Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Matthew 11 : 28-30
At that time, Jesus said, “Come to Me, all you who work hard and who carry heavy burdens, and I will refresh you. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest. For My yoke is good, and My burden is light.”
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Psalm 101 : 13-14ab and 15, 16-18, 19-21
But You, o Lord, You sit forever; Your Name endures through all generations. Arise, have mercy on Zion; for Your servants cherish her stones, and are moved to pity by her dust.
O Lord, the nations will revere Your Name, and the kings of the earth Your glory, when the Lord will rebuild Zion and appear in all His splendour. For He will answer the prayer of the needy and will not despise their plea.
Let this be written for future ages, “The Lord will be praised by a people He will form.” From His holy height in heaven, the Lord has looked on the earth to hear the groaning of the prisoners, and free those condemned to death.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Isaiah 26 : 7-9, 12, 16-19
Let the righteous walk in righteousness. You make smooth the path of the just, and we only seek the way of Your laws, o YHVH. Your Name and Your memory are the desire of our hearts. My soul yearns for You in the night; for You my spirit keeps vigil. When Your judgments come to earth, the world’s inhabitants learn to be upright.
YHVH, please give us peace; for all that we accomplish is Your work. For they sought You in distress, they cried out to You in the time of their punishment. As a woman in travail moans and writhes in pain, so are we now in Your presence. We conceived, we had labour pains, but we gave birth to the wind. We have not brought salvation to the land; the inhabitants of a new world have not been born.
Your dead will live! Their corpses will rise! Awake and sing, you who lie in the dust! Let Your dew fall, o Lord, like a dew of light, and the earth will throw out her dead.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard from the Scriptures speaking to us about trusting in the power of God and trusting in our own power, intellect and capabilities. In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah spoke against the pride of the king of Assyria, likely to be the king Sennacherib who came to besiege Jerusalem and boasted his might before the people of Judah.
As a context to what he was speaking about, the king of Assyria conquered many nations and peoples, and these people were sold into slavery and brought under the heels of the Assyrian Empire. However, there is one people whom he was unable to subjugate, that is the people of Judah, as God was standing with them and supported them against their enemies.
The king of Assyria boasted about his might and power before the people of Judah and before their king. He boasted about how many other nations had tried to go up against the Assyrians and those had been crushed, and their gods were unable to stop those things from happening. And thus, he blasphemed against God, thinking that nothing could have prevented him from achieving what he wanted, even against the power of God.
But he was completely humbled when God struck him and his forces down, sending His Angel to destroy a hundred and eighty-five thousand among the Assyrians’ mighty host. And thus, the Assyrian king was forced to retreat in great humiliation, and he would no longer trouble the people of God in Judah. And in the aftermath, the bickering and manoeuvring for power led to the very own sons of Sennacherib to kill their own father.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, that short story about what happened during the time when the proud and the mighty went against the people of God is a reminder for all of us, that the power of men is feeble and untrustworthy. All the wealth, fame, influences and glory which we have in this world are not permanent, and without warning, we may lose them at any time, and having all of them does not necessarily free us from troubles to come.
And of course we do not bring them with us when we die. Whatever we have accumulated in this life will not follow us to the afterlife. In the Gospel today, we heard about our Lord Jesus Who revealed that those who place their trust in the wisdom and intellect of men do not know the truth which God brought into the world. It is likely because they were so self-absorbed by their great deeds that they ended up ignoring God and what He was trying to tell them.
We often place our trust in perishable treasures, things that can easily perish by fire, by thievery or by any worldly deeds and causes. But if we learn to look beyond all these, then perhaps we may be able to find that true treasure which all of us should strive for, that is for the kingdom of God, and for the reward of the just and the faithful ones. These are the treasures that will last forever and will not rot or be lost.
Let us all look at the example of St. Henry, the saint whose feast we are celebrating today. St. Henry was also known as the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II, the secular leader of Christendom at the time. St. Henry although he was one of the most powerful and influential person living at that time, having enormous wealth and influence, but he remained a simple and humble person.
St. Henry reigned wisely and built a great relationship with the Church, supporting its numerous good and charitable and evangelising work with zeal, while stabilising his Empire and devoting his time for the good of his people. St. Henry devoted himself to the state and to the betterment of his people, and he was a great role model to all of them.
He helped the establishment of the Church in many places and sincerely supported the Church in many matters. He was a very devout and committed person, and helped to enforce many of the rules of Christian celibacy to both the religious and the populace in general, avoiding all forms of impropriety and wickedness. In this manner, he showed the people how to be truly faithful to God in all of their actions.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all heed the examples of St. Henry, the faithful and devoted ruler. Let us all learn to be humble and to be receptive to God’s transforming love in our midst, that we will no longer be subjected to our greed and human desires, and from now on, may all of us be able to commit ourselves, all our lives to the Lord our God without hesitation. God bless us all. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White
Matthew 11 : 25-27
At that time, Jesus said, “Father, Lord of heaven and earth, I praise You, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learnt, and revealed them to simple people. Yes, Father, this is what pleased You.”
“Everything has been entrusted to Me by My Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”
Liturgical Colour : Green or White
Psalm 93 : 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 14-15
They crush Your people, o Lord, they oppress Your inheritance. They murder the widow and the lonely, they massacre the helpless.
“The Lord does not see,” they say, “The God of Jacob does not care.” Remember this, you stupid people, when will you understand, you fools!
He Who made the ear, will He not hear? He Who formed the eye, will He not see? He Who rebukes nations, will He not punish them?
The Lord will not reject His people nor will He forsake His heritage. Justice will return to the just, and the upright will follow in its wake.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White
Isaiah 10 : 5-7, 13-16
Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger, the staff of My fury! Against a godless nation I send him, against a people who provoke My wrath I dispatch him, to plunder and pillage, to tread them down like mud in the streets. But the mind of his king is far from this, his heart harbours other thoughts; what he wants is to destroy, to make an end of all nations.
For the king says : “By my own strength I have done this and by my own wisdom, for I am clever. I have moved the frontiers of peoples, I have plundered treasures, I have brought inhabitants down to the dust, I have toppled kings from their thrones. As one reaches into a nest, so my hands have reached into nations’ wealth. As one gathers deserted eggs, so have I gathered the riches of the earth. No one flapped a wing or opened its mouth to chirp a protest.”
Does the axe claim more credit than the man who wields it? Does the saw magnify itself more than the one who uses it? This would be like a rod wielding the man who lifts it up; will those not made of wood, be controlled by the cudgel? Therefore the Lord, YHVH Sabaoth, is ready to send a wasting sickness upon the king’s sturdy warriors. Beneath his plenty, a flame will burn like a consuming fire.
Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate the great feast day of one of the most renowned holy saints of Christendom, one known for his great piety and discipline in faith, the one who made religious life to be such a devout and popular profession in his days. St. Benedict of Nursia, the founder and first Abbot of the Benedictine religious order had a great role in the history of the Church, in helping many to find their calling and vocations in God, and advance the cause of the Lord.
St. Benedict of Nursia was born five centuries after the birth of Christ at a time when Christianity has become the majority faith for the people in the then known world. The Christian faith has become the faith followed by the people from the lowest to the greatest in the society, and the Church was still growing rapidly and developing its structure and practices. However, it was very often that heresies and all other false teachings arose in the Church, and people were also often lukewarm about their faith.
They have become complacent about their faith, just as what we heard in the Scriptures today, in the Book of the prophet Isaiah, where God rebuked His people for their empty offerings and sacrifices which were not made in real and genuine faith and devotion for Him. The people had come to see those sacrifices as obligations and as merely a process, and they had no real love for the Lord.
And in the Gospel Jesus also rebuked the people who followed Him, all those thinking that His coming into the world would usher an era of eternal peace where there would be no more suffering or difficulties, where being a follower of the Lord would entail one to a life of complacency and enjoyment, and where no more work is needed. Being a Christian in fact means a life of challenges and difficulties, as the world of darkness from which we have been rescued from would not remain silent even as we approach the salvation in our God.
Jesus Himself warned that His coming would bring about conflict and struggle, even among the closest of friends, among the inner circles of the families themselves, where one member of the family, being a Christian might be pitted against the other members of the family and even be persecuted. There had been many examples in the history of our Faith and the Church, where the faithful had been torn between their families and the faith, their friends and the Lord. And those who chose the Lord often faced suffering and even martyrdom.
And thus, St. Benedict who founded several communities of the faithful who chose to devote themselves and their whole lives to God in a life of seclusion and prayer. St. Benedict was renowned for his famous Rule of St. Benedict, which became the foundation of the order which he helped to establish, as those communities which he had established eventually grew to become what we know as the Benedictine order.
The Rule of St. Benedict encompassed the rules put in place to ensure that the lives of those who chose to join the religious order of St. Benedict are filled with devotions and prayers, and filled with hard work to cultivate their faith in the Lord. They lived together and worked together in harmony, and in the challenges and the difficulties that they faced, they have nothing better and greater than God Himself Who stood by them.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, it does not mean that all of us should abandon our current lives and devote ourselves to become monks and religious like St. Benedict and his followers had done. Of course if there are some among us who had been called and chosen, and if they had chosen to follow the fullness of the examples of St. Benedict, then it is in fact a great thing, and we should give our support and encouragement to them.
But for the rest of us, each and every one of us have also been called to give our best effort to live as true and devout Christians, as those who do not just profess the faith on paper or with mere words alone, but also through hard work and dedication. Indeed, the path forward for us will be challenging, but at least then if we remain faithful to the end, then our way forward is clear, and God rewards all those who keep their faith in Him despite all the difficulties and the challenges faced.
Let us all therefore imitate the examples of St. Benedict of Nursia and his Benedictine followers, devoting ourselves in each of our own way, but most importantly be sincere in our faith and devotion, and commit ourselves wholly to God, not just with our mouth or gestures, but from the deepest depths inside our hearts and our minds. May God help us and strengthen us. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : White
Matthew 10 : 34 – Matthew 11 : 1
At that time, Jesus spoke to the people and to His disciples, “Do not think that I have come to establish peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. Each one will have as enemies those of one’s own family.”
“Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And whoever loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And whoever does not take up His cross and come after Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever finds his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
“Whoever welcomes you welcomes Me, and whoever welcomes Me welcomes Him Who sent Me. The one who welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive the reward of a prophet; the one who welcomes a just man, because he is a just man, will receive the reward of a just man. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones, because he is My disciple, I assure you, he will not go unrewarded.”
When Jesus had finished giving His twelve disciples these instructions, He went on from there to teach and to proclaim His message in their towns.
Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 49 : 8-9, 16bc-17, 21 and 23
Not for your sacrifices do I reprove you, for your burnt offerings are ever before Me. I need no bull from your stalls, nor he-goat from your pens.
What right have you to mouth My laws, or to talk about My covenant? You hate My commands and cast My words behind you.
Because I was silent while you did these things, you thought I was like you. But now I rebuke you and make this charge against you. Those who give with thanks offerings honour Me, but the one who walks blamelessly, I will show him the salvation of God.
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 