Good Shepherd

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Wednesday, 29 April 2015 : 4th Week of Easter, Memorial of St. Catherine of Siena, Virgin and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Acts 12 : 24 – Acts 13 : 5

Meanwhile the word of God was increasing and spreading. Barnabas and Saul carried out their mission and then came back to Jerusalem, taking with them John also called Mark.

There were at Antioch – in the Church which was there – prophets and teachers : Barnabas, Symeon known as Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod, and Saul. On one occasion while they were celebrating the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said to them, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul to do the work for which I have called them.”

So, after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off. These then, sent by the Holy Spirit, went down to the port of Seleucia and from there sailed to Cyprus. Upon their arrival in Salamis they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogue; John was with them as an assistant.

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Tuesday, 28 April 2015 : 4th Week of Easter, Memorial of St. Peter Chanel, Priest and Martyr, and St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, Priest (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard again, in continuation of the last Sunday, which was Good Shepherd and Vocation Sunday, that the Lord is our Shepherd, and His sheep, that is all of us, are coming back to Him in huge numbers, right then, and even right now. The works of the Church in evangelising the world since the time of the Apostles had not ceased, and still continues at a great pace.

In the first reading itself from the Acts of the Apostles, we heard how the Church was established in the region of Antioch and in many other areas of the Eastern Mediterranean, in places where people from various backgrounds lived. There were Greeks, Egyptians, Syrians, Persians, the Jews themselves, Samaritans, and also there were Romans.

People from different origins, different backgrounds, cultures and upbringing, all came together as one, having heard the Good News and believed, that they were since then known as Christians, or Christianos, in the original Greek language. This means that they have chosen to belong to Christ, which comes from the Greek word meaning the Messiah or the Saviour.

This has a great significance, in that a people who once lived in the darkness, in the world, had chosen to take the initiative to be saved from that darkness, and enter into the light through Christ, their Saviour and our Saviour too. We all have been taken out from the world, chosen and separated by God to be His sheep, and with Him as our Shepherd and Leader.

And because of that, we should no longer follow the ways of the world, but the way of our Lord, for we have been made one flock, under the guidance of one Shepherd. There is no more division and disunity, but now everyone who believes in Christ are made into one people, all walking the same path towards our salvation. And this is what we are doing now, under the guidance of the shepherds which God had appointed for us, our priests.

Today we honour the memory of two shepherds, each of whom led the people of God in their own unique way, but ultimately with the aim to lead them to salvation. St. Peter Chanel, a martyr of the faith, a French priest who went to the region of Oceania to preach the Faith and the Good News there. Despite the difficulties and challenges, he continued to persevere through the difficulties, continuing to preach the Faith to the people of God.

When the people, including even the son of the king desired baptism after having been taught the Faith by St. Peter Chanel, the king sent someone to kill him, and thus, St. Peter Chanel was martyred in the cause of the faith. But his hard works earned for the Lord a whole nation of believers. The whole nation who once persecuted St. Peter Chanel has been made whole by his martyrdom.

Meanwhile, St. Louis Marie de Montfort was a well known French priest, whose faith to the Lord and devotion to Him was very renowned throughout the land. St. Louis Marie de Montfort was also renowned for his pious Marian devotions, the dedications and prayers he led for the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary, the ever Blessed Virgin.

He preached in many places and converted many people to the cause of the faith. He led them from the darkness of this world into the light. Through his hard and painstaking work, he had brought so many into salvation in Christ. That is why, today we glorify him as one of the glorious saints, and together with St. Peter Chanel, in their different ministries, they had brought the people of God closer to their Lord and Master.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, inspired by the examples of these two faithful servants of God, then we too should also endeavour to bring many souls to salvation. How do we do so? It is by practicing our faith with real action and devotion that we may bring about the conversion of many. If we are true disciples of Christ through our actions, then people will flock to us and listen to our preaching and believe in them.

May Almighty God be with us all, and may He bring all of His scattered sheep from all over the world, from all nations back, that there may be one flock, one people, with one Shepherd, our Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord and Master. Amen.

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Tuesday, 28 April 2015 : 4th Week of Easter, Memorial of St. Peter Chanel, Priest and Martyr, and St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, Priest (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)

John 10 : 22-30

At that time, the time came for the feast of the Dedication. It was winter, and Jesus walked back and forth in the portico of Solomon. The Jews then gathered around Him and said to Him, “How long will You keep us in doubt? If You are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

Jesus answered, “I have already told you, but you do not believe. The works I do in My Father’s Name proclaim who I am, but you do not believe because, as I said, you are not My sheep. My sheep hear My voice and I know them; they follow Me and I give them eternal life. They shall never perish, and no one will ever steal them from Me.”

“What the Father has given Me is above everything else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are One.”

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Tuesday, 28 April 2015 : 4th Week of Easter, Memorial of St. Peter Chanel, Priest and Martyr, and St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, Priest (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)

Psalm 86 : 1-3, 4-5, 6-7

He Himself has built it in His holy mountain; the Lord prefers the gates of Zion to all of Jacob’s towns. Great things have been foretold of You, o city of God.

Between friends we speak of Egypt and Babylon; and also Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia : “Here so-and-so was born.” But of Zion it shall be said, “More and more are being born in her.” For the Most High Himself has founded her.

And the Lord notes in the people’s register : “All these were also born in Zion.” And all will dance and sing joyfully for You.

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Tuesday, 28 April 2015 : 4th Week of Easter, Memorial of St. Peter Chanel, Priest and Martyr, and St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, Priest (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)

Acts 11 : 19-26

Those who had been scattered because of the persecution over Stephen travelled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message, but only to the Jews. But there were some natives of Cyprus and Cyrene among them who, on coming into Antioch, spoke also to the Greeks, giving them the Good News of the Lord Jesus. The hand of the Lord was with them so that a great number believed and turned to the Lord.

News of this reached the ears of the Church in Jerusalem, so they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw the manifest signs of God’s favour, he rejoiced and urged them all to remain firmly faithful to the Lord; for he himself was a good man filled with Holy Spirit and faith. Thus large crowds came to know the Lord.

Then Barnabas went off to Tarsus to look for Saul and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they had meetings with the Church and instructed many people. It was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.

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Monday, 27 April 2015 : 4th Week of Easter (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we continue on the theme of our Lord as our Good Shepherd, the One who truly knows us in and out, and He is truly the only One who really cares about us and loves us all with all of His heart. And it is only through Him that salvation and life can be attained, and nowhere else. And that is why, He said that He is the gate, and all of His sheep pass through that gate.

And He does not discriminate between peoples, or have favourites on certain races and groups. All are equally loved by Him and all stands equal in His presence. What matters to God is not our background, our birth and our status in this world, but rather, how much we love Him and devote our attention and love for Him. This is what God wants from us, and thus it is indeed what truly matters.

As the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles showed us, some of the disciples of Jesus criticised Peter, and later on also the other Apostles like St. Paul, for having worked among the non-Jews or the Gentiles, and dwelled with them, ate with them and doing things with them. For the Jews, brought up in their rigid faith system since the days of Moses, this was anathema and forbidden.

The Jews took great pride in their ‘privileged’ status as the chosen people and the chosen race of God, being the direct descendants of Jacob, and the children of Abraham. They often looked down on the pagans and other races, those considered as not belonging to the Jewish race and faith, and they prized their status more than anything else. This is the background for understanding why some of the Jewish disciples acted the way they did.

But God, who is our Shepherd, does not care about that. He gave His salvation and the life He had brought us to everyone. He did not die for a particular group of people, but for everyone. What matters is for us to walk in His path and follow Him. If we do not do as He had instructed us to do, and if chose to follow our own whim and desires, then we can have no part with Him.

It is just like sheep following the shepherd, and if the sheep does not follow the shepherd, that sheep will be lost and will likely meet a cruel and painful end, at the hands of the wolves and other calamities may befall it. The sheep cannot be far from its shepherd, and neither can it survive without the shepherd. The shepherd gives the sheep his love, care and attention, and the sheep cherish them all.

Thus, let us all reflect on this fact, that our Lord is our Shepherd, the Way, the Truth and the Life, as He Himself had said. If we follow Him with all of our heart, then we have life in us, and if we do not do so, then we also do not take part in the salvation which He had given us and offered us freely. Thus, this is indeed the time for us to see into our own lives, if we had indeed been faithful to our Lord and Shepherd, who tirelessly put His effort to bring us all back into perfect unity with Him.

May Almighty God bless all of us, forgive us all our sins, and guide us in this life, as our Lord and Shepherd, that in the end, all of us may find our way to Him and be saved. God bless us all. Amen.

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Monday, 27 April 2015 : 4th Week of Easter (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 10 : 1-10

At that time, Jesus said to the Jews, “Truly, I say to you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber. But the shepherd of the sheep enters by the gate. The keeper opens the gate to him and the sheep hear his voice; he calls each of his sheep by name and leads them out.”

“When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but rather they will run away from him, because they do not recognise a stranger’s voice.”

Jesus used this comparison, but they did not understand what He was saying to them. So Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, I am the gate of the sheep. All who came were thieves and robbers, and the sheep did not hear them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through Me will be saved; he will go in and out freely and find food.”

“The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I have come that they may have life, life in all its fullness.”

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Monday, 27 April 2015 : 4th Week of Easter (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 41 : 2-3 and Psalm 42 : 3, 4

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for You, o God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I go and see the face of God?

Send forth Your light and Your truth; let them be my guide, let them take me to Your holy mountain, to the place where You reside.

Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my gladness and delight. I will praise You with the lyre and harp, o God, my God.

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Monday, 27 April 2015 : 4th Week of Easter (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Acts 11 : 1-8

News came to the Apostles and the brothers and sisters in Judea that even foreigners had received the Word of God. So, when Peter went up to Jerusalem, these Jewish believers began to argue with him, “You went to the home of uncircumcised people and ate with them!”

So Peter began to give them the facts as they had happened, “I was at prayer in the city of Joppa when, in a trance, I saw a vision. Something like a large sheet came down from the sky and drew near to me, landing on the ground by its four corners. As I stared at it, I saw four-legged creatures of the earth, wild beasts and reptiles, and birds of the sky.”

“Then I heard a voice saying to me : ‘Get up, Peter, kill and eat!’ I replied, ‘Certainly not, Lord! No common or unclean creature has ever entered my mouth.'”

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Sunday, 26 April 2015 : Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, Vocation Sunday (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the Fourth Sunday of Easter, but also known more commonly as the Good Shepherd Sunday and as the Vocation Sunday. On this day, as we have heard from the readings of the Sacred Scriptures, the readings all highlight the nature of our Lord as the One True Shepherd, who is the Good Shepherd, the only One who truly loves us and cares for us unconditionally.

And from this the entire history of our salvation came about. God is our Shepherd and we are all His sheep, who roam in this world, that is the pasture of the Lord, the world as the range which He had created for us all His sheep. And we are like wayward sheep, who did not listen to the voice of the shepherd, and therefore we were lost, and we could not find our way back to safety.

God can just ignore us and pretend not to care about us. After all, He is the Lord of all things who is all perfect by Himself, and He has no need for others. But He loves all of us as His own, and He is our Father, who cares for all of His children greatly. He created us not so that He can dispose of us. Instead, His love for us is so great, that St. John in our second reading mentioned that for that great love, He had sent us such a great redemption, that He sent Himself, in the form of Jesus, His Son, as the Saviour to redeem all mankind from their fate of certain destruction.

The Good Shepherd cares about all of His sheep, and our Lord therefore cares for all of us greatly. He does not want us to fall prey to the wolves, that is Satan and his allies. That was why He did what He had done, that is to give Himself to us, as the Guide and Leader to lead us back to the right path to salvation. The shepherd guides the sheep so that they will find their way to the green pasture and not lost.

Therefore, today we reflect on our Lord as our Shepherd, the One whom we should heed always and follow. We have to aim our gaze always at Him and not be distracted by other things in the world. Why is this very important? That is because we are really very easily distracted by the many dark things in this world, and we are very easily persuaded to abandon our Shepherd and follow the whim of our own desires.

Ever since our first ancestors first succumbed to their desire, the want for knowledge and their greed for earthly desires, we have been made vulnerable to the same desires, and if we allow ourselves to be overcome and controlled by our desired, then that is where we shall fall, and we shall fall into damnation together with Satan and his angels if we are not careful.

Ever since Satan had been cast out of heaven and brought down low for his failed attempt to take over the throne of heaven out of his pride and vanity, he had resented all that God had created and crafted. And the greatest of all God’s creations is us mankind, whom therefore he tried to destroy as well, and the best way to do so, is by causing us to rebel against God as well, just as he had once done before and which he had done ever since.

Thus, it is like the wolves who desire to take the sheep away from the shepherd. They would surround the flock of sheep and wait for the opportune moment for some of the sheep to linger and stray beyond the flock, and then snatch them and destroy them. This is Satan’s aim, trying to snatch us away from the salvation which God had promised us, and which He had purchased with His own Body and Blood.

Remember that Jesus said that the Good Shepherd lays down His life and thus dies for His sheep? That was exactly what Jesus had done. He barred the wolves, that is Satan and his allies from coming through to get us. He protected us and shielded us, all because of His infinite love for all of us, and His everlasting desire to see us saved from the pain and suffering caused by our sins.

And thus we were indeed saved by our Lord, and we have been made whole again. But this does not mean that we are completely out of danger and harm’s path. Even though the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross have given mankind the salvation and the path to liberation from death and into life, but we require an active effort and participation in the work of salvation for us to be saved.

The shepherd knows his sheep and he knew them all by name. And thus, our Good Shepherd, our Lord Jesus Christ also knew us all, each and every single one of us. And He calls on us to join Him and walk with Him. Now, the issue is, are we willing to put in the effort to walk with Him and walk in His path? It may seem to be easy, but I can assure you that it will not be the case.

The world is the domain of the evil one and his allies, and therefore, the ways of this world are inherently not compatible with the ways of Christ our Lord. Thus, if we follow Him and walk in His footsteps, it is likely that we will encounter difficulties, opposition and ridicule. Remember, brethren, that Christ Himself had shown us an example, by enduring all the ridicule, all the persecution and rejection of the world, on His way to Calvary bearing the cross that is our sins.

Therefore, Christ had left us all a great gift, that is His Church, the union of all the faithful together as one people, united with Him in a spiritual Body of the faithful by the sharing of the Eucharist, which He left behind as the centre of the efforts which He had started to call back all the wayward souls and sheep of His flock, to return to His loving and caring embrace.

And He had also placed for us, shepherds to take care of us, to be His representatives, under the leadership of the chief shepherd of all, from St. Peter to his successors as the Vicars of Christ, the chief representative of our Lord, the One and True Shepherd of all in this world. The priests, all the members of the ordained ministry, the holy orders, including all the bishops and all whom have given themselves to fulfill God’s calling and to become His servants, we celebrate today on this occasion as well.

Thus, today is also Vocation Sunday, a day when we remember all those who have been called to vocation in the Lord, to take up a life of dedication to the Lord and His people, to be the shepherds to guide the flock of God on their way to God. Let us pray for them, that they will remain always strong amidst the difficulties and challenges that certainly will come their way.

But let us also not forget that on this day, we too should also heed the Lord’s call, especially those of us who are young and have not known what we are to do with our own lives. Let us pray that all the young men whom God had chosen and called to His service, may discern and find their path and purpose in life, and when the time comes, to become the shepherds of God’s people, accepting the heavy but fulfilling responsibility which God had entrusted them with.

O Lord, our Good Shepherd, our Master and our God, be with us always and love us always. And allow the love and devotion for You to grow ever stronger in our hearts. Help us to guide one another on our way to You, so that none of the sheep of Your flock may be lost. Be with our priests and all those who have dedicated themselves to Your service, and be with those whom You have called. Be with us always too, now and forever. Amen.