great solemnity

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Sunday, 21 August 2022 : Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday we are all presented through the readings from the Sacred Scriptures, the Lord reminds us of His ever patient and amazing love, in gathering all of us His scattered and spread all throughout the world. All of us are God’s beloved people, His children whom He treats as His precious ones. He wants to be reunited and reconciled with us, and hence He called on us all to follow Him, and He also corrects us whenever we erred and made mistakes. He gave us help along the way and He sent us His messengers and servants, through His Church to guide us down the right path.

In our first reading today taken from the Book of the prophet Isaiah, we heard the Lord mentioning to Isaiah how He would call His people from among the nations, from the foreign lands far and distant from the land of Israel, from the different nations and origins, and the Lord also mentioned how He would even call His priests and the Levites from among the people of those nations. This is a premonition of God’s calling which He made to all the nations, to all the people of all races and origins, that His people and kingdom is no longer limited to just the descendants of the Israelites, but extending to the whole entire world.

The Lord had indeed called the direct descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the people of Israel to be the ones to form His first people, a first gathering of God’s nation among the others in this world. To them, God has given His Law and commandments, and He established and renewed the Covenant which He had made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, their forefathers. But the people of Israel had often disobeyed the Lord and refused to believe in Him, abandoning and betraying Him for the pagan gods and idols, or for the service of the worldly desires and temptations, in selling their souls for worldly glory and pleasures.

Hence, what the Lord spoke through the prophet Isaiah was significant because He revealed to all the people His true intention, which is to save all the sons and daughters of man, a promise which He had made from the very beginning, from the time when man first fell into sin. The same calling which He made to the people of Israel, has now been extended to the whole entire world, to all the sons and daughters of mankind, regardless of their race or origin, regardless of their birth and ancestry, or of their status and occupations. All the children of mankind are equally beloved by God just as He had created them all in the beginning with pure and perfect love.

He called on all the people of the whole world just as our Gospel passage today highlighted to us. In that passage, we heard how the Lord said that entering into His kingdom is truly not a really easy feat unlike what some might have otherwise thought. That is why the Lord reminded all of His disciples through that teaching and revelation, how entering into the kingdom of heaven will require one to make the effort and the sacrifices to resist the temptations of worldly glory, ambition and the pleasures of the world, all of which can lead us down the wrong path.

From what the Lord had told His disciples, it was quite obvious that the path to enter into the kingdom of God and hence into the eternal life and joy with Him will be a rather difficult and challenging one. And in the context of what happened at that time, during the time of Jesus, there were those who thought that they were saved simply because they belonged to the race of the descendants of the Israelites and therefore claimed privilege through their descent and blood. However, they had not listened to the Lord or obeyed His commandments, and refused to receive Him or His truth, when He came into their midst. Those people would not enjoy the salvation that is reserved only to those whom God finds to be worthy.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we listened to these words of reminders for us, let us all first and foremost remember that all of us have received the same privilege to come to the Lord and to return to Him, to be reconciled with Him because He has always been welcoming to all of us, and He has called us all to be His beloved people. As part of His Church, through our baptism each one of us have been made sharers in His kingdom and grace, and we have received the revelation of His truth and love in greater details, and not only that, but we also have the responsibility and the calling to live our lives in a most Christian manner each day and at all times.

All of us must remember that in the end, our every actions and deeds, our contributions and commitments, whether great or small will be held for us or against us. Our every lack and failure to act whenever we are able to, will also be held against us on the Day of Judgment, and in the end, those who are righteous and faithful will receive the fullness of God’s promises and the eternal life and glory that will be ours forever, while those who fail to be faithful and continue to walk in the path of sin will fall into eternal damnation and suffering unless we change our ways for the better.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday all of us are reminded that we cannot take our faith for granted and we have to make the effort to be faithful to God, in real and concrete actions and not just through mere lip service only. We have to be genuinely faithful and active in living out our Christian lives so that in all things we will always ever be worthy, and we will draw ever closer to God, to His grace and love. God has always patiently extended His loving hands to us, to reach out to us and embrace us, and it is really now up to us to accept His generous and compassionate mercy, and it is up to us to make a commitment to follow Him.

May the Lord, our most loving God, continue to guide us all and bless us in our every endeavours, our every good works and efforts to serve Him and to glorify Him by our lives. May our lives and actions be ever exemplary and bring inspiration to each other so that we may strengthen and inspire each other to walk ever more faithfully in God’s presence, distancing ourselves from sin and from the temptations to sin. May God be with us always, now and forevermore. Amen.

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Sunday, 21 August 2022 : Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 13 : 22-30

At that time, Jesus went through towns and villages teaching, and making His way to Jerusalem. Someone asked Him, “Lord, is it true that few people will be saved?”

And Jesus answered, “Do your best to enter by the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has gone inside and locked the door, you will stand outside. Then you will knock at the door, calling, ‘Lord, open to us!’ But He will say to you, ‘I do not know where you come from.'”

“Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets!’ But He will reply, ‘I do not know where you come from. Away from Me, all you workers of evil.’ You will weep and grind your teeth, when you see Abraham and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves left outside.”

“Others will sit at table in the kingdom of God, people coming from east and west, from north and south. Some who are among the last, will be first; and some who are among the first, will be last!”

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Sunday, 21 August 2022 : Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Hebrews 12 : 5-7, 11-13

Do not forget the comforting words that Wisdom addresses to you as children : My son, pay attention when the Lord corrects you and do not be discouraged when He punishes you. For the Lord corrects those He loves and chastises everyone He accepts as a son.

What you endure, is in order to correct you. God treats you like sons, and what son is not corrected by his father? All correction is painful at the moment, rather than pleasant; later, it brings the fruit of peace, that is, holiness, to those who have been trained by it.

Lift up, then, your drooping hands, and strengthen your trembling knees; make level the ways for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but healed.

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Sunday, 21 August 2022 : Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 116 : 1, 2

Alleluia! Praise YHVH, all you nations; all you peoples, praise Him.

How great is His love for us! His faithfulness lasts forever.

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Sunday, 21 August 2022 : Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Isaiah 66 : 18-21

Now I am going to gather the nations of every tongue, and they will witness My glory, for I will perform a wonderful thing among them. Then I will send some of their survivors to the nations – Tarshish, Put, Lud, Moscheck, Rosh, Tubal, and Javan – to the distant islands where no one has ever heard of Me or seen My glory. They will proclaim My glory among the nations.

They will bring your kindred from all the nations as an offering to YHVH on horses, in chariots, in litters, on mules, on camels to My holy mountain in Jerusalem, says YHVH, just as the Israelites bring oblations in clean vessels to the House of YHVH. Then I will choose priests and Levites even from them, says YHVH.

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Monday, 15 August 2022 : Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate together the great Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. The Assumption of Mary refers to the moment when she was taken up body and soul into Heaven, as she came to the end of her existence here in this world, and went to be reunited with her beloved Son, Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. The Church has always held the belief and tradition that Mary, by God’s grace, did not suffer the lasting effect of death, and while she did die, but her Son took her up very soon after into His Presence in Heaven.

According to Apostolic tradition, as Mary loved her Son so much, after having lived several more years past the time of her Son’s Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven, the great love that Mary had for her Son led her to experience death, sharing the same death that her Son experienced for our sake. And when the time came for her to say goodbye to this world, the Apostles were gathered and asked for Mary’s last blessing, and she entered a sleep of death, and she was placed in the tomb. One tradition stated that because St. Thomas, one of the Apostles could not be there to see Mary one last time, he demanded to see the Mother of God one last time.

When the Apostles and the other assembled disciples opened her tomb, they were all surprised to find that not only that there was no trace of decomposition, but the body of the Blessed Virgin Mother of God herself had disappeared, replaced by a bed of roses. It was evident to all then that because her Son had been triumphant over sin and death, He would not have let her to experience the degradation of death, and took her up into Heaven, body and soul. And that is the story of how the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and its equivalent in the Eastern Churches, the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin came to be.

The belief in the Assumption comes logically as Mary, the Mother of God is the Mother of the Lord and Saviour of the world, Who had triumphed over sin and death, and as our second reading from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians had highlighted to us, Christ, Mary’s Son, has conquered and triumphed over death. Sin and death had both been conquered and crushed by the Lord, through His glorious Resurrection. How can it be that Christ saved the world but did not save His own Mother? Surely because of His great love for her, He would have led her away from death and would not allow her to suffer from it? That He Who raised Lazarus and the daughter of the synagogue official could definitely have raised His own Mother to a new life with Him too?

And not only that, but as Mary herself has borne the Lord and Saviour of the world, as highlighted in St. John’s heavenly vision of the end times in the Book of Revelations, our first reading today, and from the account of St. Luke’s Gospel on the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, Mary as the one who bore the Lord Himself inside her womb was hallowed and full of grace, free from sin throughout her life, right from the moment of her conception. This is the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which stated that Mary, by the singular grace of God, had been preserved from the taint of original sin, and full of God’s grace, she remained immaculate and pure throughout her life.

That is essential because the Lord’s Presence could have not tolerated the taint of sin, and as He were to spend the time in the womb of Mary, hence, He could not have been borne through a body tainted by sin. And because Mary was without original sin, and also remained pure and full of grace, free from any sin throughout her life, she did not deserve death at all, because death is the natural consequence of sin. Since Mary did not sin, she could not have been made subject to the punishment due to sin, which is death. That is why the Church believes that Mary was taken up body and soul into Heaven, as was right and just for her, and also based on the testimony of the Apostles who witnessed it all.

Then, the Assumption should also not be confused with the Ascension, as the Assumption refers to the moment when Mary was taken up into Heaven by the will of God, by the power of her Son, taking her up body and soul into Heaven to be by His side, while the Ascension refers to the moment when the Lord Himself, the Son of God, by His own power and will, ascended into Heaven to return to His Throne and rightful place. There now the Lord reigns over us, with His mother Mary by His side, and her always interceding and praying for our sake. She has always watched over us all these while, and has always shown concern over us, falling ever so frequently again and again into sin.

Through the Assumption, first of all, we have the assurance that Mary is there in Heaven, by the side of the Lord, her own beloved Son, as our greatest ally and help in the battle against the forces of evil surrounding us and desiring our destruction. Through her constant intercession, Mary helped us all to get closer to God and helped to open the gates of God’s ever generous mercy towards us. She herself has also appeared in many well-known occasions, at Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima and elsewhere, calling on all the faithful children of God to turn back towards the Lord and repent from our sins.

Then, Mary’s own faith in the Lord, her commitment and total surrender to God, her willingness to follow the Lord and to obey His will completely in her life, carrying out her calling from the beginning to the end as the Mother of God, caring for her Son and loving Him, following Him even to the foot of the Cross, all these dedication should inspire each one of us in our own faith in God. Through Mary’s examples, we should be inspired to lead an ever worthy life that is full of faith and dedication to Him. We should do our very best to make sure that our every actions, words and deeds, every moments of our lives be worthy of God.

Mary’s Assumption into Heaven also gave us all a glimpse of our own fate in the end, if we choose to remain faithful to God, just as her own Son’s Transfiguration a few days ago had shown us as well. In the end of time, after the Final Judgement, all of us will rise up body and soul to be reunited with God, and to enjoy forever an eternity of true bliss and happiness. However, we have to be faithful to God and to be judged worthy of Him, or else we will end up in the eternity of suffering instead in the eternal damnation. The Lord has given us many opportunities and chances, and He has reached out to us generously with love, so that we may find our way to Him, and His blessed Mother Mary has shown us the most direct and surest path to Him.

May all of us draw ever closer to God, in each and every moments and opportunities available to us. May He empower each one of us to live ever more faithfully and with greater conviction and commitment from now on, following the examples of Mary, the Blessed Mother of God, who we remember of today in her glorious Assumption into Heaven. Holy Mary, Mother of God, gloriously assumed and taken up to Heaven, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

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Monday, 15 August 2022 : Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Luke 1 : 39-56

Mary then set out for a town in the hill country of Judah. She entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leapt in her womb.

Elizabeth was filled with Holy Spirit, and giving a loud cry, said, “You are most blessed among women, and blessed is the Fruit of your womb! How is it that the mother of my Lord comes to me? The moment your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby within me suddenly leapt for joy. Blessed are you who believed that the Lord’s word would come true!”

And Mary said, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit exults in God my Saviour! He has looked upon His servant in her lowliness, and people forever will call me blessed.”

“The Mighty One has done great things for me, Holy is His Name! From age to age His mercy extends to those who live in His presence. He has acted with power and done wonders, and scattered the proud with their plans. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up those who are downtrodden. He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty.”

“He held out His hand to Israel, His servant, for He remembered His mercy, even as He promised to our fathers, to Abraham and his descendants forever.”

Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months, and then returned home.

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Monday, 15 August 2022 : Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 Corinthians 15 : 20-26

But no, Christ has been raised from the dead, and He comes before all those who have fallen asleep. A human being brought death; a Human Being also brings resurrection of the dead. For, as in Adam all die, so, in Christ, all will be made alive. However, each one in his own time : first Christ, then Christ’s people, when He comes.

Then, the end will come, when Christ delivers the kingdom to God the Father, after having destroyed every rule, authority and power. For He must reign and put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed will be death. As Scripture says : God has subjected everything under His feet.

When we say that everything is put under His feet, we exclude, of course, the Father, Who subjects everything to Him. As Scripture says : God has subjected everything under His feet. When we say that everything is put under His feet, we exclude, of course, the Father, Who subjects everything to Him.

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Monday, 15 August 2022 : Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 44 : 10bc, 11, 12ab, 16

At your right hand, in gold of Ophir, stands the queen.

Listen, o daughter, pay attention; forget your father’s house and your nation.

And your beauty will charm the King, for He is your Lord.

Amid cheers and general rejoicing, they enter the palace of the King.