Holy Cross Homily

by

Wednesday, 16 September 2015 : 24th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Cornelius, Pope and Martyr, and St. Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today what we heard in the Scripture Readings from the Old and the New Testament is that all of us ought to wake up from our lack of wisdom, from our lack of understanding of the will of God, and thus we are unable to discern what is best for us to do in this life, in our actions and deeds, where our confusion resulting in the devil being able to enter into our hearts and minds and tempt us to commit sinful things.

This is what will happen if we do not put our trust in the Lord and instead rely and depend on our own whim and desires. Each of us have our different desires and wants, and when these differ from each other and no one would want to give way to the other, then conflict would arise, and this is the root of many of the sorrows and bitterness in this world, past, present and in the coming future.

Those who trust in the wisdom of men will be disappointed, as they should all realise that the intellect and capacity of mankind to understand the world around them is limited and filled with prejudice and preconceptions. We look at the world through tinted glasses of our human judgment, and as a result, we have the tendency to judge others based on what we see and what we have experienced in life.

Thus, this was why they judged St. John the Baptist and Jesus as they went about seeing what the two had done in their ministry and work in this world. They used their prejudices to think badly of St. John the Baptist as a madman and a lunatic, while of Jesus they thought of Him as a heretic and someone who refused to follow and obey the Law, and preferring to follow His own way.

Yes, these were the prejudices of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, which in what I have often mentioned, they were often so fixated in fulfilling the requirements and rigours of the Law that they forgot about God’s intentions of giving those laws to mankind in the first place. They thought that just because they were educated and filled with human and worldly wisdom, then they were to be esteemed and respected, and they thought that they had the right to judge others based on their judgment.

They were too focused on themselves, and rather than realising what God wanted from them, they became self-righteous, self-serving and filled with all sorts of selfishness and ego that characterised their actions and their deeds, and in how they always worked to undermine the good works of Christ Jesus our Lord. They thought of Jesus as a rival and as someone who would steal their glory and privileges from them, and giving in to their ego and pride, they committed great sins before the Lord.

This is clearly what we do not want to replicate in ourselves, brothers and sisters in Christ. Our path forward should be filled with humility and trust in the wisdom and in the will of God, recognising that our opinions and intellect would not provide everything that we need, and that we may commit errors and mistakes, whereas the Lord can never be wrong.

It is just as what was said that those who want to follow Jesus must first die to themselves before they are able to follow Him and walk in His ways. This does not mean a literal death, but rather, the ending of one’s own pride and ego, the ending of the desires and the greed that had been for so long a great obstacle on our path to redemption. We have to first get rid of our selfishness and our self-loving and self-serving attitudes before we can truly serve and follow the Lord our God.

Today we celebrate the feast of two saints, whose lives and examples can hopefully be an inspiration to all of us, so that we too may be able to walk in the same path that they have walked in. It is important for us to remember what Pope St. Cornelius and St. Cyprian had done in their life, in their work to bring greater glory to God, and in their commitment to the people of God.

Pope St. Cornelius was the Bishop of Rome, Pope and Leader of the Universal Church whose leadership was essential to help and guide the faithful during a time when they lived in fear of the authorities and the world, where they were persecuted daily for their sins. He led the people of the faith against the great persecution against the faithful led by the Roman Emperor Decius, who was infamous for his especially bloody and harsh persecution of Christians.

Together with many of the faithful and their leaders, which include St. Cyprian, an influential Bishop of Carthage, they led the faithful through a difficult time, including dealing not just with the external threat of official persecution but also the internal divisions and disagreements within the Church itself. The persecution had caused a great division in the Church, with the faction favouring harsh stance on those Christians who had been known to give way to some demands of the worldly authorities in place of their safety, and those, on the side of Pope St. Cornelius and St. Cyprian, who favoured mercy and forgiveness on these people.

In this, we can see clearly how the readings today stack up and is repeated once again there, with those favouring harsh persecution and treatment of their fellow brethren in faith as those who were like the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, in trusting their own human judgment and intellect in coming out with solutions and in how they deal with issues such as the one presented to them.

It does not mean of course, that God tolerated the sins of those who have committed sin and not being faithful to Him. God still despises all of those sins, even to the smallest and least of sins. However, what differentiates everything is the fact that God does not hate us or despise us as a human being, as His creation in any way. He loves us all greatly, and desires nothing else other than for us to repent our ways, to change and to be welcomed back into His grace.

Pope St. Cornelius and St. Cyprian brought the mercy of God to these people, reminding them to keep themselves worthy and pure from sins, and these two courageous and holy men did not fear even the pressures and threats from the world, and bravely embraced martyrdom, dying in defending their faith. They remained true to the end, and rather than placing their own interests, wishes and wants first, they placed God before everything else.

Let us all learn from their examples, and let us all learn to be more committed, devoted and faithful in our ways. May Almighty God help us and guide us on our way, so that we may grow less and less attached to ourselves and grow smaller in our ego, dying to our selfishness, and rise anew as people dedicated to the Lord, filled with His love, caring and loving one another as He had taught us. God bless us all and may He bring us to eternal life. Amen.

by

Tuesday, 15 September 2015 : 24th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of our Lady of Sorrows (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, we continue the narrative of yesterday’s celebration of the Triumph of the Holy Cross with the memorial of our Lady of Sorrows, the sorrowful mother of our Lord, who waited on her Son at the foot of the cross, where Jesus hung upon between the heavens and the earth. She waited patiently there, looking up as her Son expired and breathed His last, and His earthly work was done at last.

Mary knew that the day would come when she as a mother would have to see and feel the pain of seeing her Son suffering and dying before her own eyes. This had been prophesied by the prophet Simeon at the time when Jesus was only eight days old, when He was offered to the Lord as the first Son in the Temple of Jerusalem. At that time, Simeon and Anna the prophetess foretold Mary what would happen to her Son, and what it would mean to her in the time to come.

As a mother who loves her Son very greatly, as all mothers should, Mary certainly felt the great and inconsolable pain of seeing the suffering that her Son endured for the sake of all mankind. He was made to suffer for the faults and mistakes that He did not do, and He was sentenced to death even though He was innocent and without blame. And as He was led like a Lamb brought to the slaughterhouse in silent obedience, His mother also looked upon all these in silence.

This is why we also know Mary as the Mother of sorrows, our Lady of Sorrows, as the sorrowful heart of hers had to endure the death of her own Son, and an unjust and unreasonable one at that, for He was blameless and judged wrongly by His enemies who cried out for His death. And no mother should indeed witness the death of her own child, for she was supposed to live in happiness and see her children happy and prosperous around her.

But Mary is a great example to all mothers, and to all of us as well. She took all these with patience and with a great heart, and more importantly, she kept a great and unfailing faith in the Lord. She knew her part in the plan of salvation which God had revealed to her, even though not in full, but she knew that all that Jesus, her Son, had to go through, is for the better future of all mankind.

Thus, she persevered and pushed on, and painful as it was, she walked along her Son, following Him step by step as He walked down that path. And she faithfully stood by at the foot of the cross, committed and dedicated to the end. And Jesus knew how committed and dedicated His mother was, just as she had dedicated her entire life for Him. That was why He entrusted her to all of us mankind through His disciple John.

And in that way, He entrusted His mother to us, that she shall be our mother, and we become her children, as God also entrusted us all through John His disciple to Mary His own mother. And through this, Mary became our greatest help and intercessor who is constantly praying for us, interceding for our sake, and this is because of her own loving instinct as a mother, and our mother in that.

Shall we therefore, today, on this celebration in honour and memory of the sorrowful mother of our Lord, our Lady of Sorrows, Mary most faithful and devoted, pledge ourselves to dedicate ourselves more and more to her, and thus, through her we will be able to reach out to her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and attain the salvation which He had promised to all those who keep their faith in Him.

Mary, our mother is always concerned about us, for we have been entrusted to her, and just as she had witnessed the great pain and suffering which Jesus her Son had endured for our sake, she would certainly not want to witness us falling into sin and then suffering the same sufferings which her Son had worked so hard to liberate us from, and therefore, she constantly prays for us, and we too should work together with her, and do our best in our own lives to make ourselves worthy of the Lord.

May Almighty God, and His sorrowful mother, who is faithful and devoted to Him at all times, help us to find our way to Him, and guide us so that we may not lose our path but be able to reach Him and the salvation and eternal life which He had promised us. God bless us all. Amen.

by

Monday, 14 September 2015 : Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate a special solemnity in the honour of the triumph of the glorious Cross of our Saviour. Today we exalt the Holy Cross as the real symbol of triumph of good versus the forces of evil, and as a clear reminder to all of us, that our Lord had won the battle for us in a triumphant victory against the forces of Satan.

The cross was once an instrument of suffering and torture, and it was once an instrument of humiliation and ultimate defeat and surrender of all those who have been convicted and deemed guilty by the state, particularly the Romans who used them to be an instrument of fear, to show example of what would happen to those who dared to oppose their rule.

But among all the countless thousands and more who suffered on the wood of the cross, hanged and nailed for all the people to see, there was One of them who did not deserve to be punished, and yet He took up for Himself, the punishment of a slave, the scourges designed for convicts and villains, and took upon Himself the responsibility of the entire human race, so that instead of us, He took our sufferings upon Himself.

He did not have to do that, and He could just abandon us, but it was not in His nature to do that, because He is Love, and because He is love, He cannot possibly abandon us when we are in need of help. Thus, He was willing to lower Himself and empty Himself of His greatness, and assume the humble form of a Man. And in Jesus Christ, fully God and fully Man, God made Himself an example to all so that by His actions and by His example, He made us all righteous and showed us the way to go.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, in the first reading today from the Book of Numbers, we heard about how God punished His people, the Israelites for their refusal to listen to His will and walk in His ways. He punished them by sending them the fiery and poisonous serpents to bite them and bring death to them. This is the punishment for all those who disobeyed and refused to listen to God, just as the price for death is sin.

The serpents are like the angels of death, representing the judgment of God for all those who have sinned and have committed wicked things before the Lord and before men. And their destruction was seemingly assured, until Moses begged the Lord and beseeched Him to have mercy on His people, and to give them deliverance out of their great predicament.

And God instructed Moses to build up a bronze serpent and place it on a high pole, so that raising it up, it could be seen by many people who have been bitten and harassed by the fiery serpents. Those who saw the bronze serpent became well again and lived, and they did not die. This is a very clear and strong premonition to God’s own plan of salvation, where He Himself would raise Himself up for all to see, so that through Him, all who believe in Him will be saved.

As you all should see, that the fiery serpents are the punishment for the sins that caused us to all suffer death and destruction, but Christ is the new bronze serpent, raised up high even as He bore all of our sins upon Himself, all the punishment due to us, and on the cross, lifted high up between the heavens and the earth, He made Himself an example visible to all, and the testimonies of His truth were passed on to His Apostles, and from them to us.

St. Paul pointed out that just as the first Adam, our ancestor, had sinned and disobeyed the Lord, and by his actions, he had made us all condemned and fallen into sin, and if one man’s action brought all of mankind into sin and into condemnation, then it needs One Man’s action to bring all mankind back towards the Lord and towards salvation, with eternal life promised by the Lord as the goal.

And thus, Jesus Christ our Lord is the new Adam, through whom the salvation of the world was to come from. It is because of His perfect obedience to the will of His Father that had brought mankind to righteousness, because just as He is God, He is at the same time also fully Man, and by assuming the flesh of Man, by His obedience, He restored to all of us, the life and the grace of God which had been withdrawn from us when we disobeyed through sin.

And the cross He made to become a symbol of triumph and victory, and a symbol of the glory that we all are to have, if we keep our faith in the cross of Christ. But it is not just any cross, for cross by itself has no meaning, and a cross would still always be remembered for being the brutal method which the Romans used to treat those who rebelled against them. Instead, it is the Holy Cross of Jesus Christ which we commemorate, the crucifix, where our Saviour hung upon on that day in Calvary.

It was from that cross that Jesus was shown to the whole world, just as the bronze serpent was lifted up in the desert, that all who look up to Christ, believe in Him and follow Him shall not suffer the penalty of death, but live and live forever with the Lord, enjoying forever the bliss of heavenly glory, as worthy disciples, followers and children of our God.

And the empty Cross of Christ is a reminder always, that Christ had won that victory over sin and death, and nothing could hold Him, even death itself. The empty tomb is the proof of triumph together with the Holy Cross, that our Lord had won a complete, total and resounding victory forever against Satan and all of his allies and forces. And whenever Satan looks upon the Cross, he knows that his defeat is assured and his doom is at hand, and the Lord who stood by us had dealt that crushing victory against him.

Therefore, today, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us put our trust ever more in the Cross, and as Christ had at one time showed Himself to the Roman Emperor Constantine, the first to be baptised as a Christian, ‘In Hoc Signo Vinces’ or ‘In this Sign you shall conquer’, and indeed he won a resounding victory against his enemies by placing his trust and faith in the Lord, then we too should do the same.

Let us ever put our trust in the Holy Cross, the symbol of our triumph and victory against all forms of evil, the bane of Satan and the sign of our deliverance. May our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ continue to be with us and guiding us on this way, so that the Cross will be our guide, and we continue to have hope as we look on the triumphant Cross, and fear no more. May Almighty God, the Crucified Lord, be with us and bless us always. Amen.