Holy Sunday

by

Sunday, 8 September 2019 : Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 89 : 3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and 17

You turn humans back to dust, saying, “Return, o mortals!” A thousand years in Your sight are like a day that has passed, or like a watch in the night.

You sow them in their time, a dawn they peep out. In the morning they blossom, but the flower fades and withers in the evening.

So make us know the shortness of our life, that we may gain wisdom of heart. How long will You be angry, o YHVH? Have mercy on Your servant.

Fill us at daybreak with Your goodness, that we may be glad all our days. May the sweetness of YHVH be upon us; may He prosper the work of our hands.

by

Sunday, 8 September 2019 : Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Wisdom 9 : 13-18

Indeed, who can know the intentions of God? Who can discern the plan of the Lord? For human reasoning is timid, our notions misleading; a perishable body is a burden for the soul and our tent of clay weighs down the active mind.

We are barely able to know about the things of earth and it is a struggle to understand what is close to us; who then may hope to understand heavenly things? Who has ever known Your will unless You first gave Him Wisdom and sent down Your Holy Spirit to him? In this way You directed the human race on the right path; they learnt what pleases You and were saved by Wisdom.

by

Sunday, 1 September 2019 : Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday we are contemplating on a topic which many of us often find difficult to practice in our daily lives and as Christians, especially in this world which is often filled with many temptations and desires that prevent us from practicing this very important. Christian virtue that can lead us to be closer to God. And what is this virtue, brothers and sisters in Christ? It is humility.

Humility is something that we often profess to have and preach as Christians. We always like to say that we have humility in us, and yet, very often and more than not, we do not practice humility in our daily lives, and we do not act humbly in how we interact with one another and in how we utter our words and in reaching out to others. On the contrary, we are often tempted by the pride within us, and acted with ego, pride and arrogance.

In our Gospel passage today, the Lord Jesus Himself presented to us what is the problem with ourselves in how we act in our daily living. He mentioned how people often jostled and even fought over the places of honour in events and banquets, seeking places of greater honour and exposure, so that one may gain more prestige or satisfaction from having a position of greater honour and esteem than that of another person.

And yet, as the Lord Himself said, there will always be bound to be others who have greater esteem and honour than us, and it is bound that we will be displaced by another who is of greater rank and honour than us, and as Our Lord said, those who want to glorify and honour themselves will end up being humiliated and dejected of having been asked to step aside for those with greater power and honour.

In the end, for all of our pursuits of glory, power, fame and influence, what do we all gain, brothers and sisters in Christ? We gain nothing, and indeed, we end up losing as Satan will have a great time trying to persuade us to take revenge and be angry, to be jealous with one another and to strive to be more powerful and more famous than another person. We spend a lot of time trying to make ourselves more beautiful or handsome, more attractive and more acceptable to others as a result.

In fact, we also cause a lot of sufferings to one another because of our pride and our greed, our inability to resist the many temptations of power, of glory, of fame, of wealth and worldly pleasures. Many conflicts and wars have been caused by the insatiable desires of man who desired more power, more prestige, more wealth and everything else that often corrupted us mankind into the path of sin and wickedness.

The Lord has given us many blessings and good things in life, and yet we mankind are always hard to be satisfied. In truth, we will never be satisfied as long as we try to seek satisfaction in all these worldly things, in all the glory and wealth and riches of the world. The Lord has blessed us with what we need but we seek more than what we need and succumb to the temptations of the flesh, and we therefore fell into sin.

Today, all of us are called as Christians to look deep into our own lives and reflect on every actions, words and deeds we have done and spoken all these while. We are called to contemplate on how we have lived our lives thus far, and most importantly, whether we have truly put God at the very heart and centre of our whole being, and as the whole reason and purpose of our every words, actions and deeds.

Surely, more often than not, as we have discussed just earlier, we have lapsed from this path and fell into the path of pride, the path of greed and the path of sin. We fell into this state because we are weak in the flesh, and temptations are always plenty all around us. And unless we take the concrete action and efforts to resist those temptations and grow stronger in our relationship with God, we will likely end up continuing down this slippery path towards damnation.

Now, let us look at the impetus for all these temptations and for all the wickedness we have committed. In truth, everything leads to one thing, and that is pride or ego. Pride and ego is the greatest and most serious of all forms of sins, just as Satan himself was once the most brilliant and greatest among the Angels of God who was tempted by pride and fell from grace, and ended up in perpetual rebellion against God because of that same pride.

Similarly, pride has entered into our hearts and minds, corrupting our whole being and pushing us deeper towards sin. Pride is the source of all other sins, just as greed and gluttony comes about because of our own pride and ego, that desire to satisfy ourselves and our ego, sloth and lust that come about because of the same desire and want to please ourselves and gain things for ourselves, often at the cost and suffering of others, and many others.

That is why pride and ego are such dangerous enemies that we constantly have within ourselves, which become a great obstacle to us in our journey of faith towards God. How do we then resolve or counter this? The answer lies in what we have discussed earlier today and throughout today’s Scripture readings. It is humility that is the greatest weapon we have in our constant battle against pride and ego within us.

And the Lord wants us all to grow deeper in this humility, a most difficult and rarest of all Christian virtues in my opinion, as it is always very difficult for us to go up against our pride and ego, the ambition and arrogance and the selfishness that are present within us. But humility can be cultivated and it can grow within us, brothers and sisters in Christ, if only that we make the conscious effort to grow in humility and in our relationship and faith in God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all remember what the prophet Sirach mentioned in our first reading passage today, that the greater we become, the more humble we should be, and how we should submit ourselves to the power of God and not seek for things beyond our means, or as I have mentioned, causing even suffering and pain to others in our endless pursuits for power, glory, fame and worldly things.

Then, in the second reading today, I want all of us to remember what the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews pointed out in the passage, that God truly is great and Almighty, far beyond our comprehension, full of power and glory. In how God was shown as the Lord of lords, King of kings, with innumerable Angels glorifying and serving Him, the Master and Lord of all the universe, it serves to remind us all, that no matter how great we are, how glorious we are, how famous and powerful we may be in this world, we are truly nothing before the Lord.

Therefore, for all our pursuits for more power, fame, influence, glory and all worldly things, all of these are truly meaningless and futile because after all, we must realise that all these things do not last, and will not last into eternity. These are the treasures of this world that the Lord has told us to be false treasures, as distractions for us in our pursuit for the true treasure, which is truly found in God alone.

Today, henceforth, all of us as Christians, we are all called to be more humble in our lives and in how we act, in how we interact with one another, in how we live out our lives in this world today. And even more importantly, humility is something very important that we must have in today’s world, especially because today we also mark the occasion of the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.

On this day, we remember our roles as the Lord’s stewards of creation, which means that this world we are living in today, we have been entrusted to its care, just as God entrusted the world in the very first chapters of the Book of Genesis to the first men, the whole world with all of its living creatures and the whole earth itself to our care. And this is truly a very great responsibility for us all to bear.

In this regard, we need to be humble in knowing how God has entrusted with this great responsibility and duty, because He trusts us all to perform our responsibility with the best of our abilities, making use of the many gifts and talents that He has provided us with. Instead of exploiting and bringing harm to this world by our ego, by our greed and insatiable desire for wealth and worldly glory, why don’t we love what God has created for us instead?

That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, from now on let us all be truly devoted to God in all things and strive to be faithful always to Him, and show our faith and dedication through our every words, actions and deeds. Let us all be filled with humility in every actions, knowing that we are truly nothing without God, and all the glory and the wonders of this world are nothing and meaningless if we are not in God’s loving grace.

May the Lord continue to bless us all with His love and tender compassion, and may He grant us all the strength and conviction to live our lives faithfully from now on, with all humility and resisting the many temptations of this world, especially that of pride within our hearts. May the Lord bless us all and our good works, now and forevermore. Amen.

by

Sunday, 1 September 2019 : Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 14 : 1, 7-14

At that time, one Sabbath Jesus had gone to eat a meal in the house of a leading Pharisee, and He was carefully watched.

Jesus then told a parable to the guests, for He had noticed how they tried to take the places of honour. And He said, “When you are invited to a wedding party, do not choose the best seat. It may happen that someone more important than you had been invited; and your host, who invited both of you, will come and say to you, ‘Please give this person your place.’ What shame is yours when you take the lowest seat!”

“Whenever you are invited, go rather to the lowest seat, so that your host may come and say to you, ‘Friend, you must come up higher.’ And this will be a great honour for you in the presence of all the other guests. For whoever makes himself out to be great will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be raised.”

Jesus also addressed the man who had invited Him, and said, “When you give a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends, or your brothers and relatives, or your wealthy neighbours. For surely they will also invite you in return, and you will be repaid.”

“When you give a feast, invite instead the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Fortunate are you then, because they cannot repay you; you will be repaid at the resurrection of the upright.”

by

Sunday, 1 September 2019 : Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Hebrews 12 : 18-19, 22-24a

What you have come to, is nothing known to the senses : nor heat of a blazing fire, darkness and gloom and storms, blasts of trumpet or such a voice that the people pleaded, that no further word be spoken.

But you came near to Mount Zion, to the City of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, with its innumerable Angels. You have come to the solemn feast, the assembly of the firstborn of God, whose names are written in heaven.

There is God, Judge of all, with the spirits of the upright, brought to perfection. There is Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant, with the sprinkled Blood that cries out more effectively than Abel’s.

by

Sunday, 1 September 2019 : Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 67 : 4-5ac, 6-7ab, 10-11

But let the righteous be glad and exult before God; let them sing to God and shout for joy. Sing to God, sing praises to His Name; YHVH is His Name. Rejoice in His presence.

Father of orphans and Protector of widows – such is our God in His holy dwelling. He gives shelter to the homeless, sets the prisoners free.

Then You gave a rain of blessings, to comfort Your weary children. Your people found a dwelling, and, in Your mercy, o God, You provided for the needy.

by

Sunday, 1 September 2019 : Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Sirach 3 : 19-21, 30-31

The greater you are, the more you should humble yourself and thus you will find favour with God. For great is the power of the Lord and it is the humble who give Him glory. Do not seek what is beyond your powers nor search into what is beyond your ability.

As water extinguishes the burning flames, almsgiving obtains pardon for sins. The man who responds by doing good prepares for the future, at the moment of his downfall he will find support.

by

Sunday, 25 August 2019 : Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday, we listened to the Lord speaking to all of us through the words of the Sacred Scripture focusing on this one important question that we may have often asked ourselves, “Who is it that can be saved?” Or sometimes we may also ask ourselves the same question in a different way but with similar meaning, such as “Are we worthy or good enough to be saved?”

In what we have heard in today’s Scripture passages we are all reminded that unless we are truly faithful and try our best to do what the Lord wants from us, we will not have any part in the promised inheritance of God which He has promised to all those who are faithful to Him. To do that, we will have to show that we are truly faithful and good in our faith by our conscious and constant actions grounded on this faith that we have.

In our first reading passage today from the Book of the prophet Isaiah, we heard a great prophecy by Isaiah made with regards to the gathering of many nations and peoples from all origins to come to worship the Lord, the prophet spoke of how those people will come to glorify God and to praise Him, and surprisingly, how God will choose even the priests and the Levites from among them, people who were used to be considered as pagans and unworthy of God.

And this is closely related to what the Lord Jesus revealed in our Gospel passage today from the Gospel of St. Luke in which He spoke to the people with regards to the matter of salvation, and how people who assumed that they were saved by God and worthy will be disappointed to know that they are not counted among those whom God will invite to enter his eternal kingdom of glory. Conversely, there will be those people whom the earlier group considered to be unworthy and yet manage enter the kingdom of God.

In fact, the Lord Jesus was criticising the actions and attitudes of the people of Israel, who since the ancient times had been proud of their unique heritage and status as the chosen race and people of God since the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They looked down on the pagan peoples and the races of people outside the direct inheritance of Israel, considering those people to be inferior, unworthy, unclean and as sinners.

Yet, they failed to look at themselves and realise just how they themselves have been unworthy, unclean, sinful and rebellious in their attitudes towards God, in their refusal to obey Him and their stubbornness in rejecting the truths and the messages of the prophets sent into their midst to remind them to be faithful to God. They assumed their salvation to their status as the descendants of God’s faithful servants and treated it as their birthright.

But that is not how God’s salvation works, brothers and sisters in Christ. Through today’s Scripture passages, God wants each and every one of us to know that first and foremost, all of us, each and every one of us are equally beloved by God and we are all equal without distinction and without prejudice, for God is good to all of those whom He loves, even to all of us sinners. He does not distinguish between us but continues to love us all regardless and always tries to reconcile us to Himself.

It was just that He called some first from among the multitudes of His people, to be His first chosen ones and first-called, but He never meant to exclude everyone else, and with the end goal in mind of the salvation of the whole race of man. God desires that all of us who have been sundered and separated from Him will eventually be reunited with Him through repentance and by the power of the love which He has shown us, through which He hopes to bring a change in our hearts, minds, attitudes and way of life.

Yet, many of us are often unaware of this loving aspect of our God, His desire to love us and to show His merciful forgiveness to us, despite of all the things we have done, all the wicked and unbecoming behaviours and attitudes of sinful people. In the second reading today, taken from the Epistle to the Hebrews, we heard how God is represented like that of a father who loves his children, who cares for them and their needs.

And in the same passage, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews also described how the father who cares for his children will chastise the children whenever it is necessary to do so. This is done not because the father does not love the children, but rather precisely because he loves the children that he wants them all to be good and to walk in the right paths, and not to fall and remain in the wrong paths because of wrong thoughts and influences.

That was why God chastised His people, the Israelites many times throughout history, if we explore through the many chapters of the books of the Old Testament. Ever since God had made and renewed the Covenant He established with them and their ancestors, He has always tried to guide them and to discipline them along their journey, by punishing and chastising them as necessary and by weeding out all those who had no love for Him at all, those who were totally unrepentant.

The people living at the time of the Lord Jesus were no different, and it was to them that the Lord addressed what He has revealed to the people in today’s Gospel passage. Many of them professed to believe in God and to be pious, and yet, they did not truly have faith in Him, and their beliefs and piety were often just empty gestures and meaningless because ultimately, in their hearts, God did not have the most important place at all.

They became proud because they thought of themselves as the privileged and chosen people, and those who were most afflicted were those with power and authority, intelligence and knowledge, such as the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, many of whom took great pride in their piety and observance of the laws of Moses, and looked down even on the other people of Israel, especially those whom they considered to be sinners and unworthy.

But they forgot that it was not them who determined whether they are worthy or not. It is truly only God Who is capable and worthy of judging the worthiness of a person. And we have to remember this fact, that it is not we who make ourselves worthy before God, but rather, He calls us to be worthy for Him. He has called us again and again, reminding us and wanting us to seek Him and to be righteous and just once again, free from sin and from all corruptions of our past wickedness.

Contrasting the attitudes of the Pharisees, the teachers of the Law and many among the people of Israel at the time of the Exodus, who doubted the Lord and refused to believe in Him, in His prophets and in His truth, these people who often took great pride in their status, in their privileges and supposed superiority, paled in faith and in righteousness as compared to those people mentioned throughout the Scriptures as the righteous people from the pagan nations.

Take for example, Rahab, the Canaanite woman who helped the scouts of Israel to escape the city in their time of great predicament, and then Ruth, a Moabite whose faith and dedication to God was exemplary and eventually became one of the ancestors of the great king David of Israel. And we also heard of Naaman the Syrian, who although initially was skeptical of the Lord’s power, but devoted himself wholeheartedly after he was healed from his leprosy, and many others who have shown great faith in God.

And in the New Testament, we heard of the faith of the Syro-Phoenician woman who dedicated herself and trusted the Lord so much that despite the apparent rejection and humiliating insults the Lord spoke to her, she remained truly faithful and adamant that the Lord was capable of healing her daughter. This faith mirrored that of the widow of Zarephath at the time of the prophet Elijah, as she took care of the prophet during difficult years.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day all of us are reminded through what we have heard from the Scriptures and what we have discussed throughout today’s discourse, that God’s love is truly great and boundless, sincere and true, never-ending and not being biased. He loves each and every one of us equally without being prejudiced or biased by any of our worldly parameters, the parameters that we often use to divide ourselves into different groups and cliques.

God did not divide us or loved us based on prejudices by skin colour, or language, or height, or our appearances. All these things do not affect His love for us in any way, and as I mentioned many times today, God loves each and every one of us equally without distinction, and each and every one of us have been given opportunities after opportunities, chances after chances to turn away from our sins and to return to our Lord’s loving embrace.

And the number one obstacle that often prevented us from doing so is our pride. As mentioned earlier, those who claimed to know the Lord and claimed salvation to be their own, and even looking down on those whom they deemed to be inferior or less worthy than them, are all due to the pride that are in our hearts. And the more we entertain this pride present within us, the more this pride will grow and suffocate the faith present in us.

Now, we are called by God, as we have been called many times thus far. If we have responded to Him and walked in the path that He has shown us, then it is good and we should continue our journey. But if we have not yet responded to His call and instead we have been so busy and preoccupied, so full of our pride, arrogance, greed and all sorts of things that have prevented us from truly being faithful and from truly loving God, then we should do something at once with our lives.

Instead of being proud and arrogant, let us all be humble, knowing that after all, we are all sinners, and no matter whose sins are more or less serious than the other, all of us have been made corrupt and unworthy by those sins. And those whose sins are greater and repent wholeheartedly will be saved, while those with lesser sins and yet proudly refuse to repent will not be saved. While sin made us corrupted and separated from God, what matters is our desire to repent from those sins and our willingness and sincerity to love God, our loving Father and Creator.

Are we willing to allow God’s love, compassion and mercy to enter into us and make a difference in our lives? Or are we often too full of ourselves, with too much pride and worldly desires that we have not allowed God to enter into our lives and transform them into new lives of grace? We are all called to be true Christians, and the path for us have been shown to us, and the best way to start is for us to be humble, and to be open to the Lord entering into our hearts, into our minds and into the deepest parts of our beings, that from now on, we exist no longer for ourselves, but for the love and for the greater glory of God.

May the Lord continue to guide us in this journey of faith, and may His love continue to sow in us all the same genuine and strong love that He Himself has shown us first, and which we are now called to do the same as well. Let us all be witnesses of God’s love, and show this same love in our interactions with one another, that truly we will be ever righteous and just, and in the end, God will welcome us all into His eternal kingdom and glory. Amen.

by

Sunday, 25 August 2019 : Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 13 : 22-30

At that time, Jesus went through towns and villages teaching, and making His way to Jerusalem. Someone asked Him, “Lord, is it true that few people will be saved?”

And Jesus answered, “Do your best to enter by the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has gone inside and locked the door, you will stand outside. Then you will knock at the door, calling, ‘Lord, open to us!’ But He will say to you, ‘I do not know where you come from.'”

“Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets!’ But He will reply, ‘I do not know where you come from. Away from Me, all you workers of evil.’ You will weep and grind your teeth, when you see Abraham and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves left outside.”

“Others will sit at table in the kingdom of God, people coming from east and west, from north and south. Some who are among the last, will be first; and some who are among the first, will be last!”

by

Sunday, 25 August 2019 : Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Hebrews 12 : 5-7, 11-13

Do not forget the comforting words that Wisdom addresses to you as children : My son, pay attention when the Lord corrects you and do not be discouraged when He punishes you. For the Lord corrects those He loves and chastises everyone He accepts as a son.

What you endure, is in order to correct you. God treats you like sons, and what son is not corrected by his father? All correction is painful at the moment, rather than pleasant; later, it brings the fruit of peace, that is, holiness, to those who have been trained by it.

Lift up, then, your drooping hands, and strengthen your trembling knees; make level the ways for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but healed.