Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 115 : 12-13, 14-15, 16-17
How can I repay the Lord for all His goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the Name of the Lord.
I will fulfil my vows to the Lord in the presence of all His people. It is painful to the Lord to see the death of His faithful.
O Lord, I am Your servant, truly Your servant, Your handmaid’s son. You have freed me from my bonds. I will offer You a thanksgiving sacrifice; I will call on the Name of the Lord.
Liturgical Colour : White
Acts 9 : 31-42
Meanwhile, the Church had peace. It was building up throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria with eyes turned to the Lord and filled with comfort from the Holy Spirit.
As Peter travelled around, he went to visit the saints who lived in Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas who was paralysed, and had been bedridden for eight years. Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; get up and make your bed!”
And the man got up at once. All the people living in Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord. There was a disciple in Joppa named Tabitha, which means Dorcas or Gazelle. She was always doing good works and helping the poor. At that time she fell sick and died. After having washed her body, they laid her in the upstairs room.
As Lydda is near Joppa, the disciples, on hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter went with them. On his arrival they took him upstairs to the room. All the widows crowded around him in tears, showing him the clothes that Dorcas had made while she was with them.
Peter made them them all leave the room and then he knelt down and prayed. Turning to the dead body he said, “Tabitha, stand up.” She opened her eyes, looked at Peter and sat up. Peter gave her his hand and helped her up. Then he called in the saints and widows and presented her to them alive.
This became known throughout all of Joppa and many people believed in the Lord because of it.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we all listened to the words of the Sacred Scriptures, we are reminded once again of the salvation which we have generously received from the hands of the Lord Himself, Who has come into our midst, to reveal His love and mercy, His power and compassion so that by this act of supreme and most perfect, selfless and ever enduring love, God has made available to us the most wonderful grace of His love, reaching out to us through His Son, opening for us all the gates of Heaven. That is why we have to appreciate everything that He has done for us and realise what we have been entrusted with as Christians, in the need for all of us to love Him sincerely and genuinely from our hearts, and to carry out the missions He has given to us.
In our first reading today, we heard of the words mentioned by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who is likely St. Luke the Evangelist based on historical evidence, in which the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ into this world has become the means by which He has destroyed the chains of sin and death that have dominated over us and kept us ensnared and trapped in the path towards our destruction and damnation. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews explained how the Messiah, the Saviour of all had embraced our human nature for the specific reason of saving each and every one of us from the destruction because of our sins which have corrupted us all and our human nature. This justified the appearance of God in the form of Man, as Christ our Lord has revealed to us.
We must first understand that from the very beginning of time, we have been corrupted and made imperfect because of our disobedience against God and our choice of obeying and trusting the words of the evil one, Satan, the Deceiver rather than to put our faith and trust in God. We allowed ourselves to be swayed by the temptations of worldly desires, ambitions, greed and more such that we defiled our pure and perfect origin, as it had been crafted and designed by God, and we allowed sin to corrupt our nature through disobedience against God, His will, Law and commandments. And hence, in order to undo this corruption of our nature and to remove the darkness that has covered all of us, separating us from the fullness of God’s grace and love, hence God sent unto us His deliverance through His Son.
For this Son of God has been incarnate in the flesh, and become one just like us all, assuming our human nature and existence just as mentioned by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. And by His total and perfect obedience to the will of His Heavenly Father, He has become the archetype and example of the perfect Man, that had once been lost to us through sin and death. He has indeed become the New Adam, the New Man, breaking us all free from the dominion of sin, which He did by offering Himself as our High Priest, making the perfect supplication and offer on our behalf by the means of His own Most Precious Body and Blood, broken and outpoured for our sake on the Altar of His Cross at Calvary.
He can do this because while He has assumed our human flesh, existence and nature, but His humanity is distinct from His Divinity, and yet, both are indivisible and inseparable from each other. That is why, what He is offering is offering of Humanity which is made perfect by His Divinity and by His freedom from any taint of sin. Through Him and all of His works, His most perfect and wonderful sacrifice, in His ever enduring and powerful love for us, Christ has opened the doors of salvation to us, which in our Gospel passage today we have also heard and witnessed His great desire to bring us all back to the light of God’s grace, healing and strengthening us all amidst all the hardships and challenges that we have to face in life.
In that account from the Gospel according to St. Mark the Evangelist, we heard how the Lord healed the very sick mother-in-law of His disciple Simon, later to be known as St. Peter the Apostle. That occasion made many people to come and bring their sick ones to Him, so that He might heal them all as well. The Lord could very well have stayed and remained there, as He was very popular thanks to His miracles and healing, but as we heard, He chose to quietly leave the place behind, so that He could fulfil the missions and works that had been entrusted to Him. In this we have seen yet another example of the obedience and faithfulness which Christ has shown in His life, as opposed to the disobedience which we have shown against God.
It is a reminder that all of us as Christians must always strive to be obedient to God and to listen to Him at all times. We should not allow ourselves to be swayed by our desires, by the many temptations and evils all around us, which may attempt to lead us astray by pandering to our desires and our ego, our ambitions and attachments to worldly matters and pursuits. This is where we have to make the strong and firm stand for our faith in the Lord, committing ourselves wholeheartedly to His cause and to obey Him just as Jesus our Lord has shown us all the perfect example for all of us to follow. As Christians it is important that we should always show good examples and be good role models in our faith to everyone around us.
Today, the Church traditionally celebrates the Feast of St. Paul the Hermit, an ascetic whose great faith, commitment and obedience to God can truly inspire us all in how we all should live our own faith. He was a longtime ascetic after he escaped from the intense persecution of Christian during his youth by the Roman Emperor Decius, when he was just in his early twenties. According to tradition and hagiographic evidence, he would spend the next nine decades living as a hermit in the desert, dedicating himself to prayerful life in solitude, which eventually inspired many other people like the other famous ascetic, St. Anthony of Egypt, also known as St. Anthony the Great. His great holiness and dedication to a life pleasing to God is indeed an inspiration to us all as Christians, a life detached from all the worldly glory and temptations that often distract and mislead us down the wrong paths in life.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore follow in the examples shown to us by the Lord Himself and also His saints, like St. Paul the Hermit among others. Let us all strive to be ever more faithful and committed to the cause of the Lord from now on, doing whatever we can so that our every words, actions and deeds, our every interactions and good works, efforts and in all things, we will inspire many more people to live lives that are truly and wholeheartedly committed to God, as faithful and good Christians, now and always. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)
Mark 1 : 29-39
At that time, on leaving the synagogue, Jesus went to the home of Simon and Andrew with James and John. As Simon’s mother-in-law was sick in bed with fever, they immediately told Him about her. Jesus went to her and, taking her by the hand, raised her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.
That evening at sundown, people brought to Jesus all the sick and those who had evil spirits : the whole town was pressing around the door. Jesus healed many who had various diseases, and drove out many demons; but He did not let them speak, for they knew Who He was.
Very early in the morning, before daylight, Jesus went off to a lonely place where He prayed. Simon and the others went out also, searching for Him; and when they found Him, they said, “Everyone is looking for You.” Then Jesus answered, “Let us go to the nearby villages so that I may preach there too; for that is why I came.”
So Jesus set out to preach in all the synagogues throughout Galilee; He also cast out demons.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)
Psalm 104 : 1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8-9
Give thanks to the Lord, call on His Name; make known His works among the nations. Sing to Him, sing His praise, proclaim all His wondrous deeds.
Glory in His holy Name; let those who seek the Lord rejoice. Look to the Lord and be strong; seek His face always.
You descendants of His servant Abraham, you sons of Jacob, His chosen ones! He is the Lord our God; His judgments reach the whole world.
He remembers His covenant forever, His promise to a thousand generations, the covenant He made with Abraham, the promise He swore to Isaac.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)
Hebrews 2 : 14-18
And because all those children share one same nature of flesh and blood, Jesus, likewise, had to share this nature. This is why His death destroyed the one holding the power of death, that is the devil, and freed those who remained in bondage all their lifetime, because of the fear of death.
Jesus came, to take by the hand, not the Angels but the human race. So, He had to be like His brothers and sisters, in every respect, in order to be the High Priest, faithful to God and merciful to them, a Priest, able to ask pardon, and atone for their sins. Having been tested through suffering, He is able to help those who are tested.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we listened to the words of the Scriptures, all of us are reminded that in following God, we have to be truly sincere in doing so, and that we may have to encounter a lot of challenges, hardships and difficulties amidst our journey towards the Lord, and we may have to make sacrifices and persevere through whatever it is that we may have to endure in our journey towards God’s grace and salvation. The Lord has always been kind towards us and He has always shown His great patience, in continuing to love us all despite the stubborn attitudes that we had shown Him all these while. God has loved us from the beginning, and He has always helped us throughout the way, showing us the means through which we may find the surest path to His salvation, by entrusting to us His Law and commandments.
In our first reading today, we heard from the Book of the prophet Ezekiel in which the Lord told His prophet to speak to the community of the Israelite exiles in Babylon and elsewhere, telling them how each and every one of them should always put their faith and trust in the Lord, and sin against Him no more, for all the sins which they and their ancestors had committed would lead them all to ruin and destruction, because of the many temptations that this world has offered them, and which kept them away from the path towards God and His grace. At that time, the remnants of Israel in the kingdom of Judah where Ezekiel hailed from was in the last days of its existence, as the Babylonians were about to conquer them and eradicate them from existence, destroying their city of Jerusalem and its Temple.
Through what we have heard, we are reminded that if we choose to walk the path of sin and evil, through our disobedience against God and by embracing the temptations of worldly desires and greed, we are likely to end up in ultimate defeat, regret and destruction, just as the Israelites themselves had suffered, and just as how the Lord showed it through the examples of the misfortunes faced by His prophet Ezekiel. We must not allow the temptations and wickedness of this world from swaying us down the wrong path, and as Christians, we should remind ourselves that we have to follow what the Lord Himself has revealed and taught to us, His Law and commandments, through His Church, and because we are His people, it is important that we should live in accordance to God’s ways, at all times.
Then, in our Gospel passage today, we heard a related passage about the Lord Who was speaking to a young man who asked Him about how he could attain eternal life, and the young man also mentioned how he had been obeying and following the Law, the commandments of the Lord, in all of its many precepts and rules. However, when the Lord then asked the young man to sell everything that he possessed, leaving behind all worldly matters and glory, the young man left in sadness. This showed how despite everything that the young man had done in obeying the Law and commandments of God, he has not yet put the Lord at the very centre and as the first priority of his life. His love and attachment for those wealth and possessions was preventing him from truly being able to commit himself thoroughly as a disciple of the Lord.
Brothers and sisters, this does not mean that the Lord is asking us to leave behind all of our properties, wealth and earthly treasures. Rather, this is an important reminder for us that we do not end up getting so caught up and obsessed by those things that we end up getting too attached and preoccupied by them which may end up distracting our true focus and path in life, in serving the Lord wholeheartedly all of our whole lives. Those blessings, possessions and things which we have received should serve as means for us to make them for good use in empowering those around us and also helping all those who may be less fortunate and not as blessed as we all are. We should not use them for our own selfish benefits and gains, and we should also not be obsessed in trying to get more of them.
Today, the Church celebrates the memory of a great saint, whose feast day we commemorate today, namely that of St. John Eudes, a holy priest and servant of God. St. John Eudes was born in France about four centuries ago and he devoted himself to the Lord since a rather early age, committing himself to a chaste life before embarking on formation first under the Jesuits and then the Oratorians through which he grew stronger in his devotion and commitment to the Lord through a strong personal and spiritual relationship with Him. And as a priest, St. John Eudes was well known for his dedication to his work as a priest, ministering to the people of God and administering the sacraments to them, caring for the sick, the poor and the dying among other things.
St. John Eudes was a renowned preacher who has went on many missions to reach out to more and more of God’s people, calling on them all to return to Him, and he was also involved in establishing seminaries and institutions meant to help in the upbringing and formation of priests like seminaries and other related establishments to help improve the formation and spiritual quality of priests that he found quite lacking at the time. St. John Eudes also founded several religious congregations, one of which is the Order of Our Lady of Charity of the Refuge dedicated to help those prostitutes and former prostitutes who sought to live a new life of grace and penance in atonement for their past sins and way of life. He also established the Eudists, a congregation dedicated to education of priests and parish missions, something that he had done all his life. St. John Eudes truly committed himself wholeheartedly to the Lord, and we should follow in his footsteps.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore reflect upon what we have just discussed from the readings of the Scriptures and from the life and missions of St. John Eudes, the holy man of God. Let us all do our own part in living our lives worthily of the Lord, by doing whatever we can in each and every moments of our lives to carry out what God had told us to do, and to follow Him wholeheartedly in all things just as we have heard from our Scripture readings today. We should always put the Lord at the centre and at the very heart of our every actions and works, in every moments of our lives and in our every interactions with one another. It is by doing all these that we are truly able to live a worthy, Christ-like life, and we can do what God has called us to do. Let our lives be truly filled with God’s grace and love in all things, and may we all be the worthy bearers of His light and truth, and may we inspire many others to walk in the same path that we have walked ourselves in our journey towards God. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Matthew 19 : 16-22
At that time, it was then, that a young man approached Him and asked, “Master, what good work must I do to receive eternal life?” Jesus answered, “Why do you ask Me about what is good? One, only, is good. If you want to enter eternal life, keep the commandments.”
The young man said, “Which commandments?” Jesus replied, “Do not kill; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not bear false witness; honour your father and mother. And love your neighbour as yourself.” The young man said to Him, “I have kept all these commandments. What do I still lack?”
Jesus answered, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you possess, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come back and follow Me.” On hearing this, the young man went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Deuteronomy 32 : 18-19, 20, 21
They have disowned the Rock Who fathered them; they have forgotten the God Who gave them birth. The Lord saw this, and in His anger rejected His sons and daughters.
He said, “I will hide My face from them and see what will become of them. They are so perverse, so unfaithful!”
“They made Me jealous with their false gods and angered Me with their idols. I will, therefore, make them envious of a foolish people, I will provoke them to anger with an empty-headed nation.”
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Ezekiel 24 : 15-24
The word of YHVH came to me in these terms, “Son of man, I am about to suddenly take from you the delight of your eyes, but you are not to lament or weep or to let your tears flow. Groan in silence and do not mourn for the dead; wear your turban, put on your sandals, do not cover your beard or eat the customary food of mourners.”
I spoke to the people in the morning and my wife died that evening. The next morning I did as I had been commanded. Then the people said to me : “Explain to us the meaning of your actions.” I said to them, “The word of YHVH came to me in these terms : ‘Say to Israel : I am about to profane My Sanctuary, your pride, the delight of your eyes for which you long.’”
“‘The sons and daughters you left behind will also fall by the sword, but you will do as I have done : you will not cover your beard or eat the customary food of mourners; you will keep your turbans on your heads and sandals on your feet. You will not lament or weep. Instead, because of your sin, you will waste away and groan among yourselves. Ezekiel will be a sign for you. Do as he did : and when this happens, you will know that I am YHVH.’”
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 