great solemnity

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Sunday, 1 September 2019 : Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 14 : 1, 7-14

At that time, one Sabbath Jesus had gone to eat a meal in the house of a leading Pharisee, and He was carefully watched.

Jesus then told a parable to the guests, for He had noticed how they tried to take the places of honour. And He said, “When you are invited to a wedding party, do not choose the best seat. It may happen that someone more important than you had been invited; and your host, who invited both of you, will come and say to you, ‘Please give this person your place.’ What shame is yours when you take the lowest seat!”

“Whenever you are invited, go rather to the lowest seat, so that your host may come and say to you, ‘Friend, you must come up higher.’ And this will be a great honour for you in the presence of all the other guests. For whoever makes himself out to be great will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be raised.”

Jesus also addressed the man who had invited Him, and said, “When you give a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends, or your brothers and relatives, or your wealthy neighbours. For surely they will also invite you in return, and you will be repaid.”

“When you give a feast, invite instead the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Fortunate are you then, because they cannot repay you; you will be repaid at the resurrection of the upright.”

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Sunday, 1 September 2019 : Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Hebrews 12 : 18-19, 22-24a

What you have come to, is nothing known to the senses : nor heat of a blazing fire, darkness and gloom and storms, blasts of trumpet or such a voice that the people pleaded, that no further word be spoken.

But you came near to Mount Zion, to the City of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, with its innumerable Angels. You have come to the solemn feast, the assembly of the firstborn of God, whose names are written in heaven.

There is God, Judge of all, with the spirits of the upright, brought to perfection. There is Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant, with the sprinkled Blood that cries out more effectively than Abel’s.

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Sunday, 1 September 2019 : Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 67 : 4-5ac, 6-7ab, 10-11

But let the righteous be glad and exult before God; let them sing to God and shout for joy. Sing to God, sing praises to His Name; YHVH is His Name. Rejoice in His presence.

Father of orphans and Protector of widows – such is our God in His holy dwelling. He gives shelter to the homeless, sets the prisoners free.

Then You gave a rain of blessings, to comfort Your weary children. Your people found a dwelling, and, in Your mercy, o God, You provided for the needy.

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Sunday, 1 September 2019 : Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Sirach 3 : 19-21, 30-31

The greater you are, the more you should humble yourself and thus you will find favour with God. For great is the power of the Lord and it is the humble who give Him glory. Do not seek what is beyond your powers nor search into what is beyond your ability.

As water extinguishes the burning flames, almsgiving obtains pardon for sins. The man who responds by doing good prepares for the future, at the moment of his downfall he will find support.

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Sunday, 25 August 2019 : Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday, we listened to the Lord speaking to all of us through the words of the Sacred Scripture focusing on this one important question that we may have often asked ourselves, “Who is it that can be saved?” Or sometimes we may also ask ourselves the same question in a different way but with similar meaning, such as “Are we worthy or good enough to be saved?”

In what we have heard in today’s Scripture passages we are all reminded that unless we are truly faithful and try our best to do what the Lord wants from us, we will not have any part in the promised inheritance of God which He has promised to all those who are faithful to Him. To do that, we will have to show that we are truly faithful and good in our faith by our conscious and constant actions grounded on this faith that we have.

In our first reading passage today from the Book of the prophet Isaiah, we heard a great prophecy by Isaiah made with regards to the gathering of many nations and peoples from all origins to come to worship the Lord, the prophet spoke of how those people will come to glorify God and to praise Him, and surprisingly, how God will choose even the priests and the Levites from among them, people who were used to be considered as pagans and unworthy of God.

And this is closely related to what the Lord Jesus revealed in our Gospel passage today from the Gospel of St. Luke in which He spoke to the people with regards to the matter of salvation, and how people who assumed that they were saved by God and worthy will be disappointed to know that they are not counted among those whom God will invite to enter his eternal kingdom of glory. Conversely, there will be those people whom the earlier group considered to be unworthy and yet manage enter the kingdom of God.

In fact, the Lord Jesus was criticising the actions and attitudes of the people of Israel, who since the ancient times had been proud of their unique heritage and status as the chosen race and people of God since the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They looked down on the pagan peoples and the races of people outside the direct inheritance of Israel, considering those people to be inferior, unworthy, unclean and as sinners.

Yet, they failed to look at themselves and realise just how they themselves have been unworthy, unclean, sinful and rebellious in their attitudes towards God, in their refusal to obey Him and their stubbornness in rejecting the truths and the messages of the prophets sent into their midst to remind them to be faithful to God. They assumed their salvation to their status as the descendants of God’s faithful servants and treated it as their birthright.

But that is not how God’s salvation works, brothers and sisters in Christ. Through today’s Scripture passages, God wants each and every one of us to know that first and foremost, all of us, each and every one of us are equally beloved by God and we are all equal without distinction and without prejudice, for God is good to all of those whom He loves, even to all of us sinners. He does not distinguish between us but continues to love us all regardless and always tries to reconcile us to Himself.

It was just that He called some first from among the multitudes of His people, to be His first chosen ones and first-called, but He never meant to exclude everyone else, and with the end goal in mind of the salvation of the whole race of man. God desires that all of us who have been sundered and separated from Him will eventually be reunited with Him through repentance and by the power of the love which He has shown us, through which He hopes to bring a change in our hearts, minds, attitudes and way of life.

Yet, many of us are often unaware of this loving aspect of our God, His desire to love us and to show His merciful forgiveness to us, despite of all the things we have done, all the wicked and unbecoming behaviours and attitudes of sinful people. In the second reading today, taken from the Epistle to the Hebrews, we heard how God is represented like that of a father who loves his children, who cares for them and their needs.

And in the same passage, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews also described how the father who cares for his children will chastise the children whenever it is necessary to do so. This is done not because the father does not love the children, but rather precisely because he loves the children that he wants them all to be good and to walk in the right paths, and not to fall and remain in the wrong paths because of wrong thoughts and influences.

That was why God chastised His people, the Israelites many times throughout history, if we explore through the many chapters of the books of the Old Testament. Ever since God had made and renewed the Covenant He established with them and their ancestors, He has always tried to guide them and to discipline them along their journey, by punishing and chastising them as necessary and by weeding out all those who had no love for Him at all, those who were totally unrepentant.

The people living at the time of the Lord Jesus were no different, and it was to them that the Lord addressed what He has revealed to the people in today’s Gospel passage. Many of them professed to believe in God and to be pious, and yet, they did not truly have faith in Him, and their beliefs and piety were often just empty gestures and meaningless because ultimately, in their hearts, God did not have the most important place at all.

They became proud because they thought of themselves as the privileged and chosen people, and those who were most afflicted were those with power and authority, intelligence and knowledge, such as the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, many of whom took great pride in their piety and observance of the laws of Moses, and looked down even on the other people of Israel, especially those whom they considered to be sinners and unworthy.

But they forgot that it was not them who determined whether they are worthy or not. It is truly only God Who is capable and worthy of judging the worthiness of a person. And we have to remember this fact, that it is not we who make ourselves worthy before God, but rather, He calls us to be worthy for Him. He has called us again and again, reminding us and wanting us to seek Him and to be righteous and just once again, free from sin and from all corruptions of our past wickedness.

Contrasting the attitudes of the Pharisees, the teachers of the Law and many among the people of Israel at the time of the Exodus, who doubted the Lord and refused to believe in Him, in His prophets and in His truth, these people who often took great pride in their status, in their privileges and supposed superiority, paled in faith and in righteousness as compared to those people mentioned throughout the Scriptures as the righteous people from the pagan nations.

Take for example, Rahab, the Canaanite woman who helped the scouts of Israel to escape the city in their time of great predicament, and then Ruth, a Moabite whose faith and dedication to God was exemplary and eventually became one of the ancestors of the great king David of Israel. And we also heard of Naaman the Syrian, who although initially was skeptical of the Lord’s power, but devoted himself wholeheartedly after he was healed from his leprosy, and many others who have shown great faith in God.

And in the New Testament, we heard of the faith of the Syro-Phoenician woman who dedicated herself and trusted the Lord so much that despite the apparent rejection and humiliating insults the Lord spoke to her, she remained truly faithful and adamant that the Lord was capable of healing her daughter. This faith mirrored that of the widow of Zarephath at the time of the prophet Elijah, as she took care of the prophet during difficult years.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day all of us are reminded through what we have heard from the Scriptures and what we have discussed throughout today’s discourse, that God’s love is truly great and boundless, sincere and true, never-ending and not being biased. He loves each and every one of us equally without being prejudiced or biased by any of our worldly parameters, the parameters that we often use to divide ourselves into different groups and cliques.

God did not divide us or loved us based on prejudices by skin colour, or language, or height, or our appearances. All these things do not affect His love for us in any way, and as I mentioned many times today, God loves each and every one of us equally without distinction, and each and every one of us have been given opportunities after opportunities, chances after chances to turn away from our sins and to return to our Lord’s loving embrace.

And the number one obstacle that often prevented us from doing so is our pride. As mentioned earlier, those who claimed to know the Lord and claimed salvation to be their own, and even looking down on those whom they deemed to be inferior or less worthy than them, are all due to the pride that are in our hearts. And the more we entertain this pride present within us, the more this pride will grow and suffocate the faith present in us.

Now, we are called by God, as we have been called many times thus far. If we have responded to Him and walked in the path that He has shown us, then it is good and we should continue our journey. But if we have not yet responded to His call and instead we have been so busy and preoccupied, so full of our pride, arrogance, greed and all sorts of things that have prevented us from truly being faithful and from truly loving God, then we should do something at once with our lives.

Instead of being proud and arrogant, let us all be humble, knowing that after all, we are all sinners, and no matter whose sins are more or less serious than the other, all of us have been made corrupt and unworthy by those sins. And those whose sins are greater and repent wholeheartedly will be saved, while those with lesser sins and yet proudly refuse to repent will not be saved. While sin made us corrupted and separated from God, what matters is our desire to repent from those sins and our willingness and sincerity to love God, our loving Father and Creator.

Are we willing to allow God’s love, compassion and mercy to enter into us and make a difference in our lives? Or are we often too full of ourselves, with too much pride and worldly desires that we have not allowed God to enter into our lives and transform them into new lives of grace? We are all called to be true Christians, and the path for us have been shown to us, and the best way to start is for us to be humble, and to be open to the Lord entering into our hearts, into our minds and into the deepest parts of our beings, that from now on, we exist no longer for ourselves, but for the love and for the greater glory of God.

May the Lord continue to guide us in this journey of faith, and may His love continue to sow in us all the same genuine and strong love that He Himself has shown us first, and which we are now called to do the same as well. Let us all be witnesses of God’s love, and show this same love in our interactions with one another, that truly we will be ever righteous and just, and in the end, God will welcome us all into His eternal kingdom and glory. Amen.

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Sunday, 25 August 2019 : 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, 25 August 2019 : 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, 25 August 2019 : 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, 25 August 2019 : 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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Sunday, 18 August 2019 : Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday we listened to the words of the Scriptures through which God wants us to remember that being followers of His, as Christians, as those who have faith in Him will inevitably lead us to face difficulties, challenges and sufferings in life, in whatever form that we may encounter these. We must be prepared to face the trials and opposition throughout our lives as faithful Christians and we cannot expect to have an easy and comfortable life.

There are those among us who think that becoming Christians mean for us to have good, blessed life, as after all, does God not love all of us and does He not provide for all of our needs? And because God loves each and every one of us, then how can we not be happy and good in everything, blessed and be abundant with all kinds of riches and good things in this world? This is what some are thinking wrongly, as what some label as the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ among other labels.

First and foremost, we have to understand that yes, God does love each and every one of us very much, and He has blessed us all wonderfully, first and foremost with the precious gift of life. If God has not loved us, then we would have not existed in the very first instance, and He would not have patiently cared for us, because all of us are sinners, disobedient and rebellious in our ways. And yet, because of His love, God constantly forgives us and wants us to be reconciled to Him.

But just as God has given us so much love, so many blessings and wonders in this world, we mankind inherently allow ourselves again and again to fall into the temptations to sin, to disobey God and to follow instead the path of evil and wickedness. We have listened to the words of Satan and his false lies instead of the truth and the love of God. And that is why there are so much suffering and challenges in this world, especially those facing us Christians.

We all know how Satan hates seeing us being saved from destruction, for ever since the beginning of time, he had plotted for our downfall, right up from the time when he struck against our first forefathers, tempting them to sin and therefore fall from the grace of God. It was him who tempted Cain to kill his own brother Abel when the former became jealous of the latter, and it was him who tempted the people to be proud and build the tower of Babel.

It was him who moved the hearts of the people to sin, to cause the brothers of Joseph to send him into slavery because of the same jealousy they had, it was him who tempted the Israelites throughout the ages and through many years, as they fell again and again into sin, succumbing to the temptations of worldly desire, pride and greed, opposing the good works of those prophets whom God had sent among His people to keep them in the right path.

And that is what we have heard in our first reading today, from the Book of the prophet Jeremiah, in which the plots against the prophet Jeremiah were mentioned, and how those enemies of Jeremiah almost in fact managed to kill him by their plotting. The prophet Jeremiah was among the last prophets to work in the kingdom of Judah, the last of the successor kingdoms of Israel, just before the kingdom and the city of Jerusalem fell to the hands of the Babylonians and were destroyed.

The prophet Jeremiah had many enemies, even though he had faithfully served the Lord and spoke His truth among the people. Many of the people, including those powerful nobles were angry with him because they saw him as a troublemaker and as a doomsayer. But Jeremiah was merely conveying the Lord’s warnings and truthful words, rebuking the wicked behaviours of the people of Judah at that time, who had fallen deeper and deeper into the path of sin.

Thus, we heard how the prophet was thrown into a dark cistern totally unfit for human dwelling, where his enemies hoped to condemn this faithful prophet to death. Many earlier prophets had suffered that fate, being tortured, persecuted and killed for their faith and dedication to God. There were also many false prophets who spoke the words of falsehoods, the agents of Satan who opposed the good works of God and misled the people.

But amidst all of that, we also heard in the same first reading passage today of the actions of some of those who were still upright and faithful, who counted Jeremiah as a friend. They tried to protect him and to save his life, by pleading with the king to intervene and prevent the enemies of Jeremiah from having their way with the prophet and killing him. And they managed to get the prophet out of his predicament and protected him from further danger.

All of these things serve to highlight exactly what the Lord Jesus told His disciples in our Gospel passage today, and also to dispel some of our own misconceptions and the false ‘Prosperity Gospel’ I have mentioned earlier. The Lord Jesus clearly stated in His discourse in the Gospel passage that His coming into this world would bring about divisions and struggles, conflicts and troubles for all those who believe in Him.

For the context of what the Lord had said, we have to understand that most of the Jews if not all of them believed at that time that the Messiah’s coming would lead them into an eternal new era of joy and happiness, of the restoration of the glorious kingdom of Israel as how it was at the time of king David and king Solomon, when the people would once again be powerful and be free from all of their troubles.

The Lord pointed out clearly that this was not to be the case. And very importantly, we must understand that this is not because of the Lord’s own doing or intention. It is very easy for us to misunderstand what the Lord said in today’s Gospel, becoming confused and even disillusioned at what He had said about bringing conflict and division, struggles and persecutions into our midst. Rather, it was by the works of the same Satan that caused all these things to happen.

The Lord has come into this world, revealing His salvation to all the nations, through none other than Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour of all. And Satan worked hard to undermine His works, by trying to tempt Him, by trying to dissuade Him through His Apostles and disciples, speaking through them at times to weaken His resolve, and tempting Him in the Gardens of Gethsemane during the time of His agony.

But when all these failed, Satan struck through those who condemned Jesus to death, death on the Cross, thinking that by killing the Messiah of God just as he had managed to make the people to persecute and kill the prophets in the earlier days, he could finally bring mankind to ruination and destruction as he has always intended. Yet, it was through that same Cross that Satan was handed the ultimate and greatest defeat, for Christ triumphed with His Cross, delivering the salvation of God by His act of ultimate sacrifice.

Satan has indeed been defeated, but he is still always ever desperate, for he knows that even though salvation has been delivered to us, but as long as temptation is around us, he can still strike at us through those same temptations by which he has seduced our race for time immemorial. Many had fallen into his allure and temptations, and through all of the means in his disposal, he strikes especially at those whom the Lord had gathered from the nations, that is all of us Christians.

And that is why Christians throughout the history of the Church has been persecuted in various circumstances and conditions, facing difficulties and oppressions, rejections and ridicule, having to endure humiliation and difficult trials and even unto martyrdom. Many Christians have paid dearly for their faith with their lives, as the lives of the many martyrs of the Church can tell us. Many of these are those who were mentioned in our second reading by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

In that passage, we heard the encouragement spoken by the author of the Epistle, of the innumerable witnesses of the faith which have been present and who have shown their undying faith, even in the face of the toughest persecutions and difficulties. Many of them have been rejected and persecuted even by those who were closest to them, and yet, they persevered and showed love instead of hatred towards their enemies.

And first and foremost among all of them was the Lord Himself, Who showed us what the true meaning of suffering is. The Lord suffered all the painful punishments intended for us because of our sins, but He bore them all willingly because He loves each and every one of us, and that love allowed Him to endure through the many bitterness and sufferings, and how He can also forgive even those who have condemned Him to such suffering and death.

Are we then able to have the same faith and commitment to God, even knowing that we will encounter difficulties and challenges in our path, even from those who are close and dear to us, brothers and sisters in Christ? Being Christians truly mean for us to embrace Christ fully in our lives as Our Lord and Saviour, and we can only do so by truly and wholeheartedly believing in Him through words, deeds and actions. And often, to stand by our faith in Christ means going against the norms and ways of this world.

The Lord wants us all to realise this, and how He has also done so much for us, out of His so great love for us, that He was willing to shoulder the burden of His Cross, suffer and die for us sinners. If He has suffered in such a way, then it is just right that we will likely to suffer as well, for Satan strikes at all those who are faithful and good, and all these persecutions and trials come about because of him and his wicked allies. But we must not lose hope and we must be courageous and strong in faith, for God is truly always by our side.

And let us all also follow the examples of those who have helped Jeremiah to escape his terrible predicament, realising that as fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord, all of us as Christians should take good care of one another and be concerned with each other, showing care and concern for those among us who are less fortunate and are in difficulty. Let us all journey together as one family of believers, as the members of God’s one Church, that we may truly find our way to God, our loving Father and Creator.

May the Lord continue to guide us and may He strengthen in us the faith which we should have for Him. May He continue to empower us to persevere through the difficulties and obstacles we may face on our way. Let us all look forward instead to the eternal glory and true happiness that God promised all of those who remain true and faithful to Him to the very end. Amen.