holiness

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Monday, 8 April 2013 : Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ. Today we commemorate the day when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, the Mother of God, and announced to her, the great news of joy, that the Lord had finally made true His promises, that He would come and then save the people of Israel and all mankind. It is through Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born through Mary, His mother, that the salvation of the world came into fruition, the culmination of God’s long-conceived plan since the day of our fall into sin and death.

That day was indeed a glorious day, because the angel announced the arrival of the Messiah, who was to be none other than Son of God Himself, Jesus, born into man, incarnate from His divinity and took up the mortal man’s body though without sin. But the greater is the joy and glory because of what Mary did on that day, for her faith and obedience to the Lord was so great and perfect, that through her humble acceptance of that great mission to bear Christ in herself, and through her humility, that the salvation of the world and all mankind was possible.

Without Mary’s full obedience and acceptance of her mission in delivering Christ into this world, the coming of the Messiah would not have happened. It is her attitude towards the vocation that God had placed in her, which earned her our praise and adoration, the first and greatest of all the saints in heaven, and none other than the mother of our Lord Himself, to whom our Lord would listen, just as at the wedding in Cana.

We all had deserved death since the beginning of time, since when our ancestors, from the time of Adam, succumbed to the temptations and the lies of the evil one, preferring worldly pleasures to God and His love, rebelling against His great kindness. Through this act of treason, we deserved death, but yet, our God, with His great love for us, was keen to show us His mercy, and throughout time, through countless prophets, He had made His intentions clear for all to see and listen, that He would send a deliverer, the Messiah, who would correct all things once again, and made the world into a perfection once again, cleansed from all the taints of evil.

So great was God’s love that He gave us His only Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, that through Him, all of mankind and all creation have hope of a new life, an eternal life with God, and no longer be separated from the very God who loves us very much. To make all these possible, Christ would have to lower Himself, to be as men are, but unblemished, without the taints of sin. Pure as crystal and white as snow, and that is who Christ was. Because He was to give Himself up, not as mere burnt or sin offering and sacrifices, but as the true Lamb of God, our paschal lamb of sacrifice, whose purity and unblemished nature was the only one in all creation worthy of redeeming all of us from our unavoidable fate, that is death.

While the blood of goats and bulls was only able to cleanse sin temporarily, and that people would still die after those offerings, those cleansed by the Precious Blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ would no longer experience death, that is eternal death. For through the offering of His Body and Blood, Christ had given each of us a new lease of life, a life that is filled with the glory and love of God. In baptism, that we received, either as a baby or as an adult, we received this new life. We were dead to our old life, and we shared in this death, the death of Christ on the cross, that we die to ourselves and our sins, and with the Risen Lord, we too are resurrected to begin a new life in God.

It is not easy to obey God’s commandment and will, especially in the case of what God had entrusted to Mary, and to no other person. For Mary was born without sin as well, immaculate, just as her Son is, because, to be the vessel through whom God would be incarnate as Man into this world, no vessel that is tainted with sin would be worthy. Mary’s obedience made her role in our faith ever greater, since her obedience became a great role model to all of us. She obeyed despite the difficulties, and the implications of her acceptance would have on her.

Remember that what happened after Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant. He wanted to divorce her, though with honour, so that she would not be treated as an adulterous woman, since she was a virgin, and yet with child. This was the implication that would happen to Mary, all the difficulties she had to endure, by accepting the will of God, to bear Christ in herself, that through her holy womb, Christ was brought forth as Jesus, her Son. Yet she obeyed without conditions, and submitted fully to the will of God, gladly embracing the role that she is to play in the history of salvation.

As we commemorate this great event, let us reflect this fact, and whether we too can be as courageous, faithful, and obedient as Mary was, in bravely and gladly answering the call of God, that all the great works of our Saviour would be possible. Can we begin today, to strive to be more like her, and to follow her example? We may not have to bear Christ and give birth to Him like Mary did, but in our own surroundings and in our own lives, we have our own missions and callings by God, and the things God had entrusted upon us.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, today, let us pray, that we would be able to follow after the example of Mary, the Mother of God, that we can also say yes, to our Lord, and accept His will, and the mission He had entrusted upon all of us with great humility and great joy. May God bless all of us, and make our faith stronger, that we will always live in the favour of God, filled with His love. Amen.

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(Easter Vigil) Saturday, 30 March 2013 : Easter Vigil of the Resurrection of the Lord, Holy Week (Seventh Reading)

Ezekiel 36 : 16-17a, 18-28

The word of YHVH came to me in these terms, “Son of man, when Israel occupied her own land and defiled it by her way of life and her actions. I poured out My fury on them because of the blood they shed in the land and because they defiled it with their filthy idols.”

“Then I scattered them among the nations  and dispersed them in other lands. I judged them according to their conduct and their actions. But when they were brought to other nations, My Holy Name was profane because others said of them : ‘The people of YHVH had to be exiled from His land!'”

“Then I was concerned for My Holy Name, profaned by Israel among the nations where she had been dispersed. Now you shall say to the people of Israel : ‘It is not for your sake that I am about to act, but because of My Holy Name that you have profaned in the places where you have gone.'”

“‘I will make known the holiness of My great Name, profaned among the nations because of you, and they will know that I am YHVH when I show them My holiness among you. For I will gather you from all the nations and bring you back to your own land.'”

“‘Then I shall pour pure water over you and you shall be made clean – cleansed from the defilement of all your idols. I shall give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I shall remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.'”

“‘I shall put  My spirit within you and move you to follow My decrees and keep My laws. You will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you shall be My people and I will be Your God.'”

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Sunday, 17 March 2013 : 5th Sunday of Lent (Third Scrutiny for Baptism) (Second Reading)

Philippians 3 : 8-14

Still more, everything seems to me as nothing compared with the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. For His sake I have let everything fall away and I now consider all as garbage, if instead I may gain Christ.

May I be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law, but with the righteousness that God gives to those who believe. May I know Him and experience the power of His resurrection and share in His sufferings and become like Him in His death, and attain through this, God willing, the resurrection from the dead!

I do not believe I have already reached the goal, nor do I consider myself perfect, but I press on till I conquer Christ Jesus, as I have already been conquered by Him. No, brothers and sisters, I do not claim to have claimed the prize yet. I say only this : forgetting what is behind me, I race forward and run towards the goal, my eyes on the prize to which God has called us from above in Christ Jesus.

 

Alternative reading from Year A (For Third Scrutiny for Baptism)

 

Romans 8 : 8-11

Therefore, those walking according to the flesh cannot please God. Yet your existence is not in the flesh, but in the spirit, because the Spirit of God is within you. If you did not have the Spirit of Christ, you would not belong to Him. But Christ is within you; though the body is branded by death as a consequence of sin, the spirit is life and holiness.

And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is within you, He who raised Jesus Christ from among the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies. Yes, He will do it through His Spirit who dwells within you.

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Friday, 8 March 2013 : 3rd Week of Lent, Memorial of St. John of God, Religious (Scripture Reflection)

Today we hear again about love, and about compassion, these two most wonderful things in the world that came to us from God Himself. For God is love, and God is compassion. He loves all things, and especially all mankind, the last and greatest of all of His creations. Of course God hates all forms of evil and sin, but even greater is His love is for us sinners, if only that we too show Him our sincere and pure love for Him.

That is why the greatest commandments of all is to love, and even the base and heart of all the ten commandments in the Ten Commandments given to Moses, in all the prohibitions and the wordings are basically about love, and the commands given by God not to spurn the love between God and man, and the love between mankind themselves, who are fellow brothers and sisters in God. That is why love is very important, especially in our world today, when love is increasingly marginalised and misinterpreted.

For love is not just a commercial kind of love, and love is not desire and lust. Contrary to what popular perception is, love is not just limited to the love between a love-struck male and a love-struck female. That is just one form of love, and there are many kinds of love, and true love is definitely much more difficult than just to say “I love you” or giving presents and expensive gifts to show our ‘love’.

For to love means to have the profound and concrete change in our heart, and our being, and in some cases even to give ourselves in its entirety, to the other person, especially in the case of our love to God, to love Him with all our hearts, our minds, and our souls, and of course love between man and woman who have been made one by God, and no man should divide and separate such a divine union.

The reason why the institution of love, marriage, and the family had been under attack and had been subjected to much destruction in recent years is because of the growing absence of love in our world today, either between spouses, within the family itself, between the parents and the children, and between man and God, and between man and their fellow neighbours. Many of our world’s troubles today are because of the lack of this love, that man began to turn their back against God, abandoning Him for other pursuits, either for material goods or for the fame among men.

Violence in our world today has also arisen because of this growing lack of love, where brothers and sisters would not hesitate to attack one another physically or verbally, totally disregarding the commandments that God had given us, that is to love one another as we love ourselves. In too many cases today, we love ourselves too much, and we think too highly of ourselves. We are increasingly becoming less communal and more individualistic, and began to isolate ourselves from others, either in our busy career, in our busy commitments, or in our material properties and wealth, and at the same time also isolating ourselves from God and His love.

That is exactly the kind of love that St. John of God, whose feast we celebrate today, want to get away from. For St. John of God was a holy and pious man of God, and often strived for his personal piety and salvation through prayers and faith in God. However, one day, a great enlightenment came for St. John of God, through another saint, St. John of Avila, who advised him to put his personal piety and salvation behind an even more important matter, that is love for others, and service for the poor, the needy, and the less fortunate.

Since then, the light of love within St. John of God, which was previously confined within him, was released and he did plenty of good works for the sake of the poor, the abandoned, and the weak in the society of his time. This is the kind of love that God wants us to have, to care for our brethren, our fellow mankind without any hesitation, qualms, or ulterior motives, and to die first in ourselves, that we can be born anew as caring persons that place the well-being of others before our own.

It is not easy to cast away our selfishness and our strong love for ourselves, but brothers and sisters, if we help one another, and keep a strong prayer life, God will show us how to love others. It is not enough just to love God or to love ourselves alone, but to love others unconditionally is the final piece in the puzzle, that allow us to become truly beings of love that God desires, for when we love others in this way, and give ourselves to them, our own love for God will only become more perfect and more profound.

Let us pray brothers and sisters in Christ, that our life will be filled more fully with love, and that our actions too will be based on love and compassion. That we can do more things as God wanted us to do, to help one another, especially those least among us. Forgive one another’s sins and faults too. For if we do not forgive, we can never fully love one another, with the grudge and faults being in the way for that perfection of love. Let us imitate St. John of God, and also experience his moment of epiphany, when he understood that love can be more perfect, and faith can be more perfect, when it is shared and used for the good of others around us, rather than just kept within ourselves.

St. John of God, pray for us sinners, that we may follow your footsteps and grow in love for one another, and love for God our Father. Amen.

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Tuesday, 26 February 2013 : 2nd Week of Lent (Scripture Reflection)

Humility is one of the greatest virtues a Christian can have, and to be humble is one of the calling for us Christians, to accomplish. To be humble people of God, humbling ourselves before one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, and also humbling ourselves before God. In our humility, God will be able to find the true greatness in us, that is our faith, and love for Him. Pride often closes our heart to the Lord, and distance ourselves from Him, and we will be therefore judged unworthy.

It is in humility that we learn to be able to receive the love of God, and to also render forgiveness and justice upon others, since in humility, we realise our own personal weaknesses as human beings, as imperfect creatures that are bound to sin, mistakes, and faults. Therefore, if we humbly place ourselves, and act in humility and love, we will know that we too are just like others around us, who are our brothers and sisters, no matter our rank, our wealth, or our affluence. For everyone is equal in the eyes of the Lord.

If we fully realise the fullness of our weaknesses, our frailty, and our unworthiness before God, we will be able to act more justly on others, and to render loving acts and kindness to everyone, especially those whom we hate, who are less fortunate than us, that through these acts, they too can be transformed, from hatred into love, and from the poverty of the material, into the wealth of the soul. Why is this so? because we understand the nature of our frailty, our disposition towards sin and failures, that we will not easily mete out judgments on others, as we too have the same kind of weakness, and if we judge someone based on their failures, eventually, we ourselves will also be judged.

If we judge someone first, that someone will not look kindly upon us, and even may hate us. In doing so, not only that we have judged someone perhaps unjustly, but also may cause someone to fall into hatred and therefore sin. Instead, if we refrain ourselves from quick judgment and take the time to reflect upon our actions or possible course of actions, we will realise that the only way to end this endless cycle of judgment, hatred, violence, and more judgment is that to break free from it, through acts of love and justice.

Let us also in addition to that, also in humility, bow down before the Lord and wash ourselves away from our sins. Especially, in this season of Lent, which is perfect for this purpose, as we, through fasting, abstinence, and doing penance, can undergo a thorough spiritual cleansing and purification, to rid ourselves of the evils and faults that plagued us, and ensured that we are found worthy in the end, after a long battle with evil and sin, and the darkness and corruption they brought to our hearts, and to our minds. Let us also fill ourselves with love, and through that love, exercise loving acts, that all those whom we work on, will experience the love of the Lord, and therefore will also be called to salvation and purification of their sins through repentance, just as we are. That they all too may live!

Many will use the Gospel passage today as their main weapon to attack our Church mindlessly, as many literally interpret the Scripture so much that they lose the true meaning of the passage, and through their misunderstanding of the Church of God, they instead become the agents of Satan unknowingly in attempting to destroy and damage God’s Holy Church and God’s Holy people.

For indeed Jesus said that we should not call anybody in this world our father, Rabbi or Master, or leader, because indeed, we have only one such figure in all universe, that is God, God the creator, and God who saved us from eternal death, and brought us to eternal life through His Son, Jesus Christ. However, we understand that, as we know, our priests, whom we call Father, are called that because they are our spiritual fathers, just as we have our biological fathers who took care of our needs since our birth. And while biological fathers take care of our needs, our spiritual fathers ensured that we grew ever stronger in our faith and love of God. But most importantly, we call them so, because they are in representation of Christ Himself, in persona Christi, through the authority and power given to them through the Apostles. We call them Father ultimately not because we revere them as much as the Lord, but we revere the Lord through them, whom we call Father.

That is why, our Pope, whom we call Holy Father, while many will aggressively attack such a title, is nothing more than what I have mentioned. He, as the Bishop of Rome, as the leader of all the faithful in Christ, the successor of Blessed St. Peter the Apostle, to whom Christ entrusted His Church and all His ‘sheep’, is even closer in union with Christ, with God who is our Father. When we call the Pope our Holy Father, this is because we revere the Lord, our God, of whom the Pope is the Vicar, the representative in this world.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, if anyone would ever ask you the question, why you call your priests and so and so father, now you know how to answer them and enlighten them on the truth. That instead of succumbing to the evil one, we rise and fight against him, in the Name of God the Most High, our Saviour Jesus Christ. May God bless us all, that all of us may grow ever stronger in faith, in hope, and in love. That we can use this Lenten season to the best we can, to purify ourselves from our unworthiness before God, and to make ourselves ever closer to God, and help bring one another together closer to God. Amen.

 

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Wednesday, 13 February 2013 : Ash Wednesday (Second Reading)

2 Corinthians 5 : 20 – 2 Corinthians 6 : 2

So we present ourselves as ambassadors in the name of Christ, as if God Himself makes an appeal to you through us. Let God reconcile you; this we ask you in the name of Christ. He had no sin, but God made Him bear our sin, so that in Him we might share the holiness of God.

Being God’s helpers we beg you : let it not be in vain that you received this grace of God. Scripture says : “At the favourable time I listened to you, on the day of salvation I helped you. This is the favourable time, this is the day of salvation.”

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Wednesday, 6 February 2013 : 4th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Sts. Paul Miki and Companions, Martyrs (First Reading)

Hebrews 12 : 4-7,11-15

Have you already shed your blood in the struggle against sin? 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.

Strive for peace with all and strive to be holy, for without holiness no one will see the Lord. See that no one falls from the grace of God, lest a bitter plant spring up and its poison corrupt many among you.

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Happy St. Anthony’s Day! (17 January 2013)

http://www.romereports.com/palio/animals-pay-a-visit-to-st-peters-square-for-celebration-of-their-patron-saint-anthony-english-8769.html

Today is the celebration day of St. Anthony the abbot, celebrated in Rome with the blessing of animals. St. Anthony the abbot or St. Anthony the Great is a third century AD monk who was noted for his great holiness and perseverance through numerous attacks and temptations by the devil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_the_Great

St. Anthony, pray for us!