Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 95 : 1-2a, 2b-3, 5b-6
Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth! Sing to the Lord, bless His Name.
Proclaim His salvation day after day. Recall His glory among the nations, tell all the peoples His wonderful deeds.
YHVH is the One Who made the heavens. Splendour and majesty go before Him; power and glory fill His sanctuary.
Liturgical Colour : White
1 John 2 : 3-11
How can we know that we know Him? If we fulfil His commands. If you say, “I know Him,” but do not fulfil His commands, you are a liar and the truth is not in you. But if you keep His word, God’s love is made complete in you. This is how we know that we are in Him : he who claims to live in Him must live as He lived.
My dear friends, I am not writing you a new commandment, but reminding you of an old one, one you had from the beginning. This old commandment is the word you have heard. But, in a way, I give it as a new commandment that is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and true light already shines.
If you claim to be in the light but hate your brother, you are still in darkness. If you love your brothers and sisters, you remain in the light and nothing in you will make you fall. But if you hate your brother you are in the dark and walk in darkness without knowing where you go, for the darkness has blinded you.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate together the feast of the Holy Innocents, one of the earliest martyrs in the Church, for those innocents were the young infants of the town of Bethlehem, who was killed by the order of king Herod the Great of Judea, in his futile effort to try to destroy the coming Messiah and King, as written in the Holy Gospels and prophesied in the Old Testament by the prophets.
The Holy Innocents were the victims of human greed, ego and pride, the outcome of man’s attachment to worldly glory and the temptations of the world. I am sure that some of us may have wondered, why God allowed those infants in Bethlehem to be killed. Surely he could have intervened and prevented the infants from being killed? But this is where we need to understand that, the cause of this sad tragedy, was our attachments to sin and our refusal to obey God’s will.
God gave each and every one of us free will and the wisdom to discern His will. Yet, by our own conscious choice and abuse of our freedom, we chose to be selfish and to entertain the wicked temptations which Satan put in our place, as obstacles in our way towards the Lord. Throughout the history of mankind, there had been countless occasions when people suffered, because of the tyranny of those who had power, glory, prestige and superiority over others.
For this particular case on the Holy Innocents, we should also understand the context and the reason why king Herod did what he had done, in the slaughter of the innocent infants of Bethlehem. King Herod the Great was the first king and the founder of the Herodian dynasty of kings who would rule Judea, Galilee and parts of southern Syria, which at that time, just came under the rule and domination of the mighty Roman Empire.
King Herod took over control of Judea from the previous native, Jewish dynasty of the Hasmoneans, descendants of the Maccabees, who were the ones that won the independence of Judea from foreign rule, as written in the Book of the Maccabees. King Herod took over power by deceit and with support from the Romans, who made Herod some sort of a client king, who had some authority and autonomy over Judea, but ultimately had to submit to the Romans. Herod himself was not a Jew, but an Idumean.
Herod therefore, was insecure in his power and kingdom, and therefore, the news of the coming of the King among the Jewish people, was a very bad news for him. As a foreigner ruling as king over the Jewish population, he would have felt even more insecure with this revelation, and of the Three Wise Men who came to him saying that the King of Kings would be born in Bethlehem in the territory of his kingdom.
This is why, combined with Herod’s own megalomania and grandeur, as he was known for his many huge building projects, including vast expansion of the Temple of Jerusalem and a building named after himself, the Herodium, it would be natural for Herod to want the King of Kings to be killed as a rival to his power and authority. Yet, we have to understand that he clearly had a choice in this matter. He had it within his free will and choice not to do what was so abominable and wicked as killing innocent children, but he did it nonetheless.
And why is that so, brothers and sisters in Christ? It is because of his selfishness, his inability to detach himself from his pride and ego, and his greed for power. He did not want to allow a rival King to emerge, someone who might snatch the kingdom, power and glory that was in his hands. And unfortunately, this was the same reason why many of us mankind, throughout history had done, and caused untold sufferings and pains for countless others.
Therefore, today as we celebrate this feast of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem, all of us are called to reflect on our vulnerabilities to the temptations of pride and greed in our own lives, and how we can fall deep into the trap of sin should we indulge ourselves in them as Herod had done. Unless we consciously choose to resist those temptations, it is likely that we will cause sufferings and pains to others just as king Herod had done to the innocent infants of Bethlehem, all to satisfy his pride, ego and megalomania.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, during this blessed Christmas season, are we able to devote ourselves to God with a new strength and zeal? Are we willing to resist the pull and the temptation of worldly desires and to get rid of ourselves the pride and ego within our hearts and minds? Let us all instead turn towards God and follow the selfless example of Christ in everything we say, act and do, so that from now on, we are no longer living in sin, but in the grace of God. May God be with us always. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Matthew 2 : 13-18
After the wise men had left, an Angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph and said, “Get up, take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, for Herod will soon be looking for the Child in order to kill Him.”
Joseph got up, took the Child and His mother, and left that night for Egypt, where He stayed until the death of Herod. In this way, what the Lord had said through the prophet was fulfilled : I called My Son out of Egypt.
When Herod found out that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was furious. He gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its neighbourhood who were two years old or under. This was done in line with what he had learnt from the wise men about the time when the star appeared.
In this way, what the prophet Jeremiah had said was fulfilled : A cry is heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation : Rachel weeps for her children. She refuses to be comforted, for they are no more.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Psalm 123 : 2-3, 4-5, 7cd-8
Had not the Lord been on our side, when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us alive; such was their anger against us.
A bit more and the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, the raging waters would have swept us away.
The snare was broken and we were freed. Our help is in the Name of the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.
Liturgical Colour : Red
1 John 1 : 5 – 1 John 2 : 2
We heard His message from Him and announce it to you : God is light and there is no darkness in Him. If we say we are in fellowship with Him, while we walk in darkness, we lie instead of being in truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we are in fellowship with one another, and the Blood of Jesus, the Son of God, purifies us from all sin.
If we say, “We have no sin,” we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He Who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from our wickedness. If we say that we do not sin, we make God a liar, His word is not in us.
My little children, I write to you that you may not sin. But if anyone sins, we have an Intercessor with the Father, Jesus Christ, the Just One. He is the sacrificial Victim for our sins and the sins of the whole world.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, the day after the Christmas day, every year, we celebrate the feast of the holy Protomartyr, St. Stephen. St. Stephen was one of the original seven deacons chosen by the Church, to be ministers to God’s people, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, and he was a person filled with grace, and with wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit. In the Acts of the Apostles, the story of his last stand and defence for the faith, and his martyrdom were written, how he eloquently stood up for the Lord before his accusers, and accepted death with faith.
We must be wondering why is it that in such a time and season filled with joy and celebration that is this Christmas, then suddenly just right the day after the glorious and joyous day that is Christmas itself, then we are celebrating the feast of a great martyr of the faith, whose account of his suffering and death was truly one that is terrible and painful at the same time. He was falsely accused by his enemies and all those who sought to silence him, and was stoned to death.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the reason why we celebrate the painful death of a great martyr of the Church, the first to be martyred after the foundation of the Church, and hence, St. Stephen’s title of protomartyr, is because we must remember, that Christmas in itself, all the joy and celebration associated with it, is far more than all the revelries and celebrations that we often associate with Christmas, in how this world celebrate Christmas.
In truth, as we all should have known, Christmas is all about Christ and His coming into this world, with a special mission, and that is the salvation of us all. He is God, Who willingly embraced us mankind, by humbling Himself to take up the form and appearance of Man, being conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of His mother Mary. He was born into this world, God Who became incarnate into Man, Son of God and Son of Man, two distinct and yet inseparable natures, in the person of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
It is this truth which St. Stephen had to suffer and die for, the truth that the Messiah has come, as God Himself, incarnate in the flesh, fully God and yet at the same time also fully Man. He proclaimed before the people gathered, the truth about the Messiah, Jesus Christ, Whom they have rejected and crucified, and yet, Whom St. Stephen proclaimed to be the Saviour that God had promised His people, and Who had not died, but rose from the dead into His heavenly glory.
The Pharisees, the teachers of the Law and many of those who refused to believe in Christ and His truth, were angered by St. Stephen’s wisdom and revelation before them, his stand for his faith and for his God and Saviour, even when faced with a certainty of death amidst the throng and many people who wanted his death for the supposed blasphemy. St. Stephen courageously stood by his faith and became inspiration for countless generations of Christians even to this very day.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, today, as we continue to progress through the season of Christmas, we ought to reflect on the life and the works of St. Stephen, his love for God and his courageous stand for his faith in Him. How can St. Stephen have that courage to stand before his many accusers and all those who were obviously hostile against him and his faith in God? That was because St. Stephen had great faith and love for God.
He truly believed in the salvation which Christ had brought with Him, Who emptied Himself of all glory and majesty, to suffer a most painful death on the cross, all for the sake of the salvation of us, His beloved people. And although St. Stephen knew that the people who went up against him were unlikely to listen to him, but he did what he could, and what he must do, in proclaiming the truth about the Messiah.
In the end, conversion did come for some among them, most importantly and prominently, St. Paul the Apostle, whom in his previous persona of Saul, was one of those who stoned St. Stephen to death. God called Saul, and he went through conversion to the faith, and became like St. Stephen, in devoting the rest of his life to God, and suffered martyrdom in Rome for his courageous faith.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us should realise that Christmas is a reminder for us, that we are all those who believe in God, Who came into this world as a Man, as a Child born in the town of Bethlehem, Who has come to save the world, and yet many refused to believe in Him, persecuted and rejected Him as well as His disciples and followers. Throughout the history of the Church, many thousands and more have suffered from their devotion and faith to God, even to this very day.
Therefore, let us all pray, that our brethren in faith who are still constantly persecuted for their faith in various parts of the world, will remain strong in their commitment to God, and will not fall away from the faith. And let us also remain strong and committed ourselves, in our faith, by living our lives with true love and sincere faith in God, by sharing our Christmas joy with one another, especially with those who are in need and are suffering.
St. Stephen, holy martyr of the Church, the first of those in the Church who died because of your faith in God, pray for us all sinners, pray for each and every one of us, that by your intercession, we too may be strengthened in faith, and that we may live our lives ever more faithfully and ever closer to God, our loving Father. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Matthew 10 : 17-22
At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “Be on your guard with people, for they will hand you over to their courts, and they will flog you in their synagogues. You will be brought to trial before rulers and kings because of Me, so you may witness to them and the pagans.”
“But when you are arrested, do not worry about what you are to say, or how you are to say it; when the hour comes, you will be given what you are to say. For it is not you who will speak, but the Spirit of your Father in you. Brother will hand over brother to death, and a father his child; children will turn again parents and have them put to death.”
“Everyone will hate you because of Me, but whoever stands firm to the end will be saved.”
Liturgical Colour : Red
Psalm 30 : 3cd-4, 6 and 8ab, 16bc and 17
Be a Rock of refuge for me, a Fortress for my safety. For You are my Rock and my Stronghold, lead me for Your Name’s sake.
Into Your hands I commend my spirit; You have redeemed me, o Lord, faithful God. I will rejoice and be glad in Your love, for You have seen my affliction.
Deliver me from the hand of my enemies, from those after my skin. Make Your face shine upon Your servant; save me in Your love.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Acts 6 : 8-10 and Acts 7 : 54-59
Stephen, full of grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people. Some persons then came forward, who belonged to the so-called Synagogue of Freedmen from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia and Asia. They argued with Stephen but they could not match the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke.
When the Council heard the reproach Stephen made against them, they were enraged and they gnashed their teeth against him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, fixed his eyes on heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus at God’s right hand, so he declared : “I see the heavens open and the Son of Man at the right hand of God.”
But they shouted and covered their ears with their hands and rushed together upon him. They brought him out of the city and stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul. As they were stoning him, Stephen prayed saying : “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 