Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 16 : 1, 5-6, 8b and 15
Hear a just cause, o Lord, listen to my complaint. Give heed to my prayer for there is no deceit on my lips.
Hold firm my steps upon Your path, that my feet may not stumble. I call on You, You will answer me, o God; incline Your ear and hear my word.
Under the shadow of Your wings hide me. As for me, righteous in Your sight, I shall see Your face and, awakening, gaze my fill on Your likeness.
Liturgical Colour : Green
2 Maccabees 7 : 1-2, 9-14
It happened also that seven brothers were arrested with their mother. The king had them scourged and flogged to force them to eat the flesh of a pig which was prohibited by the Law.
One of them, speaking in behalf of all, said, “What do you want to find out from us? We are prepared to die right now rather than break the law of our ancestors.”
At the moment of his last breath, he said, “Murderer, you now dismiss us from life, but the king of the world will raise us up. He will give us eternal life since we die for His laws.”
After this, they punished the third. He stuck his tongue out when asked to, bravely stretched forth his hands, and even had the courage to say : “I have received these limbs from God, but for love of His laws I now consider them as nothing. For I hope to recover them from God.”
The king and his court were touched by the courage of this young man, so unconcerned about his own sufferings. When this one was dead, they subjected the fourth to the same torture. At the point of death, he cried out, “I would rather die at the hands of mortals, and wait for the promises of God who will raise us up; you, however, shall have no part in the resurrection of life.”
Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we hear today how the Lord loves all, even the rich, the privileged, and the sinners. He cares for everyone without distinction of class or rank. What matters to Him is, how dedicated we can be to Him, giving all of our very beings, committed to Him in prayer.
Today, we heard the story of Zaccheus the dwarf, who was a tax collector and a rich man. He climbed the tree despite the obvious difficulty he faced because of his height, just so that he can see Jesus who came to visit the area. The Lord praised him and his faith, particularly in front of those who slander him and Jesus Himself for interacting with a person widely considered as a traitor and a great sinner at the time of Jesus.
This was because, at that time, the place where Jesus conducted His ministry, the present day Israel and Palestine, was under the rule and authority of the Roman Empire, as the province of Judea. The Romans imposed taxes on all their provinces and territories, and in this, they employed the local merchants and agents to conduct the tax collection.
Those people then became wealthy, as they were well paid by their Roman employers, but they became the objects of scorn by their own people, seeing them as traitors who sold their race and their nation to the Romans and get profits and much money from doing so. This is of course not true, but it is what most people believed in, and as such, they developed stereotypes against the tax collectors like Zaccheus and dissociated themselves from these ‘wicked’ people.
That was why the people sneered when Jesus said to Zaccheus that He wanted to have a meal at his place and eat together with him. They did so because they must have thought, how can a teacher and a prophet (to them) like Jesus be mingling together with such sinners, traitors in fact no less. This is compared to the Pharisees who were well respected in the Jewish society, who disdained sinners and considered themselves holy above all others.
It is their pride that became their downfall. They pride themselves in their holiness and great piety, which they had achieved through prayer and rituals they went through every day. But in fact, in their hearts, they do not have God. God was absent from their hearts, and His love did not take root in them. Instead, it is in ‘sinful’ man like Zaccheus, where the Lord truly resided, and made his heart His residence.
Our Lord and God is truly loving and merciful, brothers and sisters, because He is willing to forgive the sins of even great sinners like Zaccheus, providing that they come and seek His mercy and love in humility. And that was precisely what Zaccheus had done. He surrendered himself, baring his sins to God, and made a public proclamation of faith to God. He was sinful, yes, and yet through his humility and love for God, he was forgiven and given glory, while those who slandered sinners and did not acknowledge their sins were rebuked.
God gives mankind many chances to repent, to acknowledge their sinfulness, abandon their old lifestyle of sin, and embrace His laws and precepts, that is basically love, following what Christ had told us in His ministry. Yet, to many of us, it is not easy for us to look away from our sins and instead focus ourselves towards God. We have often been so immersed in our sins, that we have been ensnared deeply by them. Yet, that does not mean that we have no hope.
Indeed, as I always would like to say, the greater the sinner is, the more likely that one is to be aware and to be ashamed of his or her sins. The greater a sinner is, the more that the person can be aware of how evil his or her actions, words, and deeds had been, and consequently approach closer and closer towards the throne of the Divine Mercy, that is God.
This is of course not for everyone, as not many will come to realisation of their sins, or have the desire to repent from those sins. Regardless of how great and how many the sins we have committed, it is often that we either ignore the sins we have committed or commit even more sins. As such, we fall deeper and deeper into the path towards damnation, and away from God our loving Father.
We have to be more like Zaccheus, for despite his sinfulness and how he was slandered in the society for their perception of him, he did not shy himself from meeting the Lord and making the effort to come and see Him, again despite his short stature which made it difficult for him to do so. We ought to be more like him, in making that effort, to seek the Lord, remorseful and shameful of our own sins, and make the same commitment as Zaccheus, to do what is good from then on. Either as an act of charity as Zaccheus had done, or through even simple acts of love to others in need.
Another thing that we have been taught today is, not to become like the people who slandered Zaccheus and Jesus our Lord, simply because of their prejudices and bias, formed by preformed concepts they had on Zaccheus as the ‘traitorous’ tax collector. We should not be quick to judge others for what they are, and indeed we must not judge, as Jesus, in other instances had taught us so.
Why so? That is because if we judge others, then we too can be judged, and often that we who did not notice our own sins, will be judged more than the one whom we had judged. We should never form any prejudice or preconceptions in our minds about anyone, and even if the person has shortcomings in him or her. Rather, what we should do is that we should encourage and help each other, supporting each other on the path towards salvation.
Therefore, let us today aspire to become more like Zaccheus, seeking the Lord in our lives, and vow to change our ways for the better. May the Lord who loves us continue to watch over us, bless us, and empower us always. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Luke 19 : 1-10
When Jesus entered Jericho and passed through the city, a man named Zaccheus lived there. He was a tax collector and a wealthy man. He wanted to see what Jesus was like, but he was a short man and could not see Him because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed up a sycamore tree. From there he would be able to see Jesus, who was going to pass that way.
When Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, Zaccheus, come down quickly, for I must stay at your house today.” So Zaccheus climbed down and received Him joyfully.
All the people who saw it began to grumble, and said, “He has gone as a guest to the house of a sinner.” But Zaccheus spoke to Jesus, “Half of what I own, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone, I will pay him back four times as much.”
Looking at him, Jesus said, “Salvation has come to this house today, for he is also a true son of Abraham. The Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.”
Liturgical Colour : Green
2 Thessalonians 1 : 11 – 2 Thessalonians 2 : 2
This is why we constantly pray for you; may our God make you worthy of His calling. May He, by His power, fulfill your good purposes and your work prompted by faith. In that way, the Name of Jesus our Lord will be glorified through you, and you through Him, according to the loving plan of God and of Christ Jesus the Lord.
Brothers and sisters, let us speak about the coming of Christ Jesus, our Lord, and our gathering to meet Him. Do not be easily unsettled. Do not be alarmed by what a prophet says or by any report, or by some letter said to be ours, saying that the day of the Lord is at hand.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 144 : 1-2, 8-9, 10-11, 13cd-14
I will extol You, my God and King; I will bless Your Name forever. I will praise You day after day and exalt Your Name forever.
Compassionate and gracious is the Lord, slow to anger and abounding in love. The Lord is good to everyone; His mercy embraces all His creation.
All Your works will give You thanks; all Your saints, o Lord, will praise You. They will tell of the glory of Your kingdom and speak of Your power.
The Lord is true to His promises and lets His mercy show in all He does. The Lord lifts up those who are falling and raises those who are beaten down.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Wisdom 11 : 22 – Wisdom 12 : 2
For the entire world lies before You, just enough to tip the scales, a drop of morning dew falling on the ground. But because You are Almighty, You are merciful to all; You overlook sins and give Your children time to repent. You love everything that exists and hate nothing that You have made; had You hated anything, You would not have formed it.
How could anything endure if You did not will it? And how could anything last that You had not willed? You have compassion on all because all is Yours, o Lord, Lover of life.
In fact Your immortal Spirit is in all. And so by degrees You correct those who sin, You admonish them, reminding them how they have strayed so that turning away from evil they may trust in You, Lord.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Brethren, beloved brothers and sisters in Christ. What right do we have to be proud and judgmental before God and before others? What right do we have to condemn others because we think that we are better than them? And what right do we have to boast of ourselves and the good things that we do, before the Lord our God? None, we have none of these rights, because we truly are all sinners without exception, all equal before the Lord.
The Lord loves all those who are humble, and those who are in deep realisation of their own sins. They are truly beloved by God, because they are those who are more likely to have God in their hearts, and also those who are more likely to put the Lord at the centre of their hearts and at the centre of their very being. It does not mean that the proud and the mighty do not have the Lord in their hearts, but they are predisposed to put less importance to the Lord compared to those who are meek and humble.
This is because, due to our nature, our pride very often stands in the way of salvation in God, as well as blocking the love of God from reaching us. When pride masters our hearts, it grows to arrogance, and a feeling of superiority that tends to shut out anything that points out our inadequacies and mistakes, because we tend to put ever more and more trust in our own strengths and abilities.
We must not therefore, be like the Pharisee, who basked in his own glory, and praising his own goodness. He even went on to look down upon those whom he considered to be not as good as him, particularly the tax collector. He thought of himself as being pious and saved, but in fact he is truly empty within him, and without God as the centre of his life.
In doing what he had done, the Pharisee had highlighted the pride he has in him, and how he gave in to that pride, and finally, in his prayers, he gave glory to himself and did not give glory to God. The Lord who sees all and knows all will give what the Pharisee and other people like him, what they deserved. They deserved neither praise nor honour, because in their pride, they gave no glory to God, and in a prayer full of hubris, they revealed the darkness of their souls.
Brethren, although Jesus used the example of the Pharisees to depict the bad seed in the society, in many different occasions and conditions, that is mainly because at that time, the Pharisees were well known for their very strict adherence to the laws of Moses, as well as the other, numerous Jewish laws and customs.
This is in fact good, as indeed, we all need to obey and follow God’s rules and laws. However, in the way that this was done by the Pharisees, they had not done what the Lord truly wanted them to do, and in fact, the Pharisees obeyed mostly the laws of men, that is the numerous rules, regulations, and rituals created by the people over many generations.
They have lost the understanding of the true meaning of the law of God, as well as how it should be implemented. They had become obsessed at the observation of the laws derived from the true law, that they did those rules without true understanding of why they did so. Even worse, as the leaders of the people and role model of the people, they have misguided the people of God, and also exploited them, by imposing on them the crushing weight of such rules and regulations.
What the Lord truly wants from us, His children, is the love and dedication that we can give Him, genuinely and sincerely, from the depth of our hearts. This kind of love is not easy for us to achieve, as it means the total giving of ourselves, the opening of our hearts to the Lord and His love. In the same way, the Lord also wants us to love one another just as we have loved ourselves, and just as we have loved Him. These are the essence of the true desire of the Lord for us, through which He guided us via His laws and commandments.
This is why, the Lord loves the prayer of the tax collector mentioned in Jesus’ teaching, where He mentioned that the prayer of the tax collector was heard and he had his sins forgiven for him. The tax collector did not only distance himself from the Holy Presence of God, feeling so unworthy because he realised the depth of his faults and iniquities, but he even lowered himself humbly before God’s presence, kneeling in great shame before God.
And yet, it is this tax collector who are more capable of understanding his own sins, being in greater realisation of the faults he had committed. As I would like to highlight again what the late, saintly Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen had said, that the greater the sin one has, the closer is one to the throne of mercy. The darker one’s sins are, the more shame they should experience before the Lord their God.
Yet, the problem lies in that, many of us today are desensitised to sin. We are no longer feeling that shame whenever we commit sinful deeds. We instead even find sin to be good things and things that we enjoy. Hence we begin our path to downfall, by not realising the gravity of our sinfulness, and putting our pride ahead of us. In essence, we are becoming more and more like the Pharisee instead of the remorseful tax collector.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, lastly, the Lord also taught us the importance of prayer through the same parable, that we ought to pray, but not just any prayer. A prayer that is truly genuine and from the heart, made in complete submission to the will of God, and also complete willingness to listen to the word of God being spoken in our hearts.
Prayer is not just about us talking all the time, and neither it is a litany of demands and wishes for us to send to the Lord. Instead, a prayer is ought to be how it is intended, that is as a two-way communication channel between us and the Lord. That is what prayer truly is, brothers and sisters! Talk less and listen more! The Lord who knows all certainly knows what we truly need. It is often that what we desire is not what we need. In our greed it is likely for us to desire even things that we do not truly need.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, today all of us are called to a life of greater holiness, deeper spirituality, and greater commitment to the Lord. We need a deeper faith, a healthier prayer life, and ultimately, greater dedication and love for our fellow mankind, and especially, for the Lord Himself. May we grow ever stronger in our faith, our hope and love in God. God bless us all. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Luke 18 : 9-14
Jesus told another parable to some people, fully convinced of their own righteousness, who looked down on others : “Two men went up to the Temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, and the other a tax collector.”
“The Pharisee stood by himself, and said, ‘I thank You, God, that I am not like other people, grasping, crooked, adulterous, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and give the tenth of all my income to the Temple.'”
“In the meantime the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.'”
“I tell you, when this man went back to his house, he had been reconciled with God, but not the other. For whoever makes himself out to be great will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be raised up.”
Liturgical Colour : Green
2 Timothy 4 : 6-8, 16-18
As for me, I am already poured out as a libation, and the moment of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness with which the Lord, the just Judge, will reward me on that day; and not only me, but all those who have longed for His glorious coming.
At my first hearing in court no one supported me; all deserted me. May the Lord not hold it against them. But the Lord was at my side, giving me strength to proclaim the Word fully, and let all the pagans hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will save me from all evil, bringing me to His heavenly kingdom. Glory to Him forever and ever. Amen!
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 