Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday our attention is brought to the need for us all to be faithful, to be prepared and to be committed to God, at all times throughout our lives so that we may truly be ready and be worthy of Him. Through the passages we have heard, we received the assurance from God that all those who have been faithful to Him shall not be disappointed, because He has loved them all very well and blessed them.

In our first reading today, taken from the Book of Wisdom, we heard of an assurance for the people of God, relating to them the memory of their ancestors, the Israelites during their time of slavery in Egypt. By linking the experience to the well-known story of how God saved His entire people and liberated them from slavery, God wanted His people to know and to remember that even in their darkest moments, God always remembers those whom He loves.

The reference to the Passover in that passage is a reference to how the Passover is passed on year after year, from generation to generation, as a reminder of the moment of salvation for God’s people, when God intervened personally to save His people, holding them by hand out of the land of Egypt, foiling the plots their slavemasters and enemies had on them, and saved them by the gift of His love.

And then in the second reading today, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the author who wrote to the audience who were likely the Jewish converts to Christianity, spoke of even more examples of how God rewarded His faithful servants and how He remained true to the promises which He has made to His beloved ones. The examples of Abraham and Sarah were given in that passage, detailing how Abraham followed God faithfully and constantly, despite of the journey and challenges he had to face.

God made a great Covenant with Abraham because of his faith, promising that his descendants will be great and numerous, countless like the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. And God remained true to that Covenant, being with Abraham and his descendants, with the people who have come from among his descendants, right to this very day, caring for all of us and protecting us, providing for us and loving us dearly.

Sarah was also mentioned, as having a son that she and Abraham had waited for a long, long time. She remained faithful to God in the end, although during the many years of waiting, according to the Book of Genesis, she faltered a few times, in her attempt to get a son through her slave Hagar, in how she doubted initially when the Lord came to Abraham and her telling them that she would have a son within the year, even in her very old age.

We see in that occasion, of how God is so generous and ever-loving, ever-patient, in caring for His beloved people, even giving chances to those who have faltered, as Sarah had done, and as later on, the Israelites themselves had done. In the rest of the Books of Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, we can see how the Israelites often rebelled and disobeyed against God, and how God punished them many times. But in the end, He continued to care for them and loved them.

Now, having heard so much about how God loved His people, and if we read on through the rest of the Scriptures, we can see even more examples of such love and faithfulness from God to His people, to the Covenant He has made with them. And God gave us the perfect proof of His love by giving us the ultimate gift in Christ, His own Beloved and Begotten Son, to be Our Saviour and Our Liberator.

And through Christ, God has once again brought His people to freedom, and this time, not just the people of Israel, but the whole race of man, for through Christ, Who is the Divine Word Incarnate, God made Himself incarnate in the flesh of Man, fully Man and fully Divine, all of us have come to share in the humanity of Christ and therefore become God’s adopted children, and as the children of Abraham by faith, for Christ is also born of the race of Abraham.

God fulfilled the promises He made to His servants, establishing the descendants of Abraham, that is all of us who have been faithful to Him, and granting us the promise of eternal glory and inheritance He has kept and prepared for us. He has blessed His people and made us great once again, rescuing us from the fated destruction and promised us that at the end of time He will come to gather all of us to Himself.

And that is what we are reminded of through the Gospel passage today, when the Lord Jesus Himself used a parable to remind all of His disciples and followers to be ever faithful and to be ever vigilant in faith so that they would not be taken by surprise if the Lord comes once again, in fulfilment of the promise which He has made, and which He had adequately forewarned to all of us, that is the timing of the Last Judgment and the end times.

As we have heard and discussed earlier, God is ever patient, ever forgiving and ever loving, giving us many opportunities, again and again, one after another, just because He truly loves us all that much. But we must not take His love ever for granted, as the time will come for us to have to reckon for our decisions and commitments in life, whether we follow God or refuse to walk in His path.

The Lord has always been faithful to His words, He is ever true and ever just, and therefore, if He has promised of His second coming in glory, to judge all of us according to our deeds and to our faith, then it will eventually happen, at a time not of our choosing but at a time we will not expect at all. God alone knows when the exact time of this moment of reckoning will happen, and what each and every one of us should do is that we must be prepared for Him.

In the parable that the Lord used to teach His disciples, He spoke of two types of servants and stewards, one are those who are faithful to the commands of the master, obeying his will and doing whatever they can to fulfil the works of the master, being diligent and hardworking, ever prepared and ever ready, while the other stewards are those who delayed and were being complacent and lazy in their work, thinking that their master would not come back so soon.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, each and every one of us are those stewards whom the master has entrusted with his household, that is this world, entrusted by God, Our Lord and Master, to be our responsibility. The Lord has also given us all the free will to choose between obedience and disobedience, between faith and impiety, between the path He has shown and the path of temptations and sin showed to us by Satan.

Are we then able to commit ourselves to a wise choice, thinking carefully and discerning well on what we are to embrace in our lives from now on? Should we choose the Lord Who has been faithful to us all these while, ever loving and ever forgiving, ever compassionate and generous in everything? Or should we choose the way of this world, all the false offerings and temptations of the devil?

Beware, brethren, for the lure of the devil is very powerful indeed, and unless we have genuine and true faith and love for God, we will be easily trapped by the devil’s lures, and end up falling into disobedience and sin, and therefore into damnation and eternal suffering. Are we able to commit ourselves to the path that Christ our Lord has shown us? This requires us to be persistent and resilient, to persevere through the temptations and challenges we may face through this journey in our lives.

Today, all of us are called to be dutiful and good stewards, to be always exemplary in our lives and be ever prepared and ready for the Lord. And this means that we should be faithful just as Abraham, Sarah and all other faithful servants of God have been faithful. And we should not be afraid of failures or being distracted in our journey of faith, as no one in this world is perfect, and because of that, it is perfectly normal for us to falter or to encounter obstacles from time to time.

However, the most important thing here is for us to pick ourselves up and remain strong despite the challenges we encounter, despite the failures we have encountered and all the downfalls we have experienced. Remember that God always loves us, and He has always given us chances after chances, and He is always willing to help us up through those challenges. If He has not given up on us, then all the more we should not give up on ourselves. We must persist and remain strong in our journey, so as to draw ever closer to God and to be worthy of Him when He comes again.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all pray asking God for the courage and the strength to go through these respective journeys of our lives, that we may bear the crosses and trials of our lives with faith, with courage and with determination and passion, burning love for God. May God continue to guide us throughout this journey and may He empower us all to live ever more faithfully in His presence from now on. God bless us all. Amen.

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday all of us are brought, through the Sacred Scripture passages we have heard, to reflect on our own respective lives, and what pursuits and attention we have given to the various desires we have in life all these while. The Scripture passages today have a very clear direction and meaning, that is to remind us of our own mortality, smallness, imperfections and powerlessness precisely because of our mortality.

In the first reading today, taken from the Book of Ecclesiastes or Qoheleth, we heard about the author mentioned about the many meaninglessness in life, in the gaining of knowledge, in the toiling and hard labour in work and efforts for sustenance and perhaps for income and money, among many others. It is meaningless not because those things themselves are meaningless, but rather, we have to understand that the author focused on the impulsive and often overly addictive pursuits for these things among us mankind.

These are the things that are presented very well and clearly by the Lord Jesus in our Gospel passage today, in which He spoke of the parable of the rich man and his wealth to His disciples and to the people who were gathered before Him. It stemmed from a question and request from a man who wanted the Lord to persuade and to advice his brother to share with him the family inheritance, a common issue that often face the members of our many families.

From what we have briefly heard being described in the Gospel passage, we can assume quite well that the man was having a dispute with regards to the family inheritance and possessions with his brother. This is something that we must have heard a lot of times, in families and communities all around us, and even perhaps in our own families, how the members of the family bicker, disagree and even fight against one another disputing and seeking, desiring and wanting a part of the family possessions, wealth and other things.

Thus, the Lord made it clear to the people, making use of the opportunity as a teachable lesson both for the man who asked Him to advice his brother, as well as the rest of the people and His disciples that seeking, desiring and wanting the worldly possessions and goods, wealth and other forms of worldly satisfaction is truly not worth what we may think they are, just as the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes mentioned earlier.

In the parable the Lord told the people, we heard of a rich man who was very proud of his achievements and wealth, his many granaries and riches stored in those granaries, and how he planned and thought a lot on how he could enlarge the granaries he had so that he could store even more of the grains harvested from his vast tracts of rich and fertile farmlands. He has planned in his mind how he wanted to gain even more riches and enjoy the many more years of living with all those riches.

And the Lord through that parable showed His people how futile their searches and many ambitions for power, worldly glory, wealth, fame and glamour are, as the rich man was destined to die that very night, and none of his numerous wealth and plentiful stored riches could have saved him from the inevitable. No one can escape death, and death is a certainty that we mankind have to face, and when we die, nothing that we gain for ourselves in this world, all the worldly treasures and goods will be brought with us through death.

Unfortunately, brothers and sisters in Christ, this is exactly what many of us have been doing wrongly all these while. We have put our focus, effort and attention so much on trying to gather for ourselves all these worldly goods, glories and achievements that we become intoxicated and addicted to them, and in our endless pursuits for these things, we end up forgetting why we live in this world and the reason for our existence all these while.

In our second reading passage today, St. Paul in his Epistle to the Church and the faithful people of God in the city of Colossae, he spoke of what each and every one of us as Christians are called to do in our lives, and that is to seek for greater things in Christ, and not to seek the false treasures and the futile pursuits for worldly glory in this world. He exhorted the people of God to follow the Lord faithfully, and to reject all sorts of immorality, sin and the many temptations being present in this world.

That is why today, all of us having heard and listened to the words of the Scripture passages that strongly urged and reminded us to seek the true treasures of our life, we are now called to reflect on how we have lived our lives thus far and how much progress we have actually made in trying to find this true treasure of our life. Have we been acting like that rich man who cared for nothing but for the greater glorification of himself and for the greater wealth of his own?

On this day we are called to reflect on how futile is the pursuit of wealth, glory, fame, worldly pleasures and all sorts of excesses of this world. And as I mentioned earlier in this discourse, we must be careful and not misunderstand that we must abandon everything that is worldly and all sorts of worldly possessions, wealth or anything related to this world. We must understand that we do still need to have these things, but it is just that we cannot be overly obsessed and preoccupied with them as what many of us often do.

While we live in this world, we should be smart and make good use of whatever resources and blessings that God has given each and every one of us. However, we must not allow these things to overcome us and rule over us instead. We make use of them and not they make use of us instead. Unfortunately, it is our weak human nature and predisposition to desire and greed that often brought us to fall into sin.

We are easily tempted by the many worldly glory, temptations, pleasures and all the things that cause us to forget about God and our true treasure in life. We seek for glory and happiness in this world that do not truly last, and often we are not able to overcome our attachment, and as a result, we fail to notice how we should go forward in life seeking true happiness and joy, and instead, are trapped in the endless cycles of desire.

We have to strive to look beyond the meaninglessness of our endless pursuits of power, glory, fame and all those things that often prevent us from finding our true treasure, which is nothing less than God, our true treasure and destination, the only One Who is capable of granting us true happiness and joy that is beyond anything else that this world can give us. For no matter how wonderful, joyful or great all the treasures of this world can be, and how good they may seem to be, they will not last.

In fact, much sufferings present in this world are caused by our own desire for all these things, and how our conflicting desires with one another cause us to bicker, to fight, and to exploit those who are weaker than us, so that we can gain for ourselves more of what we desire and want. And we can never be truly happy since whatever we do to gain all those desires, we will have inadvertently or even consciously caused unhappiness or suffering all around us.

As the Scripture says, ‘What does it gain for us to gain the entire world and yet lose our soul?’, we are reminded today that we must resist the temptations of false pleasures and happiness in this world. Satan, our great enemy knows this very well, and he is doing whatever he can in order to tempt us and to bring us to our downfall, by showing us all sorts of false pleasures in life that seem to be better, more enjoyable and more wonderful than the path leading towards God and His salvation.

Are we able then to make good use of whatever blessings and worldly goodness God has given us, but without being overcome by our desires and greed? Are we able to grow deeper in our relationship with God, and in our love for Him so that despite all those temptations and challenges we will have to face, we will always remain steadfast in faith and stay faithful in all things?

May the Lord guide us all and may He empower each and every one of us to live faithfully in His presence from now on, if we have not done so. May He continue to love us and bless all of our good works, that we may come to seek the true treasure and happiness in our lives, that lies in God alone, in being with Him and enjoying forever the glorious inheritance and blissful life He has promised us all. Amen.