holy men

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Saturday, 13 July 2013 : 14th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Henry (First Reading)

Genesis 49 : 29-32 and Genesis 50 : 15-26a

Jacob then gave his sons these instructions : “I am soon to be gathered to my people; bury me near my fathers, in the cave in the field of Ephron, the Hittite; in the cave in the field of Machpelah, to the east of Mamre in Canaan, the field that Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite as a burial place. It was there that Abraham and his wife Sarah were buried. There they buried Leah.

When Joseph’s brothers realised that their father was dead they said, “What if Joseph turns against us in hate because of the evil we did him?” So they sent word to Joseph saying, “Before he died your father told us to say this to you : Please forgive the crime and the sin of your brothers in doing evil to you. Forgive the crime of the servants of your father’s God.”

When he was given the message, Joseph wept. His brothers went and threw themselves down before him. “We are your slaves,” they said. But Joseph reassured them, “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? You intended to do me harm, but God intended to turn it to good in order to bring about what is happening today – the survival of many people. So have no fear! I will provide for you and your little ones.” In this way he touched their hearts and consoled them.

Joseph remained in Egypt together with all his father’s family. He lived for a hundred and ten years, long enough to see Ephraim’s great-grandchildren, and also to have the children of Machir, the son of Manasseh, placed on his knees after their birth.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am going to die, but God will surely remember you and take you from this country to the land He promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”Joseph then made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “When God comes to bring you out from here, carry my bones with you.” Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten.

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Friday, 28 June 2013 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Irenaeus, Bishop and Martyr (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the feast day of St. Irenaeus, who was a bishop and martyr hailing from the early Church. St. Irenaeus emphasized the teachings of the Apostles and the tradition of the faith in opposition to the numerous heresies of man born in the turbulent times of the second century Church. He especially defended the episcopacy and Church hierarchy, particularly the primacy of the successors of St. Peter, the Bishops of Rome.

He defended the teachings of the Church and the people of God from influences such as Gnosticism, which syncretic practices threatened to destroy the young Church from within. His role is therefore crucial in ensuring that the true, orthodox faith in the Lord can remain undisturbed and flourished in the next centuries after his death, while that of the heresies dwindling into oblivion.

He gave his full trust to the Lord, and steadfastly defended the faith. He believed in God who is loving and merciful, the Lord who healed the leper in the Gospel reading today, the Lord who gave Abraham the words of His promise, and kept fully to the promise, by granting Abraham his promised son, Isaac, through Sarah, even when she had been very old.

Yes, brothers and sisters in Christ, our Lord and God wants to heal us, and grant us His blessings and grace, that is if we remain faithful to Him and show our love and dedication to our God and creator. Our Lord and God is kind, and He wants to bring all of us scattered throughout the world back to Him, like a shepherd tending to his sheep, and searching for the lost ones, to make sure that no sheep may fall to be prey of wolves.

That He had done through His teachings that He had passed down through the Apostles. The Apostles themselves and their successors are shepherds in God’s image of the Good Shepherd, ever ready to defend the faith, both from the pagans and the heresies that came from within the Church itself. They worked hard, like the way St. Irenaeus had done, to defend the sheep of the Lord from the wolves of heresy, and the wolves of this world.

We should indeed rejoice, because despite our sinfulness and our rebellious nature, God wants to save us through the covenants He had made, first that He made with Abraham, and one that was renewed into a new covenant by Christ, the Son of God, by His death on the cross in Calvary. That He gave Himself, His own life, His Body and His Blood for us, so that we can be saved, is testimony enough of His love for us, and proof enough why He is the only One worthy of praise and worship.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, emulating the example of St. Irenaeus, the valiant defender of the faith of the early Church, his contemporaries, the Apostles and the early Church Fathers, let ourselves be resolved to defend our faith in the Lord against all kinds of aberrant teachings that seek to diminish the divinity and the love of our God, teachings that are like wolves preying on weak and unsuspecting sheep, our very own brothers and sisters.

That is why there is an ever greater need to strengthen the faith within all of us, empowering ourselves so that all of us may remain steadfast in our faith, the true faith as beheld by St. Irenaeus and the Apostles, amidst the numerous currents in this world, the currents of heresy, the currents of worldliness, and the currents of evil. These currents corrupt mankind and will bring us away from God and salvation in Him.

Remain strong, brothers and sisters in Christ!  and pray for one another at all times, that God will defend us against the evils of this world. May God always be with all of us. Amen.

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Friday, 28 June 2013 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Irenaeus, Bishop and Martyr (Gospel Reading)

Matthew 8 : 1-4

When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed Him. Then a leper came forward. He knelt before Him and said, “Sir, if You want to, You can make me clean.” Jesus stretched out His hand, touched him, and said, “I want to, be clean again.”

At that very moment, the man was cleansed from his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you do not tell anyone, but go to the priest, have yourself declared clean, and offer the gift that Moses ordered as proof of it.”

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Friday, 28 June 2013 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Irenaeus, Bishop and Martyr (Psalm)

Psalm 127 : 1-2, 3, 4-5

Blessed are you who fear the Lord and walk in His ways. You will eat the fruit of your toil; you will be blessed and favoured.

Your wife, like a vine, will bear fruits in your home; your children, like olive shoots will stand around your table.

Such are the blessings bestowed upon the man who fears the Lord. May the Lord bless you from Zion. May you see Jerusalem prosperous all the days of your life.

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Friday, 28 June 2013 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Irenaeus, Bishop and Martyr (First Reading)

Genesis 17 : 1, 9-10. 15-22

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, YHVH appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty. Walk in My presence and be without blame!”

God said to Abraham, “For your part, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you, generation after generation. This is My covenant with you, that you will keep, you and your descendants after you : Every male among you shall be circumcised.”

God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai, your wife, no longer are you to call her Sarai, but Sarah. I will bless her, and I will give you a son by her. I will bless her and from her will come nations; kings and peoples shall come from her.”

Then Abraham fell face down, and he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? And can Sarah who is ninety have a child?” And Abraham said to God, “If only You would accept Ishmael as Yours!”

But God said, “Not at all! It is Sarah, your wife, who will give birth to your son and you will name him Isaac. I will establish My covenant with him and his descendants after him forever. As for Ishmael, I heard you. I will bless him and make him fruitful, and I will multiply his race. He shall be the father of twelve princes and I will make of him a great nation.

But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, the child Sarah will have this time next year.” When He had finished speaking with Abraham, God went away from him.

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Monday, 24 June 2013 : Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, our God loves us, and He loves all of us so much that He is willing to save all of us from the damnation of hell. He sent us His only Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Saviour, the One who redeemed us from the sins of our forefathers, from their rebellion against the love of God. Through Him we are saved, if we accept Him as our Lord, and His free offer of salvation to all of us.

To prepare for the Messiah, the Lord sent His messenger, in the person of John the Baptist, the precursor and the preparer of the way for Christ. His dedication to the mission for which he had been chosen for, and his tireless work had indeed straightened the way for Christ and paved the way for salvation.

Today we celebrate the feast of this great messenger of God and saint, John the Baptist, whose baptisms called the people back towards the Lord through repentance. Repentance allowed the people to set their hearts and minds right, so that they would be in the correct state of heart and mind to be receptive of the Lord and His message that is brought by none other than Christ, His Son and our Saviour.

St. John the Baptist had dedicated his whole life to the Lord, as someone set aside for the works of God, through whose hands God had worked His wonders to the people of Israel, the last of the prophets before the coming of the Messiah, who would eventually liberate God’s people from the tyranny of evil, sin, and therefore death.

God is faithful, and He remembered His covenant that He made with Abraham years ago, with the promise He had made that the descendants of Abraham, all of us, will be fruitful, and will be blessed. Even when the descendants of Abraham, as shown through Israel did not stay faithful entirely to the Lord, but fell into rebellion, in the similar way as their forefathers, God did not give up on us, just as He did not give up on mankind after the disobedience of Adam and Eve, our first ancestors.

We are all precious to God, so precious that despite the covenant broken by our rebellion and our stubbornness against God’s love and compassion, He was willing to forge a new covenant with all of us, and this covenant will never be broken, because this covenant is not made just by God’s words alone, but sealed with none other than the Most Precious Blood of the Lamb of God, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who shed His blood from up there on the cross, flowing from His holy wounds, pierced by our sins and our rebellion.

St. John the Baptist had a great part to play in this plan of salvation, not only as the one who helped to bring God’s mission to perfection, and helped to convert many to the cause of the Lord through repentance, but also through his direct role in the initiation of Jesus’ ministry on this world. Through his baptism of Christ on the Jordan, he initiated Christ on His ministry, which began after that baptism, when the Lord proclaimed to the world, that Jesus is indeed His Son, and that His favour is on Him.

His humility that he showed when he declared the identity of Christ to his own disciples, so that He would increase while John himself would decrease in importance is an example for all of us, that whenever we do things, let us remember that we should do it for the greater glory of God, and not to our own personal human glory, and seek the praise of the Lord, and not the praise of man.

We can follow the many examples of Saint John the Baptist, my dear brothers and sisters, that we should emulate him in our lives. To love and serve the Lord with all our hearts, with all our minds, and with all our being, that we truly become the children of God, and people beloved by the Lord our God. May the Lord guide us at all times in our lives, that we will not be led astray in our path towards Him. God bless us all. Amen.

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Monday, 24 June 2013 : Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (Gospel Reading)

Luke 1 : 57-66, 80

When the time came for Elizabeth, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbours and relatives heard that the merciful Lord had done a wonderful thing or her, and they rejoiced with her.

When, on the eighth day, they came to attend the circumcision of the child, they wanted to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, “Not so; he shall be called John.” They said to her, “But no one in your family has that name!” and they asked the father, by means of signs, for the name he wanted to give him.

Zechariah asked for a writing tablet, and wrote on it, “His name is John,” and they were very surprised. Immediately Zechariah could speak again, and his first words were in praise of God. A holy fear came on all in the neighbourhood, and throughout the hill country of Judea the people talked about these events.

All who heard of it pondered in their minds, and wondered. “What will this child be?” For they understood that the hand of the Lord was with him.

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Monday, 24 June 2013 : Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (Second Reading)

Acts 13 : 22-26

After that time, God removed Saul and raised up David as king, to whom He bore witness saying : ‘I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all I want him to do.’ It is from the descendants of David that God has now raised up the promised Saviour of Israel, Jesus.

Before He appeared, John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for all the people of Israel. As John was ending his life’s work, he said : ‘I am not what you think I am, for after me another One is coming whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.’

Brothers, children and descendants of Abraham, and you also who fear God, it is to you that this message of salvation has been sent.

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Monday, 24 June 2013 : Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (Psalm)

Psalm 138 : 1-3, 13-14ab, 14c-15

O Lord, You know me : You have scrutinised me. You know when I sit and when I rise; beforehand You discern my thoughts. You observe my activities and times of rest; You are familiar with all my ways.

It was You who formed my inmost part and knit me together in my mother’s womb. I thank You for these wonders You have done.

My heart praises You for Your marvellous deeds. Even my bones were known to You when I was being formed in secret, fashioned in the depths of the earth.

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Monday, 24 June 2013 : Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (First Reading)

Isaiah 49 : 1-6

Listen to me, o islands, pay attention, peoples from distant lands. YHVH called me from my mother’s womb; He pronounced my name before I was born. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword. He hid me in the shadow of His hand. He made me into a polished arrow set apart in His quiver. He said to me, “You are Israel, My servant, through you I will be known.”

“I have laboured in vain,” I thought and spent my strength for nothing.” Yet what is due me was in the hand of YHVH, and my reward was with my God. I am important in the sight of YHVH, and my God is my strength. And now YHVH has spoken, He who formed me in the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob back to Him.

He said : “It is not enough that you be my servant, to restore the tribes of Jacob, to bring back the remnant of Israel, I will make you the light of the nations, that My salvation will reach to the ends of the earth.”