hope in the Lord

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(Usus Antiquior) First Sunday of Lent (I Classis) – Sunday, 22 February 2015 : Gradual and Tract

Liturgical Colour : Violet

Gradual

Psalm 90 : 11-12

Angelis suis Deus mandavit de Te, ut custodiant Te in omnibus viis Tuis.

Response : In manibus portabunt Te, ne umquam offendas ad lapidem pedem Tuum.

English translation

God had given His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways.

Response : In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.

Tract

Psalm 90 : 1-7, 11-16

Qui habitat in adjutorio Altissimi, in protectione Dei caelincommorabitur.

Dicet Domino : Susceptor meus es Tu, et refugium meum : Deus meus, sperabo in eum.

Quoniam ipse liberavit me de laqueo venantium et a verbo aspero.

Scapulis suis obumbrabit Tibi, et sub pennis ejus sperabis.

Scuto circumdabit Te veritas ejus : non timebis a timore nocturno.

A sagitta volante per diem, a negotio perambulante in tenebris, a ruina et daemonio meridiano.

Cadent a latere tuo mille, et decem milia a dextris tuis : tibi autem non appropinquabit.

Quoniam Angelis suis mandavit de Te, ut custodiant te in omnibus viis tuis.

In manibus portabunt te, ne umquam offendas ad lapidem pedem tuum.

Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis, et conculcabis leonem et draconem.

Quoniam in me speravit, liberabo eum : protegam eum, quoniam cognovit nomen meum.

Invocabit me, et ego exaudiam eum : cum ipso sum in tribulatione.

Eripiam eum et glorificabo eum : longitudine dierum adimplebo eum, et ostendam illi salutare meum.

English translation

He who dwells in the aid of the Most High, shall abide under the protection of the God of heaven.

He shall say to the Lord, You are my Protector and my Refuge. My God, in Him I will trust.

For He had delivered me from the snare of the hunters, and from the sharp word.

He will overshadow you with His shoulders, and under His wings you shall trust.

His truth shall encompass you with a shield. You shall not be afraid of the terror of the night.

Of the arrow that flies in the day, of the business that walks about in the dark, of ruin and the noonday devil.

A thousand shall fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come nigh to you.

For He had given His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways.

In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.

You shall walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you shall trample under your foot the lion and the dragon.

Because he had hoped in Me, I will deliver him, I will protect him, because he had known My Name.

He shall call upon Me, and I will hear him, I am with him in tribulation.

I will deliver him, and I will glorify him, I will fill him with the length of days, and I will show him My salvation.

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(Usus Antiquior) First Sunday of Lent (I Classis) – Sunday, 22 February 2015 : Introit and Collect

Liturgical Colour : Violet

Introit

Psalm 90 : 15, 16 and 1

Invocabit me, et ego exaudiam eum : eripiam eum, et glorificabo eum : longitudine dierum adimplebo eum.

Qui habitat in adjutorio Altissimi, in protectione Dei caeli commorabitur.

Response : Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper : et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

English translation

He shall call upon Me, and I will hear him, I will deliver him and glorify him, and I will fill him with length of days.

He who dwells in the aid of the Most High shall abide under the protection of the God of heaven.

Response : Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Collect

Deus, qui Ecclesiam Tuam annua quadragesimali observatione purificas : praesta familiae Tuae; ut, quod a Te obtinere abstinendo nititur, hoc bonis operibus exsequatur. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium Tuum, Qui Tecum vivis et regnas in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

English translation

O God, who has purified Your Church with the annual observance of Lent, grant to Your household that what it strives to obtain from You by abstinence it may secure with good works. Through our Lord Jesus Christ Your Son, who with You lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.

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Saturday, 21 February 2015 : Saturday after Ash Wednesday, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brother and sisters in Christ, today we heard about the calling of Levi, who would become the Apostle St. Matthew, who is also one of the great Four Evangelists, or the writers of the four Holy Gospels. In this therefore we learn a very important fact, which the prophet Isaiah in his book, that is our first reading today, had also talked about, that is the forgiveness offered to all sinners who repent from their sins.

First of all, let us all understand the background of what had happened, and why the Pharisees and the people in general hated the tax collectors so much and considered all of them as great sinners, and loathed to be near them and less so, to come to their place and eat with them? That is because, the tax collectors were seen as the traitors to the nation and to the people, as their job was to collect taxes from the people to be given to the Romans, who at that time ruled over Judea and all of the Promised Land of Israel.

No one likes to pay taxes, and less so if they have to pay tax to a foreign master and ruler. And the Jews were a proud nation, proud of their status as the chosen race and chosen people of God. Since the time of the Exodus, they have slowly grow in their pride, as well as in their prejudice against sinners, who they saw as unclean and had to be cast out of the society of the people of God and be denied the grace of God. Anyone, therefore, who associated themselves with these sinners, correspondingly were also considered as unclean and as sinners.

But in all these, they failed to pay heed and notice a great fact, that they were all also sinners, and truly, no one could boast rightfully that they were less or more righteous or worthy of God’s salvation, since all of mankind are really sinners in the eyes of God for their disobedience against God. And even those Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, who liked to show off their piety in the public places, as Jesus had pointed it out rightly, that they were even greater sinners by their actions and by what were in their wicked hearts and minds.

They were not thinking about God in their hearts, and less so about the people of God, who had been entrusted to them, teachers of the Law of God, who should have guided these people to God. Instead, they forsook their duty to seek worldly glory and human praise. And through their actions, they deceived and misled the people of God and cast them even further into sin.

They were judgmental against sinners and refused to have anything to do with them. But as Jesus had shown everyone, He showed that God is merciful and loving, just as He is just and hating towards all forms of sins. And indeed He came to rescue first the most sinful ones, the ones who lie furthest from the grace, light and salvation of God. There is only one objective, that all these sinners would repent, change their ways and sin no more, and thus become worthy to receive the salvation of the Lord.

God hates the sins but not the sinner. But if we sinners do not change our sins and abandon our sins before it is too late for us, then God’s wrath will be upon us all the same. That is why in this season of Lent, we are constantly reminded of our sins and all the wickedness we have committed before the presence of God and men alike. We have to know of our sins, realise how wicked they are, and change our ways.

If we do so, we can be assured that the grace of God will be upon us. The prophet Isaiah affirmed this to us, and the life of St. Matthew himself give an even greater testimony of the sinner turned saint. There were many of the saints who were once great sinners. But what differentiated them from the other great sinners was that they repented, they knew of their sins and abandoned them, changing their ways and devoted themselves from then on to the service of God and mankind.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Peter Damian, a great bishop and Cardinal of the Church, as well as a Doctor of the Church by his numerous works and writings that still help and influence us even to this very day. He was a nobleman who gave up everything and all forms of worldliness to join religious life in prayer and devotion to God. But God had great plans for him.

St. Peter Damian in his roles and works would be instrumental in rooting out sins and wickedness from the Church of God, assisting the Pope, the Vicar of Christ in the governance and reform of the Church, so that all the wicked peoples not worthy of the service of God and unrepentant were cast out and rejected by the Church. As a result, the Church was purified of those who were like the Pharisees, sinful and yet refusing to change their sinful ways and misleading the people of God into sin.

He helped to reform many parts of the Church establishment, and through his numerous works and writings, he helped many people to be awakened to their sins and wickedness, and therefore helped to bring many souls to salvation and closer to the Lord their God. And this is exactly what we all should do as well, as the members of the Church.

We are all sinners too, and we are all equal before God. Never look down upon others who have sinned, as if we do so, then we too will be judged in the same way by the Lord. Instead, let us help each other, that everyone may be called to the Lord and abandon their sins and wickedness, and renew their effort to love the Lord their God and commit themselves to Him and His ways.

May the example of St. Peter Damian inspire us all, that we may use this season of Lent to truly repent from our sins, change our ways and lead a righteous life from now on, and help to keep one another in righteous life and avoid sin. God bless us all. Amen.

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Friday, 20 February 2015 : Friday after Ash Wednesday (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the days of Lent, and the readings call us all to remember our true purpose of celebrating and going through this sacred season of Lent, the forty days of preparation for the coming of Easter. In this season, we go through fasting and abstinence on certain days, as a public and concrete way of showing our sincerity in following the Lord, by preparing ourselves body, mind, heart and soul for the celebration of our Lord’s Passion, death and resurrection.

But are we fasting and abstaining in the right way and for the right purpose? That is the essence of today’s readings. Are we fasting and abstaining for show so that people may be awed at what we are doing and therefore praise us greatly for doing so? Are we fasting and abstaining because our parents said that we must do so, or because the Church is teaching us to do so? Are we merely following the teachings of the Church without understanding them?

When we fast we have to realise that we are not doing it for ourselves, but for God. We fast and we abstain ourselves from eating meat and controlling our earthly and human desire, these are all to suppress our human emotions and desires, which often lead us to sin and to wickedness before the presence of God and men alike. Fasting and abstinence are meant for us to realise our frailty and our sinfulness, that we are truly unworthy sinners, given grace and forgiveness by our ever loving God.

Fasting and abstinence are meant to help us to restrict ourselves from the worldliness and things that often lead us away and distract us from following the teachings of our Lord with the wholeness of our hearts. This is why, even though the rules on fasting and abstinence involve food that we consume, but they should not be limited to this only.

Yes, fasting and abstinence can come in the form of restricting and limiting ourselves from our favourite hobby and activity, which often took so much time from us that we end up wasting our time and being unable to contribute positively and in a good way towards those who are around us. There are truly many things we can do and we can choose from many options.

We can abstain from computer gaming, watching our favourite television programmes and videos, from the sin of gluttony and sloth, from the pleasures of the flesh, and something as simple as stirring ourselves from laziness when we see someone around us who are suffering, not having enough food, enough love or respect by others as a fellow mankind.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the readings remind us that this Lent is a time for us to focus on the right things and fast as well as abstain for the right purposes. We fast because we know that by our sinfulness, we have been separated from our Lord by a certain degree. The more we sin, the further we have been separated from our loving God. And this is what all of us should be aware of.

We fast and abstain to remind ourselves on our own sinfulness, and it is also a kind reminder for us all who have more in terms of food, care, love and the goodness and graces of the world, we should share them with those who are less fortunate. That is the kind of fasting and abstinence that our Lord truly wants from us, and not those done for the sake of human praise and appearances as the Pharisees had done.

May the Lord awaken in us all the desire to love one another and to share the joy and grace we have, that no one will ever be in need again. May this Lent be a blessed season for us to reflect on our sins and therefore seek God’s forgiveness and repent in total sincerity. God bless us all. Amen.

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Thursday, 19 February 2015 : Thursday after Ash Wednesday (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we progress through the season of Lent, and as we recall yesterday’s imposition of ashes on our foreheads, we continue to prepare ourselves to welcome Christ into our lives and celebrate with full joy and attention, and earnestly seeking to reconcile ourselves with the Lord, so that through this perfect opportunity during this Lenten season, we may be fully prepared to rejoice together with Him at the coming of Easter.

What is the significance for this, brothers and sisters in Christ? It is that we have been given a great opportunity to redeem ourselves, despite all of our wickedness and sins, so that we may be made clean and worthy once more. God is loving and forgiving and He desires for us all to be reconciled with Him through our Lord Jesus Christ, who had offered Himself in exchange for the consequences of our sins.

By dying on the cross He destroyed our death, and freed us from the bonds of death and from the chains of sin, and by rising from the dead, He restores us to life and give us the hope of a new and eternal life, one that is no longer tainted by sin, but filled forever with grace and the light of God. But if we think that this is going to be easy or to be a honeymoon period, then we have to really think it through very carefully.

For as we heard in the Gospel today, following Christ our Lord means taking up our cross and follow on the path of the cross of Christ. And if Jesus was rejected, mocked and spat upon during His arduous path towards Calvary, then the same will also happen to us all who decided to follow Christ. All the followers of Christ will also suffer as our Lord had suffered.

We must be ready to make a commitment and to devote ourselves to walk righteously on the path towards the Lord. Otherwise, if we are not able to commit and to show genuine devotion, and continue in our sinful ways, then we will not be able to receive the fullness of God’s grace, or even worse, that is to be rejected by God and receive condemnation.

Our faith must be real and concrete, and we all must be dedicated in our actions to show the faith we have to God. We have to practice what we believe in, or otherwise, our faith is useless and has no meaning. This season of Lent is therefore a time for all of us to look back into our own actions in the past and reflect on them. Have we been acting in accordance with our faith? Or have our actions proved otherwise instead?

This is the season of forgiveness, and it is also the best time for us to return to the Lord and ask for His mercy. And having been given this great chance, let us not waste it and make best use of the time available. Do you know that the souls suffering in hell wish that they are able to relive their existence on earth even if just for a single second?

Why is this so? In that single second, they wish that they would have been able to repent and change their ways before the Lord, and they wished that the Lord would have forgiven them. It is too late for them now, and nothing can save them from the fiery and painful suffering of hell, a total separation from God from where there can be no escape. That will also be our fate if we decide to do nothing and ignore our Lord’s call for our repentance.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, therefore, let us all be proactive in this season of Lent. Forgive one another and do not be in conflict anymore with any of our brethren. If we are angry with anyone or hold any grudge upon someone, let us quickly seek to restore the relationship between us and forgive each other. Love all those who are around us, and love also those who have hated us and persecuted us.

May Almighty God bless us all in this holy season of Lent, that we will find our way in getting closer and closer to Himself. May He forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven the faults of those who had hurt us and caused trouble to us. Let the grace and love of God fill us in this time onward, so that from now on, the community of the people of God will grow greater ever in grace. God be with us all. Amen.

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Wednesday, 18 February 2015 : Ash Wednesday (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple or Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the beginning of the holy and solemn season of Lent, the forty days period that begins today and ends on the beginning of the Holy Week, as a season of preparation for the approaching celebration of the most important aspects of our faith, that is the celebration of our Lord’s death and resurrection from the dead.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we mark the beginning of that penitential season, a time for us to reflect on ourselves and on our own lives, in terms of what we had done in this life and in what we have failed to do as the Lord commanded us. This is a time for us to seek God’s forgiveness and mercy, taking advantage of the rich mercy and love which He had shown us through our Lord, Jesus Christ.

In today’s readings, first taken from the Book of the prophet Joel, the content is one of humble lamentation and begging for supplication, by the people of God who had longed for a long period of time, the salvation in God. They have longed for the rescue and the help which only our Lord could give, the true joy and happiness which only He can give us and nothing else of this world could.

And in that same reading, we can see how our Lord Himself also desired for the salvation of His beloved people, no matter how sinful or wicked they were. It is only one thing that the Lord wants out of them, that is for them to abandon their sins, and from then on to love Him with all of their hearts and with the full and complete strength of their beings.

Sin is a great bane for mankind, that is the one which has separated us from the love of God, and it has caused us much great sufferings in this world. Before sin entered into the world and into the hearts of men, everything were good and perfect, and mankind were destined for a life in eternal joy and happiness as the Lord intended it, to live with Him and reign with Him forever.

Yet, our pride, our desire and greed, our emotions and our prejudice had prevented us from accomplishing such a wondrous life. Our ancestors were tempted and they failed. They gave in to the temptation of Satan, that is the temptation of knowledge. And ever since then, mankind had been in rebellion against God, and without God, mankind cannot stand up and preserve themselves, for truly we need God in our daily life.

Yes, our Lord and God provided us with everything that we need and He knows all that we will ever need. There is absolutely no need to worry for anything, as if we trust in Him, we shall never be disappointed. But, many of us continue to worry about the things of this world, and we are often swayed to follow our peers and be corrupted by the many concerns and pleasures of this world, the pleasures of the flesh.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, ever since sin entered into the hearts of men, we have been made dirty and unworthy, as desire and greed became a part of us. We are not easy to be satisfied, and we also easily becoming jealous and hateful towards others, all because of desire and vanity, pride and arrogance, thinking that the world is all about us and everything revolves around us.

And today in the Gospel, God made it clear to us that He meant business. He showed the depth of our wickedness as even in fasting we can commit sin, by fasting for the sake of doing it, or even worse, as the Pharisees had done it, by showing off their supposed piety by fasting very publicly and openly to gain human praise and earthly prestige, but in their hearts there was no place for God.

In their pride and arrogance, they showed the worst human qualities and capacities for sin and wickedness. They were so caught up in their pride, for being supposedly the elites of the society and the role models in faith, that they forgot to give glory to God, the One whom they ought to serve and welcome into the world. Instead, they rejected Him and piled troubles and obstacles upon obstacles in God’s work of salvation, and as a result, they were accursed and rejected as well by God.

What is the best attitude, brothers and sisters? What is the attitude we should adopt then? It is through humility and understanding of our own sinfulness, and in knowing the corruptions and wickedness that had separated us from the Lord, then we can be led on the right path towards salvation and life in the Lord our God. And on this day, this Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our own frailty, of our own sinfulness and wickedness, and of how much we need the Lord our God to be in our lives.

When the priest imposes the ashes upon our forehead, and with the words that accompany it, these are a reminder for all of us to know that as we are created from dust, from the earth, then to the earth too our bodies will return. Our bodies may perish when we die and turn back to the dust, but our soul is eternal and will live forever, either in eternal joy with God, or in eternal suffering in hell. And on the day of the resurrection, on the last day, God will raise us up all body and spirit, and we will rejoice forever in His glory, with a renewed body of glory, if we remain faithful to Him.

We are all reminded through this, that whatever achievements we have in this life, and whatever glory and praises we have accumulated in this life. And whatever honour and fame we have received from men, in the end all these will not benefit us. Jesus our Lord had repeated this many times, with the example of the parable telling us how a rich man piled up his great wealth and thinking he had it all secure for his future happiness and indulgence, when the Lord was in fact about to end his life there and then.

An important lesson for us all is that we should not build for ourselves a treasure that will not last. Build instead the eternal treasure and riches which we can only build through our obedience to our Lord, and not through greed and hoarding of the resources and the goods of this world. Our earthly life is just temporary, and is a precursor to the eternal life which we will all receive from God Himself at the end of time, if we remain faithful to His laws and precepts.

It is imperative therefore for us to reflect on this imposition of the ashes, and as we begin our Lenten journey, the forty days of retreat and recollection of our own lives, which is designed to help us to find our way again to the Lord and to rediscover the focus and purpose of our lives, that is to bring glory to God by our actions and deeds. We have to indeed recall the forty days of suffering and difficulties which our Lord Jesus went through as He walked in the desert for forty days and nights without food.

The devil tried to dissuade Him and pull Him away from His works of salvation by telling all sorts of lies about humanity, and taking advantage of the human emotions, needs and wants in order to prevent the salvation of many souls to be done. But the Lord Jesus remained completely obedient to the wishes of His Father in heaven, and despite the temptations, Jesus continued on without qualms and with firm conviction in the faith of the Lord.

In the same way therefore too, we will all eventually encounter difficult times in life. There will be temptations that threaten to cause us to sin and do even more wicked things. If we are unable to resist, then the lures of Satan will get to us eventually. What is at stake is nothing else than the fate we are to face, whether it be eternal suffering for our disobedience or eternal life and happiness for our obedience.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we enter into this season of Lent and begin our preparation for Easter earnestly, let us all take a step back in our lives, take the time out from our busy daily schedules, and learn to find some time to be with the Lord our God. This is a season of prayer, of sincere atonement and seeking for God’s mercy and forgiveness. Fasting and abstinence are meant to help us to achieve this, and when we fast and abstain, we must have a clear goal in mind, that is to help us overcome the distraction and temptation on our way to God, and not to show it off to others.

May this season of Lent help us to become ever more faithful children and servants of our God, and may He continue to watch over us and guide us so that we will not be overcome by the forces of evil arrayed against us. God bless us all. Amen.

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(Usus Antiquior) Ash Wednesday (I Classis) – Wednesday, 18 February 2015 : Holy Gospel

Liturgical Colour : Violet

Sequentia Sancti Evangelii secundum Matthaeum – Continuation of the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew

Matthew 6 : 16-21

In illo tempore : Dixit Jesus discipulis Suis : Cum jejunatis, nolite fieri, sicut hypocritae, tristes. Exterminant enim facies suas, ut appareant hominibus jejunantes. Amen, dico vobis, quia receperunt mercedem suam.

Tu autem, cum jejunas, unge caput tuum, et faciem tuam lava, ne videaris hominibus jejunans, sed Patri tuo, qui est in abscondito : et Pater tuus, qui videt in abscondito, reddet tibi. Nolite thesaurizare vobis thesauros in terra : ubi aerugo et tinea demolitur : et ubi fures effodiunt et furantur.

Thesaurizate autem vobis thesauros in caelo : ubi neque aerugo neque tinea demolitur; et ubi fures non effodiunt nec furantur. Ubi enim est thesaurus tuus, ibi est et cor tuum.

English translation

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “When you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, sad. For they disfigure their face, that they may appear unto men as fasting. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward.”

“But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that you do not appear to men as fasting, but to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees all in secret will repay you. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where they can be consumed by the rust and moth, and which thieves break through and steal.”

“But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither the rust nor moth can consume and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there lay your heart as well.”

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Tuesday, 17 February 2015 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of the Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard about the story of Noah and how he and his family escaped the destruction of all the living together with the animals and creatures chosen to go with them on the ark they had created with the instruction from God. And in the Gospel today we heard about how Jesus chastised and rebuked His disciples for failing to see what He had done, which was essentially the manifestation of God’s love for mankind, by feeding those who were hungry with food and leaving them with satisfied stomachs.

Today’s readings talked about the mercy and love which God shows to all those who are faithful to Him and walk righteously along His path without diversion and corruption, those like Noah and his family, who feared God and loved Him, following His ways even though the rest of the world were following their own wicked and corrupted human ways and desires.

God regretted having created mankind, who was to be the greatest and most loved out of all His creations and yet, they failed when Satan tempted them and brought them to disobey the will of God. And as mankind carried on, tainted by sin, they continued to commit all sorts of wickedness that were born out of another sin which men had committed, that is the murder of Abel by his brother, Cain.

All the sins of mankind added up and indeed God’s patience has its limits. It is also a reminder for us all that God does not wait forever for us to continue to live in sin and ignore His love. Eventually all of us will die, brothers and sisters in Christ, at a time unknown to us. God alone knows the time and place where we are to die, and if we continue to sin before the Lord and refuse to change our ways until it is too late, then when the time comes, the share of the people who were destroyed by the Great Flood will be ours as well.

But God will show His mercy and love on those who listened to Him and who are righteous in their way of life, just as Noah and his family were. This is what God can promise us, and indeed if we are faithful, God will not disappoint us. His love will forever be with us and our descendants. He reminded us of these in the Gospel today as He spoke of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod, that is the corruption in these people which led mankind astray, the sins of pride and jealousy, of hatred and lust, and many others.

God will provide for all those who have put their trust in Him, and He will give them what they need, just as He gave the five thousand men and even more women and children, the food of bread until they are completely satisfied and even with spare to be collected. But more often that not, mankind trusts in their own devices and abilities, refusing to obey the Lord and walking down their own paths towards disobedience, rebellion and eventually destruction.

It is a lesson and reminder for us today, that we have to conform to the way of the Lord and discard all forms of our pride and haughtiness. There is still time for us, and while there is still time, it is crucial for us to find our way to the Lord as soon as possible before it is too late. And today we also celebrate the feast of the seven holy founders of the Servites, a religious order founded by the seven men who were once noblemen and merchants of the city of Florence.

The seven men left their family, wealth and possessions to retire in a religious and dedicated life to God in a mountainside. They left behind everything to give themselves in total commitment to the Lord, abandoning all forms of greed and human desire, and to bury all their pride and hubris, their prejudice and wickedness. And their example had become an example and inspiration for many others who followed in their footsteps.

It does not mean that we have to replicate what they had done and abandon everything we have in this life in order to dedicate ourselves completely to the Lord. Indeed, what they have done can be an option for us to follow on and what they have done set the example for many others to also lead a holy and devoted life free from sin. But what we all should do is truly to be true disciples of our Lord, and not believing just for the sake of believing or only pay lip service to Him, but with all of our heart and being let us love Him and follow His ways with all of our hearts.

May Almighty God be with us all and may He guide us in this life, so that we may free ourselves from the wickedness and sinfulness of this world, heeding His call and offer for mercy, that we may no longer be stubborn and hardened in heart, but become instead loving and caring towards one another. God bless us all. Amen.

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Sunday, 8 February 2015 : Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sexagesima Sunday and Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we continue to progress on towards the celebration of the most important parts of our Faith, that is the suffering, Passion, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Today is Sexagesima Sunday, or literally meaning ‘sixty’ as a reminder for us that we are within about sixty days from the coming of Easter.

And on this day we heard about the nature of our lives, of our dwelling in this world, and the answer to all of our difficulties, plight and sorrows. As the first reading, taken from the Book of Job had mentioned, the suffering of this world, the pain and sorrow we all experienced, are like what Job had once experienced when Satan tested and tempted him against the Lord.

If we read the entirety of the Book of Job from the beginning to the end, we would realise that the suffering of mankind was never, ever the intention of our Lord. Suffering is in fact the result of the works of Satan and all of his allies, the forces of darkness in this world, and also more importantly, because of our disobedience against the will of God, that is sin.

Job’s friends accused Job of having sinned and committed wickedness before God. But meanwhile Job continued to complain and lamented for his sufferings, part of which we heard in our readings today, he continued to remain faithful to the Lord and never did once he cursed the Lord or blamed Him for what had happened to him. God showed Job that there are much that he did not understand, and He gave His answer to all of Job’s complaints, and for his continued faith despite his ramblings, he received great rewards surpassing what he had lost and what he had suffered from.

Thus, God wants to succour us and help us, and that was what God intends with us. The psalm today speaks of the healing which we can find in God, and it is this healing which our Lord Jesus Christ had brought with Him as He entered into our world to save it and to save all of us, His beloved people and children. The Gospel today reinforced this, by showing how Christ is concerned with all of His people, from the greatest to the least, and was concerned about spreading the truth He brought into the world to all the peoples.

He worked to heal the people of their afflictions, of the diseases that scourged their bodies, just as Job once was covered with boils and scabs that itched, and far above all these, was the healing which our Lord wrought upon our souls. What is this sickness of our souls? It is none other than sin. Sin is the scourge upon all of us, and it is a great barrier that prevents us from reuniting and being in complete unity and reconciliation with our Lord.

But we truly have no need for fear, as the Lord Himself had spared nothing else but Himself, and incarnate through His own Son, He made Himself the salvation and deliverance for us all mankind. For He is the Word of God, the Divine Word who is God and always is with God since before the beginning of time, and who was incarnate in the flesh to become like one of us, born a Man.

And through Jesus therefore, the word of God became real and concrete in this world, and instead of speaking through messengers and prophets, by the coming of Jesus into the world, God Himself speaks directly to us all, by what Jesus had taught us, and which His Apostles and disciples, and through them the Church, had preserved and passed down upon us.

In the readings for the Sexagesima Sunday, we hear of the parable of Jesus, that is the teaching of Jesus using stories and real experiences to make it easier for people to understand, the translation of the word of God into the words of men. Through what Jesus taught the people, what we know as the parable of the sower, the word of God has the power to bring us from the darkness of this world and from the suffering of the world into eternal happiness and joy with God.

However, as the parable shows us, that the word of God is like seeds planted by the Lord, who is the Sower, and the fate of those seeds depend on what kind of treatment or soil that they land on. This means that from our side, we must put in effort and work to ensure that the word of God can fall on fertile soil, and hence grow to bear rich fruits, that will lead us to our eternal reward, just as God once rewarded Job for his faith.

There will be many obstacles, brothers and sisters in Christ, as the parable shows us, and surely as our own experiences should have told us, that to be truly faithful and devoted to the Lord, and to follow Him in all of our ways is not going to be easy. Temptations of the world, the pressure from our peers and friends, and from the world itself to conform to the ways of the world or be rejected will be great, and it is on our part that we need to put in our effort to resist those challenges and temptations.

Today we celebrate the feast of two saints, St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita, two people who had very different life stories, and yet their experiences and examples will show us that what God had done unto us, by His coming into the world to offer us His generous mercy and love, is truly unmatched and unprecedented in the history of this world.

St. Jerome Emiliani was once a civil servant who worked in the government sector a few hundred years ago in what is today Italy. He eventually left behind everything to join the sacred priesthood and dedicated himself completely to the Lord and to his fellow men. St. Jerome Emiliani was renowned especially for his great love and care for orphans and all the children who were destitute and filled with problems in their lives.

St. Jerome Emiliani therefore helped to establish institutions and places where orphans and many other people who had been ostracised and rejected could stay as their new homes, and he himself with other priests and servants of God ministered to them and cared for them. He also established houses to accommodate former prostitutes who had repented from their sins.

Meanwhile, St. Josephine Bakhita was born in what is now Sudan just a century and half ago, and when she was young, she had to taste the bitter pill of war and violence, as well as the experience of slavery and subjugation by others, forced to accept the religion of heathens by her captors. She was sold as a slave and she was treated very badly, often tortured and not given proper food and place to live in.

By the grace of God, she was freed from her slavery when she was purchased from her previous owners by a Christian diplomat who came into the region and then entrusted St. Josephine Bakhita with the care of his family and children. A court thereafter ruled that St. Josephine Bakhita had not been legally a slave as where she was at, the state had ruled out slavery since before her birth, and thus she was then a freedman.

She was then baptised as a Christian and accepted into the Church by the future Pope St. Pius X, who was then the Patriarch of Venice, as she lived in the region where he had jurisdiction in. St. Josephine Bakhita thereafter joined the Canossian sisters, where she had lived for a while prior to her freedom, and from then on she lived a life of holy contemplation and filled with prayers and dedication to God. Great is her reward at the end of her earthly life.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, as we continue to prepare for the celebration of Holy Week and Easter, as well as we prepare for the season of Lent that precedes the former, which is soon to come, let us all take all these lessons and words into our hearts. St. Jerome Emiliani cared for the least of the people, the orphans and the rejected, just as Christ Himself gave Himself to the service of all those who have not been loved and those persecuted by others.

Let us all allow God to come into our lives, and through the planting of His words in our hearts, let us all be changed and transformed to become true and faithful children of our Lord, in all our words and deeds. Like St. Josephine Bakhita, the slaves turned freedman and then into a faithful servant and devoted woman, by allowing God to come into our lives, we allow ourselves to be freed from the slavery of sin and detaching ourselves from the things of this world.

May Almighty God bless us all, guide us all back to Him and in Him may we find satisfaction, succour and enlightenment, that we may all rejoice in Him in His everlasting glory, as we receive the great rewards for our faith, and may all of us be healed from the earthly and worldly afflictions. Amen.

by

Saturday, 7 February 2015 : 4th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of our Lady)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we discuss in the readings of the Holy Scriptures, of the nature of our Lord and God as our Shepherd and loving Guide, who cares for all of us, as His beloved children and people. He wants us all to be reunited with Him, and that was why He sent us Jesus His Son, to be the Deliverer and Saviour of us all, to bring us from all evils and liberate us all from all forms of sins.

God did not desire our destruction, but instead He wants us all to be saved from our own destructive attitudes, our rebelliousness and disobedience against His will which directly leads us into sin, and from sin into death, as sin is an obstacle for us to be reunited with our Lord, and without the Lord our God, our Shepherd, we are truly nothing. We cannot survive without the love of our Shepherd, just as sheep cannot survive and prosper without their shepherds.

We have lived for a very long time in the darkness, and we have lost our way in the darkness of this world, and without a guide, we are condemned to an eternity in darkness and suffering, in a state of hopelessness and complete separation from the love of our God. All these are because of our sins, the disobediences we have committed before the Lord and men alike.

But as I have mentioned, the Lord loves us very, very much, and just as the shepherd loves his sheep and cares for all of them without exception, thus the same applies to our Lord, who does not want even a single one of His sheep, that is all of us, to be lost from Him. We can liken this to a shepherd who does not wish his sheep to be lost to the wolves, to be scattered and without a leader to guide them and show them the way to a good life.

Thus this was why if we look at the Gospel passage today, even though our Lord Jesus and His disciples were very tired, particularly our Lord Himself, after ministering without cease on many occasions to the multitudes of the people of God, He still pushed Himself forth and taught more people who were looking for Him for guidance and the way for them to go in their life.

That is because He truly has concern and love for us. He is genuinely worried about us, for what is at stake is nothing other than the eternal fate of us all, and if He did nothing to save us, then all of us would have been lost, body and soul, to the eternal suffering and despair in hellfire. This is the fate that He does not want us all to have, and that was why, He became our Shepherd, to guide us all along the right path and show us all the path towards salvation in Him.

And just as a shepherd is willing to die and give up his life for his sheep, thus our Lord Jesus, our Shepherd is also willing to lay down His life for our sake. He laid down His life to protect us, and indeed to deliver us from the darkness of this world, to pay the price for our sins. Shepherds are willing to put their own lives at risk just so that their sheep may be safe from the depredations of wolves and all others that seek their destruction and harm. And indeed, our Lord is no different.

So for such a great love and care which our Lord had shown us all, even to the point of bearing the consequences of our sins and to even bear enormous suffering and to die for us, have we shown Him the same kind of unconditional and genuine love which we ought to show Him? Most often, we have shown Him contempt and indifference, and we even reject the love He had given us freely.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all appreciate the love which our Lord and Shepherd had shown us, and let us reciprocate it by loving Him back and following Him and the path which He had shown to all of us. Let us follow Him with all of our heart and let us no longer be disobedient but follow Him all the way to the end, where He will reward us with rich rewards and eternal life in bliss. God bless us all. Amen.