Immaculate Heart of Mary

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Saturday, 28 June 2014 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Irenaeus, Bishop and Martyr, and the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of our Lady or Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary) or Red (Martyrs)

Lamentations 2 : 2, 10-14, 18-19

Without pity YHVH has shattered in Jacob every dwelling. He has torn down in His anger the ramparts of Judah’s daughter. He has thrown her rulers and her king to the ground, dishonoured.

The elders of the daughter of Zion sit in silence upon the ground, their heads sprinkled with dust, their bodies wrapped in sackcloth, while Jerusalem’s young women bow their heads to the ground. With weeping my eyes are spent; my soul is in torment because of the downfall of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the open spaces of the town.

To their mothers they say, “Where is the bread and wine?” as they faint like wounded men in the streets and public squares, as their lives ebb away in their mothers’ arms. To what can I compare you, o daughter of Jerusalem? Who can save or comfort you, o virgin daughter of Zion? Deep as the sea is your affliction, and who can possibly heal you?

Your prophets’ visions were worthless and false. Had they warned of your sins, your fate might have been averted. But what they gave you instead were false, misleading signs.

Cry out to the Lord, o wall of the daughter of Zion! Oh, let your tears flow day and night, like a river. Give yourself no relief; grant your eyes no respite. Get up, cry out in the night, as the evening watches start; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to Him for the lives of your children, who faint with hunger at the corner of every street.

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Tuesday, 13 May 2014 : 4th Week of Easter, Memorial Feast of our Lady of Fatima (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate a truly wonderful and beautiful feast of the Church, honouring the blessed mother of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that is His mother, Mary, who appeared to three children at a village known as Fatima in Portugal, almost a century ago, in which she revealed much revelations of truth to the children, about the faith and the Church and the constant battles it faces daily against the evil in the world.

The revelations of Fatima had been a very popular topic among many of the faithful, and many speculations about its contents had arisen. But most importantly, the truth is that Mary who appeared to the three children foretold the many events that would happen, and did happen in the course of the last one century since the apparition.

The apparition was seen by the three children, but many tens of thousands of other people saw the miracle of the sun and testified to its truth, through which the Blessed Virgin Mary showed the truth of her message, and the urgency of the contents of such message, in the view of the increasing dangers facing the Church of God and the faithful disciples of the Lord.

Our Lady and mother of our Lord had often appeared to us, to mankind to continue to urge us to return to the loving embrace of her Son, and abandon our past, sinful lives, in exchange of a new life anchored upon God’s love. She appeared to the three children at a time of great difficulty, not just for the Church but also for the entire world and mankind.

The first world war was raging when the three children saw our Lady in Fatima, and her appearance occurred just moments before the downfall of the Christian nation of Russia, the Russian Empire, which was overthrown by the Communist rebels and agitators, ushering in a long period of suffering, death and destruction, which we all are very aware about, the effects of which are still felt today.

The Cold war, and the second world war was all indirectly and directly linked to that event, and also to other sad events that had unfolded during the past one century. And the apparition revealed those sad events to the children, who eventually one of them revealed much of the revelations to the Church. This world indeed had been filled with so much violence and evil for much of the past century, and it is therefore ever more urgent that we heed the call for repentance.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have to change our ways if we have dwelt in darkness and engage in wicked behaviours and dealings. We cannot be ignorant and continue with our lives as if nothing has happened. We have to commit ourselves to the way of the Lord and listen to the call of His mother, who, as the greatest among the saints and intercessors, and as the one nearest to her Son’s throne, she is our greatest help in this life’s battle against the corrupting nature of sin and evil.

The Lord Himself said that those who do the will of God, and keep as well as understand His precepts will be blessed. As such, that is what our Lady at Fatima encouraged mankind, that is to give themselves to the Lord and dedicate themselves to Him, and to ask His mother for help and intercession during the time of troubles. We must not be afraid to do so, for the mother of our Lord is loving and merciful, and she wants to help us that we may be saved and be reunited with her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have to be profoundly changed in our ways, that in all the things we say and do, we will always reflect the will and nature of our God, and in that, be blessed in all that we do. Let us heed the call of our beloved mother Mary, who appealed to us to reform our ways that we may shun violence and evil, and embrace instead her Son who showed us love in all its perfection through His sacrifice on the cross.

O, our Lady of Fatima, the mother of our Lord and our mother, help us to change our ways and continue to speak to us, just as you had spoken at Fatima long time ago, that we may understand better, how to become loving children of God, and sin no more but live eternally in His grace. O most loving mother, pray for us sinners. Amen.

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Tuesday, 16 July 2013 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Scripture Reflection)

Brothers and sisters in Christ! Indeed, we are all brethren, brothers and sisters to one another, because all of us share the same Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, who is our Brother. He did not leave mankind behind when we sinned against Him and rebelled against His love and His will. Instead, as the reading pointed out today, He came to dwell among us, and be with us, that we become His brethren, and will have part in Him and His salvation.

The Lord dwells within us, because we are the Temple of the Holy Spirit, which must be kept holy at all times, and free from the filth of sin and evil. To do so, we must reflect Christ in all the things that we do, in all the words that we say, and in all the works of our hands. And to reflect Christ simply means to love, loving God with all our hearts and our entire being, and also to love our neighbours, our brethren as much as we love ourselves.

If we do all these, in the complete awareness of what we are doing, which glorify Christ more and more, we will be brought closer and ever be with God. He will accept us as His own, as His brethren, and He will protect us from the harm caused by the evil one. To us, He had shown compassion and love, just as the love shown by shepherd to his sheep. If we are lost, like the lost sheep, He will do all the things He can, in order to bring us back to Him again.

But we must also remain obedient to Christ, as even if we are already saved, we can be lost once again, if we do not remain faithful to our calling in life, that is to be with Christ and to love Him with all our strength. Especially, in our world today, it is easy for one to fall away from grace, because of the increasing materialism in this world, the temptations of pleasure and false happiness that this world provide to many people, that they began to turn away from the teachings of Christ.

Doing the will of God is what God truly desires from us all, and in following Christ and His teachings, we are doing the will of God, that is love, for one another, and for God Himself. If we show love in our actions, we are doing God’s will and therefore will always remain in God’s grace, and we will be save from damnation of death and hell that awaits those who disobeyed the Lord and continued their lives in sin.

Today, we are celebrating the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, an important feast day for the Carmelites, a well-known religious order, which began at Mount Carmel itself, which is located in Israel today, the same location where the prophet Elijah contested against the four hundred and fifty priests of Baal, the pagan god, in front of the people of Israel, on who is the true God of Israel.

Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, appeared to St. Simon Stock, who was the founder of the Carmelite Order, and gave him what is well-known today as the brown scapular, closely associated with this feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The Carmelites themselves placed the Blessed Virgin Mary as the perfect role model for all faithful to follow, in their faith to the Lord, in following the example of Mary herself, in her dedication to her Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, from His birth, to His suffering on the way to Calvary and death on the cross.

So devoted is our Lady to her Son, our Lord Jesus, that she followed Him all the way through His suffering for our sake, to the cross, and stood by below Him, accompanying Him through the time of His greatest ordeal. Though sword pierced her heart, for seeing the cruel death of her Son, she persevered and our Lord gave her to His disciple, John, and gave him to His mother too.

Therefore, in the same way, our Blessed Virgin Mary had been given to us by the Lord Himself, and we had also been given to the care of our Lady, whom we celebrate today as the Lady of Mount Carmel, to be our mother and helper. Why helper? Because our Lady is the greatest of the saints, through her own position being the mother of God, but even more importantly because of her purity and dedication to the Lord and all God’s children.

Today we follow the example of the Carmelites, to give our love and dedication to the Lord, through His mother, our Blessed Virgin Mary. Because, just as the Carmelites stress in their formations and principles, there is no better way to the Lord other than through Mary, His mother. Mary is our greatest intercessor before the Lord for His mercy and help, because, just as at the wedding at Cana, Jesus did listen to His mother, when she pleaded with Him to help the wedding brides despite Him telling her explicitly that the time has not yet come for Him to reveal His power.

That is why we dedicate ourselves in prayer through the Blessed Virgin Mary, who became a guide in our journey towards the Lord. She helps us through her prayer, and because she is closest among the saints in heaven to the Lord, our prayers will be heard, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

That is why it is good for us to follow the example of the Carmelites and indeed, of our Lady herself, in their dedication to Jesus our Lord, on the love they have to our Lord and Saviour. Jesus did not mean any disrespect when He seemingly rebuked His own family when they were waiting for Him as told in the Gospel today. Indeed, Jesus actually affirmed the honoured position His mother had, because Jesus told the people that whoever does the will of God and do things for the sake of the Lord, they are His brethren, His family. Who else is more faithful and more obedient to the will of God other than Mary, our Lord’s own mother? The Virgin who readily accepted her role in the salvation of all mankind by accepting the Lord’s will for her, to be the vessel that brought the Saviour into this world.

Surely, today we must rejoice, that we have our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Blessed Virgin Mary, to intercede for our sake before her Son, our Lord and God. Through her we can be closer to Christ, and through her prayers for our sake, all of us who are sinners have greater hope of salvation, because Christ Himself will surely be moved by the petitions and pleas of His own mother, who cares for us just like her own children. Remember, when Christ gave His mother to John to be cared for, He also gave her to us, that we become her own, and receive the love and care that she had once shown Jesus.

May our Lady of Mount Carmel, our Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, pray for us and protect us from the harm of evil that is in our world, and through her, may we be able to get closer and reach higher to Christ, her Son, that in the future, we will be able to praise Him together with her, and all the saints and holy people of God in heaven. Amen.

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Saturday, 8 June 2013 : Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, just yesterday we celebrated the great feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, but at the same time, we cannot forget Mary, His mother, who is often also depicted with a flaming heart just like that of Jesus. But while Jesus’ heart in the Most Sacred Heart iconography shows a wreath of the crown of thorns, the heart of Mary was pierced with a sword, which depicted the prophecy of Simeon the prophet, who predicted that Mary’ heart would be ‘pierced’ by a sword, that is her Immaculate Heart.

Yes, just as Christ is loving and filled with love, in His Most Sacred Heart, so does His mother too, with her Immaculate heart, for she was born without sin, in immaculate condition, and her heart was filled with pure joy and love of the Lord. That is what we are celebrating today, the feast of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Yet, just as I had mentioned it, that same heart, which is immaculate, pure beyond reasoning and filled with love, would have to be ‘pierced’ with a sword. Not in the literal meaning of course, as this sword represents the heart of Mary that was rendered to pieces in great pain as she watched her Son, our Lord Jesus in His Passion on the way to Calvary, suffering the sins of all mankind unto His death on the cross.

Imagine for all of you mothers out there, that when your children encounter something dangerous, or their lives are in great danger, I am sure that those who are mothers will immediately be faced with the greatest fear of their life. You all will be seized with fear, but even more so, with the feeling of love for your children, that great love bonded by ties of blood that is stronger than anything else, which links between mothers and their children. No mother will want to see her children suffer or face pain. True and loving mothers would even give themselves in place of their children, so that they may live instead of her.

Then, therefore, imagine Mary herself, our Lady, the Mother of Jesus, who had been given the good news by the Archangel Gabriel, that she would bear the great Son of God Most High, whom was to be the Messiah and Saviour of all mankind, the promised salvation that was pronounced through the countless prophets of the ages past. She bore Jesus for nine months in her womb, and with Joseph, her husband, she braved the pain of childbirth at that night in Bethlehem, until she gave birth to Jesus, our Lord and God.

She nurtured Him with love and compassion, and as perfect as a care that a mother can give to her child. With Joseph as the head of the family, they protected the infant Jesus from external dangers such as Herod by escaping to Egypt, and eventually settling down to a happy life in Nazareth, as a simple carpenter family.

But even from the very beginning, the baby that she had is indeed not any ordinary being, but the Lord Himself incarnate into a human being, the vessel of salvation, for through Jesus, the Lamb of God, salvation would come forth to all mankind. Ever since His birth, kings and wise men had pledged their fealty and praise by bringing Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The prophet Simeon and the prophetess Anna told her of the greatness that her Child would become and Simeon also foretold her about the sorrows that she would face later.

Mary watched Jesus grew up from being an infant, into an adolescent, during which time he was left behind in Jerusalem, when Mary in great fear, searched for her Child with Joseph, until they found Him in the Temple in Jerusalem. When Mary told Jesus about why He had made things difficult for His family, that was not a chastisement at all, neither was it a scolding. It was in fact the love that Mary has for her Son.

So much that she loves Him that she fears if anything were to happen to Jesus, a feeling that surely all the mothers out there would understand. None of us wants our children to be hurt or lost somewhere. We would do our best to galvanise all available forces until our child can be found, as if a great treasure had been lost.

Mary experienced a lot of strange occurences and happenings throughout her grooming of Jesus, but she did not question the Lord nor did she waver in her faith, but instead, she kept her faith strong, and kept everything in her heart. Indeed, such a great heart that our Blessed Virgin Mary has, to store all that feelings, anxiety, and emotions that she had for her Son in her Immaculate Heart!

She accompanied Jesus through His adulthood, through His ministry after the baptism at the Jordan, and she became the catalyst that allowed Christ to perform His first miracle at the wedding in Cana. Through her help, and her great concern for the wedding couple, she managed to persuade Christ to give them aid by performing the transformation of the water into wine, saving the wedding of the couple.

She accompanied Jesus through His last days on earth, in His Passion, and followed Him through the scourging and the condemnation, and unto Calvary below the cross, on which hung the Saviour of the world, made to suffer all the weight of the sins of the entire world, of all mankind past, present, and future. It is at that point, that the prophecy of Simeon came true, that a sword would indeed pierce her Immaculate Heart.

That great loving heart, and the heart that had accompanied the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, ever since His birth, now had to witness the cruelty through which Christ died on the cross for the salvation of mankind. She understood it as a part of God’s plan for salvation, for without the death of Christ, the Lamb of God, there can be no salvation. But imagine the great amount of pain that must have been inflicted to our Lady, seeing her Son mocked and insulted, and condemned to a criminal’s death on the cross.

And yet, despite all of that, she remained faithful to the Lord, and was as firm as ever in her mission entrusted to her by God. She had been faithful since the very beginning, when she accepted God’s will in making her the vessel through which the Saviour of the world would be born, and all the way until the end, she remained faithful. Truly, how great is our Lady and her Most wonderful Immaculate Heart, pure and loving, filled with all the warmth of God’s love, and in this heart we can see the great journey and struggle that our Lady had to go through, along with her Son, Jesus Christ, all the way to the end at Calvary.

Yet, as we know, everything did not end at Calvary, as Jesus our Lord rose again in glory on the third day after His death, and through His glorious resurrection, the salvation of mankind was fulfilled completely, and indeed, our Lady had a great part in this. Just as what we saw in the coat-of-arms of our late Blessed Pope John Paul II, of a cross with a letter M at the bottom. That ‘M’ is Mary, the Mother of Jesus, who supported Jesus in His life, since His infancy, all the way to that sorrowful day on Calvary.

Jesus entrusted His mother to His disciple, John on that day, and also entrusted John to His mother. Through that act, therefore, He also made all of us, all mankind, the children entrusted to Mary, the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, all the love and warmth of the heart of Mary will be poured out to us, and her love will help us and guide us in a straight path to her Son, Jesus. It is indeed true, the saying that, “To Jesus, through Mary”.

Mary is our mother too, and just as she had cared for her Son, Jesus, she will also love and care for us. Pray to our Lady often, and ask her for her intercession for all of us sinners who are still suffering in this world, that just as at the wedding in Cana, she will also help intercede for our sake before her Son, that Jesus would show us His wonderful mercy.

O Immaculate Heart of Mary, the most wonderful heart of Mary, pierced by a sword of sorrow at the cruel death of Your Son, be with us and guide us in our own paths towards Your Son, that we will stay faithful, and that we will not inflict ever more wounds to increase the suffering of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, for every sin that we commit is another wound that we add to the wounds of Christ.

Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed are you amongst women and blessed is the Fruit of your womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

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Saturday, 8 June 2013 : Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Gospel Reading)

Luke 2 : 41-51

Every year the parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover, as was customary. And when Jesus was twelve years old, He went up with them, according to the custom of this feast.

After the festival was over, they returned, but the boy Jesus remained in Jerusalem, and His parents did not know it. They thought He was in the company, and after walking the whole day they looked for Him among their relatives and friends.

As they did not find Him, they went back to Jerusalem searching for Him, and on the third day they found Him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions. And all the people were amazed at His understanding and His answers.

His parents were very surprised when they saw Him, and His mother said to Him, “Son, why have You done this to us? Your father and I were very worried while searching for You.”

Then He said to them, “Why were you looking for Me? Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house?” But they did not understand this answer.

Jesus went down with them, returning to Nazareth, and He continued to be subject to them. As for His mother, she kept all these things in her heart.

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Saturday, 8 June 2013 : Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Psalm)

1 Samuel 2 : 1, 4-5, 6-7, 8abcd

My heart exults in YHVH, I feel strong in my God. I rejoice and laugh at my enemies for You came with power to save me.

The bow of the mighty is broken but the weak are girded with strength. The well-fed must labour for bread but the hungry need work no more. The childless wife has borne seven children, but the proud mother is left alone.

YHVH is Lord of life and death; He brings down to the grave and raises up. YHVH makes poor and makes rich, He brings low and He exalts.

He lifts up the lowly from the dust, and raises the poor from the ash heap; they will be called to the company of princes, and inherit a seat of honour.

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Saturday, 8 June 2013 : Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary (First Reading)

Isaiah 61 : 9-11

Their descendants shall be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a race YHVH has blessed.

I rejoice greatly in YHVH, my soul exults for joy in my God, for He has clothed me in the garments of His salvation, He has covered me with the robe of His righteousness, like a bridegroom wearing a garland, like a bride adorned with jewels.

For as the earth brings forth its growth, and as a garden makes seeds spring up, so will the Lord YHVH make justice and praise spring up in the sight of all nations.