holy men

by

Wednesday, 8 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints or Virgins)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in today’s Scripture readings, all of us heard about the account of the creation of Man, how God created the first of our kind and gave him life. He blessed them and gave them many things, and also the command and stewardship over the earth. It was also mentioned that God laid an important commandment to man, that he must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, a story which we are surely well acquainted with.

In that story we heard of how the first man, Adam and the first woman, Eve disobeyed God, when Satan disguised as a serpent tempted them to eat a fruit from the tree, and therefore gaining knowledge over good and evil to become like God their Creator. That was how mankind sinned and therefore were cast out of the Gardens of Eden, and were forced to endure sufferings on earth as a result of their disobedience.

But now let us ask this question to ourselves. Was it the forbidden fruit from the tree that had caused mankind to sin and to become wicked? Or was it because they themselves were unable to restrain their greed and failed to resist the temptations of the devil? This would become significant if we look into the Gospel passage today, where Jesus mentioned to the Pharisees and to the teachers of the Law, in their dispute about the rules of the laws that the latter tried to impose on the people of God.

We have to understand the dynamics and the historical developments of that time if we are to understand why Jesus struggled with these people, who refused to budge and adamantly tried to advance their own thinking against the truth revealed to all by God through Jesus. At that time, the Pharisees strictly enforced the rule of food prohibitions, or what is now known as the kosher rule.

They followed the old rule of Moses, which the Lord passed down to the people in the guidelines of what they ought to eat and not to eat. But at that time, the people of Israel were travelling in the desert, and they were truly rebellious and refused to obey the Lord and His ways. That was why God imposed on them the set of laws, rules and regulations that He had put in place so as to help them to control themselves and to help guide them on the way towards righteousness.

But God never intended for the laws to become a burden for His people, or as a tool to make people to lord it over others just because they conform to the rules, and while others did not. It was never God’s intention for His people to misunderstand the real meaning of His laws. Yet, that was precisely what the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law had done.

These people were too focused on the external applications of the Law, to the point that they were blinded to their own shortcomings and failures. They were so focused on the purity of their externals and all the observations of the laws they so carefully guarded, they had forgotten the most important commandment of all, that is to love and serve the Lord with all of their might and strength.

Many of the things which they had done, they did them in order to be seen and to be praised by the people who saw them. Many might have seen how they have observed fully the entirety of the laws of Moses, all of its rules and tenets, but on the other hand, as just mentioned, their intention for doing all these were wrong. God did not have the place of honour in their hearts as He should have.

It was just as how it was at the time of Adam and Eve. At that time, they disobeyed God and therefore sinned. It was not because of the fruit they ate that they have sinned, but because from their own hearts, wickedness had arisen, the inability to restrain their greed and desires which Satan used in order to bring about our downfall. In the same manner therefore, what Jesus said was very true, that what made someone impure is not something that we eat and bring in from the outside, but rather what came out from ourselves.

God created all things good and perfect, and therefore it is not right indeed to say that anything is impure or unclean. Rather, it was what had come out from our hearts that had led us into sin. It was our vulnerabilities and our tendency to fall into the temptations of worldliness which had brought us into sin, rather than anything else outside ourselves.

It is often that we, like the Pharisees and the elders, refused to see this truth because we are proud, and we do not want to lose our face, knowing that we are not perfect inside us, but dirty and wicked. And therefore, we put on masks of purity and piety, in order to hide the fact that we are sinners and delinquent rebels before God and men. But what we are doing is that we are just running away from the problem, and often, we end up in denial, which leads us all into an even greater sin, that is the refusal to repent from our sins.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is where perhaps we should look up to the examples of the holy saints we venerate and glorify today, namely St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita. St. Jerome Emiliani was an Italian priest whose deeds among the orphans and those who were suffering then, was greatly noted by his contemporaries, as he worked hard to ensure that these people were properly taken care of and not abandoned.

St. Jerome Emiliani established places for these people to settle in, renting houses for this purpose, and increasingly, there were more and more pious and loving people who followed in his footsteps and stepped in to help the orphans and the poor people to be able to have a decent living. Eventually a religious society founded upon the ideals and the works of St. Jerome Emiliani was established, through which many people would go on to follow in the footsteps of this great and holy saint.

Meanwhile, St. Josephine Bakhita was a former slave turned a pious nun, born in Sudan in northern Africa, and was sold to slavery at a very young age, when she was kidnapped by slave traders who sold her to the slave market. She was also sold and resold a few times between slave owners, which experiences troubled and traumatised her greatly.

Eventually she was bought by an Italian vice-consul, and through difficult moments, managed to make her way to Italy, where she received the faith and became one of the converts. She also managed to gain her freedom, and upon baptism, she chose to join the convent of religious sisters, becoming one of the Canossian sisters.

She eventually continued to serve God and His people dutifully, renowned for her great piety and faith, in her zeal in the service of God, and in how her holiness shone through her actions in life. She never forgot her experiences in life, how she had suffered through slavery and all the other injustices, and yet, as the perfect example of Christian love and virtue, it was told that when one youth asked her if she would forgive her captors and slavers, she immediately said without hesitation that she would forgive them, for without them, she would not be a Christian, a religious, and indeed, later a saint.

The examples of these two venerable saints can be our inspiration in life, brothers and sisters in Christ. We must follow in their footsteps, doing good in our lives, and not be trapped by our pride, our folly and our stubbornness to accept God’s grace, forgiveness and love. We must learn to be faithful as St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita had been faithful, and learn to love as they have loved.

May the Lord help us all, so that we may emulate the lives of His wonderful saints, and practice what they themselves had done, in our own lives. May the Lord bless us all and our works, so that they will bring much good to this world, and bring righteousness and justice upon ourselves, that we will be worthy of the Lord, and worthy to receive His promise of eternal life, purified from all of our sins. May God bless us all. Amen.

by

Wednesday, 8 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints or Virgins)
Mark 7 : 14-23

At that time, Jesus then called the people to Him again and said to them, “Listen to Me, all of you, and try to understand. Nothing that enters a person from the outside can make that person unclean. It is what comes from within that makes a person unclean. Let everyone who has ears listen.”

When Jesus got home and was away from the crowd, His disciples asked Him about this saying, and He replied, “So even you are dull? Do you not see that whatever comes from outside cannot make a person unclean, since it enters not the heart but the stomach, and is finally passed out?” Thus Jesus declared that all foods are clean.

And He went on, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him, for evil designs come out of the heart : theft, murder, adultery, jealousy, greed, maliciousness, deceit, indecency, slander, pride and folly. All these evil things come from within and make a person unclean.”

by

Wednesday, 8 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints or Virgins)
Psalm 103 : 1-2a, 27-28, 29bc-30

Bless the Lord my soul! Clothed in majesty and splendour; o Lord, my God, how great You are! You are wrapped in light as with a garment.

They all look to You for their food in due time. You give it to them, and they gather it up; You open Your hand, they are filled with good things.

You take away their breath, they expire and return to dust. When You send forth Your Spirit, they are created, and the face of the earth is renewed.

by

Wednesday, 8 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints or Virgins)
Genesis 2 : 4b-9, 15-17

On the day that YHVH God made the earth and the heavens, there was not yet on earth any shrub on the fields, nor had any plant yet sprung up, for YHVH God had not made it rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the earth, but a mist went up from the earth and watered the surface of the earth.

Then YHVH God formed Man, dust drawn from the clay, and breathed into his nostrils a breath of life and Man became alive with breath. God planted a garden in Eden in the east and there He placed Man whom He had created. YHVH God caused to grow from the ground every kind of tree that is pleasing to see and good to eat, also the tree of life on the middle of the garden and the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

YHVH God took Man and placed him in the garden of Eden to till it and to take care of it. Then YHVH God gave an order to Man saying, “You may eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you will not eat, for on the day you eat of it, you will die.”

by

Monday, 6 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Paul Miki and Companions, Martyrs (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard of the work of God’s love, which He had done out of love for all the things which He had created. In the first reading today, taken from the familiar passage of the first part of the Book of Genesis, we heard about the account of how God created the entire universe, that from nothingness that was before creation, God made the whole universe, all of creations complete with all the creatures.

God did not create the whole universe, with all of the objects, things both living and non-living without a reason. That reason was love, for He Himself is love, and is in perfect harmony and love in Himself. He existed in perfect harmony and love within His most Holy Trinity, but then, He wanted to share that love. And therefore, He created all things, including us all mankind because He wants to love each and every one of us.

He did not create us to allow us to perish in the darkness and in damnation of hell. But it was because of our ancestors’ and our own disobedience and refusal to listen to Him that we have been separated and sundered from His love and grace. He has made all things good and perfect, but it was our refusal to obey and to embrace His love that had brought evil upon this world.

Yet, despite all of that, He never gave up on us. Had He not loved us, or hated us for what we have done, then God would have pulled away His love and grace from us. Just as easily as He had created us, He could have destroyed us utterly as well, for after all, He is God, the Almighty God of the whole universe. But He did not do so, and that is because of His love. He loves each and every one of us so tenderly that He is willing to give us a chance.

That was why He continued to work on us mankind throughout time, sending His servants and prophets to call us back from the darkness and therefore to return into His light. He called many times for mankind to abandon their ways of sin and evil, and to return to the truth and the righteousness of God. And to that extent, He also promised that He would send us all a Saviour, Who would deliver us from all of our sins and troubles, and He did fulfil that promise perfectly, through the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.

In the Gospel today, we witnessed and heard how Jesus and His disciples went from place to place, and many came to Jesus wanting to be healed from their afflictions, both that of the body and that of the spirit. He healed them, cured them from the diseases that affected their flesh, and He cast out demons from them, making them healed both in body and spirit, and be reconciled with God.

He urged them to repent from their sins and called them to a life of righteousness, to be forgiven by God and to live a life of virtue and upright nature, which is what He had commanded His Apostles and disciples to continue in this world, so that even after He had left this world, His works would still continue to go on and save more souls, the proof of the love of God Who willingly suffered for our sake and Who willingly endured the cross for us.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we commemorate the memory of those who have followed in the footsteps of the Holy Apostles, those who have received the same calling and ministry as the disciples of our Lord had. Today we remember St. Paul Miki and his companions, who were the faithful servants of God, martyred in the land now known as Japan, at the time of the great persecution of the faithful there approximately four centuries ago.

At that time, the Church and the faith grew rapidly in Japan, as many missionaries came to that land making use of the opportunity of the open door policy of the Japanese government at that time, consisting of many local warlords, who welcomed the Europeans who came to trade, and at the same time, carrying with them missionaries seeking for the conversion of souls.

Many people, both the commoners and the nobles alike were attracted to the faith for various reasons, but many of them genuinely came to believe in the message which the missionaries had preached, about the Lord our God Who loves us all so much, about the state of our sins and our fate of damnation, and how God wanted to save us all by calling upon Himself all peoples from every nations to come and to approach upon the Throne of His mercy.

Many were baptised and became ardent Christians, including St. Paul Miki and many others. They openly practiced their faith and preached it to many others, who also were then convinced to repent their sinful ways and be converted to the faith. The faith and the Church there was rapidly growing, and its outlook was great. But no sooner that the changes in the political scenes happened, that the Christians soon found themselves in trouble.

For the new government of the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan became increasingly suspicious and hostile to the influence that the Christian faith had on many people in the Japanese society. There were increasingly more and more persecutions of the faithful, and more and more people found it difficult to practice their faith openly, out of fear of the authorities.

But there were many of those who refused to be daunted by the challenges presented to them, and continued to do the good works which had been started in them. Many of them, including St. Paul Miki and his many other fellow brethren in faith were arrested, and were made to choose between staying on in their faith and facing certain death, or to abandon and reject their faith in God, by the act of stepping on images of the Lord and crucifixes, and live.

St. Paul Miki and his many companions in the faith did not comply with the offer of the authorities. They would rather serve the Lord Who loved them even though they knew that they would suffer great persecution, torture and eventually death. They would not choose the comforts of the world to save themselves but at the cost of betraying the Lord and therefore losing their souls.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, from the examples of St. Paul Miki and his many fellow companions, we should learn to follow the Lord as they had done, filled with faith and commitment. We should love Him in the same manner as they had done, that is with all of their hearts. After all, God had loved us all so much, that even though we have sinned, but He was willing to forgive us.

May the Lord strengthen in us our faith, and may He awaken in us the strong desire to love Him and to devote ourselves to Him. Let us all help one another to grow ever closer to God, and to grow in our faith, love for God and love for one another. May we all become worthy and good servants of our Lord, in the footsteps of the Holy Apostles and the holy saints of God, St. Paul Miki and his companions. God bless us all. Amen.

by

Monday, 6 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Paul Miki and Companions, Martyrs (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Mark 6 : 53-56

At that time, having crossed the lake, Jesus and His disciples came ashore at Gennesaret, where they tied up the boat. As soon as they landed, people recognised Jesus, and ran to spread the news throughout the countryside.

Wherever He was, they brought to Him the sick lying on their mats; and wherever He went, to villages, towns or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplace, and begged Him to let them touch just the fringe of His cloak. And all who touched Him were cured.

by

Monday, 6 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Paul Miki and Companions, Martyrs (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Psalm 103 : 1-2a, 5-6, 10 and 12, 24 and 35c

Bless the Lord my soul! Clothed in majesty and splendour; o Lord, my God, how great You are! You are wrapped in light as with a garment.

You set the earth on its foundations, and never will it be shaken. You covered it with the ocean like a garment, and waters spread over the mountains.

You make springs gush forth in valleys winding among mountains and hills. Birds build their nests close by and sing among the branches of trees.

How varied o Lord, are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all – the earth full of Your creatures. Bless the Lord, my soul!

by

Monday, 6 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Paul Miki and Companions, Martyrs (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Genesis 1 : 1-19

In the beginning, when God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth had no form and was void; darkness was over the deep and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘Day’ and the darkness ‘Night’. There was evening and there was morning : the first day.

God said, “Let there be a firm ceiling between the waters and let it separate waters from waters.” So God made the ceiling and separated the waters below it from the waters above it. And so it was. God called the firm ceiling ‘Sky’. There was evening and there was morning : the second day.

God said, “Let the waters below the sky be gathered in one place and let dry land appear. And so it was. God called the dry land ‘Earth’, and the waters gathered together he called ‘Seas’. God saw that it was good.

God said, “Let the earth produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants, fruit trees bearing fruit with seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth.” And so it was. The earth produced vegetation : plants bearing seed according to their kind and trees producing fruit which has seed, according to their kind. God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning : the third day.

God said, “Let there be lights in the ceiling of the sky to separate day from night and to serve as signs for the seasons, days and years; and let these lights in the sky shine above the earth.” And so it was. God therefore made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the smaller light to govern the night; and God made the stars as well. God placed them in the ceiling of the sky to give light on the earth and to separate the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning : the fourth day.

by

Friday, 3 February 2017 : 4th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Blaise, Bishop and Martyr and St. Ansgar, Bishop (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs) or White (Bishops)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we are reminded by the Scripture readings on the importance and the sanctity of the matter of marriage, which is the union that God had made between a man and a woman. In the first reading, we are told by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews, that marriage must be respected by all, and that we should not depend on money.

Indeed, it is worldly cares and temptations such as money, pleasures of the flesh, lust, immorality, fornication of the flesh and many others which are able to endanger the sanctity and unity found in our marriage. It is from them that adultery and all sorts of despicable sins were born from, as what we can see in the example of the adultery of king Herod, as told in the Gospel today.

King Herod was the ruler of Judea, who was one of the sons of king Herod the Great. Philip was his brother, the ruler of Decapolis, but this brother died before Herod, and left behind a widow named Herodias with a daughter, as mentioned in the Gospel today. It was not lawful for him to take Herodias as a wife, as she had been lawfully and rightfully wed to his own brother.

But both of them persisted in their sins, not least Herodias who resented John the Baptist for telling them off on their adultery. After all, she was most likely still young, even with a daughter, and in the world then, even today, who would not be tempted to be the wife of a king? She would be influential, powerful and wealthy, instead of being a sombre widow of a deceased king.

Herod himself also embraced the sin, and he was unable to restrain himself, which became the source of his undoing. He tried to listen to John the Baptist, and tried to restrain himself, but he was not able to resist the temptations of the flesh, as shown in the Gospel today. He lusted in the daughter of Herodias who danced so beautifully as to mesmerise him and turn his heart away from anything else. He was so tempted as to make vows and promises, even to give away half of his kingdom.

In the end, that led to him being responsible for the death and martyrdom of John the Baptist, a holy man and the herald of the Messiah. In this, he had committed a great sin, not just because of his adulterous behaviour and relationship with Herodias, but all the more because he was unable to restrain himself and succumbed to the temptations that led him to commit a murder, even when done unintentionally.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, it is important that all of us heed the lessons to be learnt from today’s Scripture passages. We must learn to resist our vulnerabilities and all the temptations that lead us to sin. We must not be complacent and neither should we give in to the temptations that can bring about our downfall. We have to be upright and we must commit ourselves to the way of the Lord and not to worldly values.

Let us all follow the examples of St. Blaise and St. Ansgar, the two holy saints whose feast we are celebrating today. St. Blaise was a bishop of the Church, and also a famous physician, who was renowned for his prowess as a physician, healing many people from their bodily illnesses. Later on, he would devote himself to the Lord, becoming a physician and healer for the souls.

Through his many works, he helped many people to overcome their attachments to sin, to worldliness and to all temptations of the world. St. Blaise showed the people how they ought to live in faith and avoid all forms of fornications and sin. He was later arrested and tortured under the persecution of the faithful by the Emperor Licinius, and was told to have suffer torture with iron combs and was later beheaded.

Meanwhile St. Ansgar was a devout servant of God and an influential preacher, whose works of evangelisation in the region now known as northern Germany, Denmark, Sweden and some other areas in Northern Europe had led to the conversion of the pagans and the sinners there into the Christian faith. At that time, many of the people there still lived in ignorance of the faith, and they sinned against God.

But St. Ansgar showed them by examples, and also through his teachings, by revealing to them the Sacred Scriptures and the Good News of the Lord, that their ways had been wrong, and encouraged them to return to the Lord and accept baptism for the forgiveness of their sins. This St. Ansgar had done, and many were saved by his works. He helped to lay a solid foundation for the Church and the faith in the places where he worked to minister to the people of God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, through what we have heard in the Scriptures today, the bad examples of Herod and Herodias, and the virtuous examples of St. Blaise and St. Ansgar, let us all as Christians learn to uphold Christian teachings and values, and strive to be upright, honest and just in all of our ways and deeds. May the Lord help us in all of our good works, and may He strengthen in us the resolve to live our lives free from sin. May God bless us all. Amen.

by

Friday, 3 February 2017 : 4th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Blaise, Bishop and Martyr and St. Ansgar, Bishop (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs) or White (Bishops)
Mark 6 : 14-29

At that time, king Herod also heard about Jesus, because His Name had become well-known. Some people said, “John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in Him.” Others thought, “He is a prophet like the prophets of times past.” When Herod was told of this, he thought, “I had John beheaded, yet he has risen from the dead!”

For this is what had happened : Herod had ordered John to be arrested, and had had him bound and put in prison because of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. Herod had married her, and John had told him, “It is not right for you to live with your brother’s wife.”

So Herodias held a grudge against John; and wanted to kill him, but she could not, because Herod respected John. He knew John to be an upright and holy man, and kept him safe. And he liked listening to him, although he became very disturbed, whenever he heard him.

Herodias had her chance on Herod’s birthday, when he gave a dinner for all the senior government officials, military chiefs, and the leaders of Galilee. On that occasion the daughter of Herodias came in and danced; and she delighted Herod and his guests. The king said to the girl, “Ask me for anything you want and I will give it to you.”

And he went so far as to say with many oaths, “I will give you anything you ask, even half my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What shall I ask for?” The mother replied, “The head of John the Baptist.” The girl hurried to the king and made her request, “I want you to give me the head of John the Baptist, here and now, on a dish.”

The king was very displeased, but he would not refuse in front of his guests because of his oaths. So he sent one of his bodyguards with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded John in prison; then he brought the head on a dish and gave it to the girl. And the girl gave it to her mother.

When John’s disciples heard of this, they came and took his body and buried it.