take note that because the Lord Himself now dwells in us, we have become the Temple of His Presence, and the Tabernacle of His dwelling, just as we reserve the Eucharist in the Tabernacle at the heart and the centre of the Church. Therefore, we must make sure that we keep ourselves worthy and holy, so that we are truly worthy to have the Lord, the Giver of all Life and the Source of all that is good, dwell within us.

If we have sinned, in a small or big way, let us all endeavour to seek to be forgiven first, by doing penance and seeking God’s forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance, looking for a priest to confess our sins. Let us not be afraid to ask for forgiveness and to go to confession. It is better that in our humility we are forgiven and brought to perfect reconciliation and be found worthy once again, rather than for us to receive Him in an unworthy state and then be condemned for defiling the Holy Temple of God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all seek to be more committed to our faith in the Lord, and let us all seek to be closer to the Lord our God, who is really and truly present in the bread and wine transformed by the priests, the Alter Christus, into the very Body and Blood of our Lord Himself. Let us all who receive Him worthily gain the blessings and graces He had promised all of us who believe. God be with us all, the Temples of His holy Presence. Amen.