Italian saints

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Saturday, 29 April 2017 : 2nd Week of Easter, Memorial of St. Catherine of Siena, Virgin and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Acts 6 : 1-7

In those days, as the number of disciples grew, the so-called Hellenists complained against the so-called Hebrews, because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

So the Twelve summoned the whole body of disciples together and said, “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God to serve at tables. So, friends, choose from among yourselves seven respected men full of Spirit and wisdom, that we may appoint them to this task. As for us, we shall give ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.”

The whole community agreed and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and Holy Spirit : Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenus and Nicolaus of Antioch who was a proselyte. They presented these men to the Apostles who first prayed over them and then laid hands upon them.

The Word of God continued to spread, and the number of the disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly and even many priests accepted the faith.

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Wednesday, 8 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints or Virgins)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in today’s Scripture readings, all of us heard about the account of the creation of Man, how God created the first of our kind and gave him life. He blessed them and gave them many things, and also the command and stewardship over the earth. It was also mentioned that God laid an important commandment to man, that he must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, a story which we are surely well acquainted with.

In that story we heard of how the first man, Adam and the first woman, Eve disobeyed God, when Satan disguised as a serpent tempted them to eat a fruit from the tree, and therefore gaining knowledge over good and evil to become like God their Creator. That was how mankind sinned and therefore were cast out of the Gardens of Eden, and were forced to endure sufferings on earth as a result of their disobedience.

But now let us ask this question to ourselves. Was it the forbidden fruit from the tree that had caused mankind to sin and to become wicked? Or was it because they themselves were unable to restrain their greed and failed to resist the temptations of the devil? This would become significant if we look into the Gospel passage today, where Jesus mentioned to the Pharisees and to the teachers of the Law, in their dispute about the rules of the laws that the latter tried to impose on the people of God.

We have to understand the dynamics and the historical developments of that time if we are to understand why Jesus struggled with these people, who refused to budge and adamantly tried to advance their own thinking against the truth revealed to all by God through Jesus. At that time, the Pharisees strictly enforced the rule of food prohibitions, or what is now known as the kosher rule.

They followed the old rule of Moses, which the Lord passed down to the people in the guidelines of what they ought to eat and not to eat. But at that time, the people of Israel were travelling in the desert, and they were truly rebellious and refused to obey the Lord and His ways. That was why God imposed on them the set of laws, rules and regulations that He had put in place so as to help them to control themselves and to help guide them on the way towards righteousness.

But God never intended for the laws to become a burden for His people, or as a tool to make people to lord it over others just because they conform to the rules, and while others did not. It was never God’s intention for His people to misunderstand the real meaning of His laws. Yet, that was precisely what the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law had done.

These people were too focused on the external applications of the Law, to the point that they were blinded to their own shortcomings and failures. They were so focused on the purity of their externals and all the observations of the laws they so carefully guarded, they had forgotten the most important commandment of all, that is to love and serve the Lord with all of their might and strength.

Many of the things which they had done, they did them in order to be seen and to be praised by the people who saw them. Many might have seen how they have observed fully the entirety of the laws of Moses, all of its rules and tenets, but on the other hand, as just mentioned, their intention for doing all these were wrong. God did not have the place of honour in their hearts as He should have.

It was just as how it was at the time of Adam and Eve. At that time, they disobeyed God and therefore sinned. It was not because of the fruit they ate that they have sinned, but because from their own hearts, wickedness had arisen, the inability to restrain their greed and desires which Satan used in order to bring about our downfall. In the same manner therefore, what Jesus said was very true, that what made someone impure is not something that we eat and bring in from the outside, but rather what came out from ourselves.

God created all things good and perfect, and therefore it is not right indeed to say that anything is impure or unclean. Rather, it was what had come out from our hearts that had led us into sin. It was our vulnerabilities and our tendency to fall into the temptations of worldliness which had brought us into sin, rather than anything else outside ourselves.

It is often that we, like the Pharisees and the elders, refused to see this truth because we are proud, and we do not want to lose our face, knowing that we are not perfect inside us, but dirty and wicked. And therefore, we put on masks of purity and piety, in order to hide the fact that we are sinners and delinquent rebels before God and men. But what we are doing is that we are just running away from the problem, and often, we end up in denial, which leads us all into an even greater sin, that is the refusal to repent from our sins.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is where perhaps we should look up to the examples of the holy saints we venerate and glorify today, namely St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita. St. Jerome Emiliani was an Italian priest whose deeds among the orphans and those who were suffering then, was greatly noted by his contemporaries, as he worked hard to ensure that these people were properly taken care of and not abandoned.

St. Jerome Emiliani established places for these people to settle in, renting houses for this purpose, and increasingly, there were more and more pious and loving people who followed in his footsteps and stepped in to help the orphans and the poor people to be able to have a decent living. Eventually a religious society founded upon the ideals and the works of St. Jerome Emiliani was established, through which many people would go on to follow in the footsteps of this great and holy saint.

Meanwhile, St. Josephine Bakhita was a former slave turned a pious nun, born in Sudan in northern Africa, and was sold to slavery at a very young age, when she was kidnapped by slave traders who sold her to the slave market. She was also sold and resold a few times between slave owners, which experiences troubled and traumatised her greatly.

Eventually she was bought by an Italian vice-consul, and through difficult moments, managed to make her way to Italy, where she received the faith and became one of the converts. She also managed to gain her freedom, and upon baptism, she chose to join the convent of religious sisters, becoming one of the Canossian sisters.

She eventually continued to serve God and His people dutifully, renowned for her great piety and faith, in her zeal in the service of God, and in how her holiness shone through her actions in life. She never forgot her experiences in life, how she had suffered through slavery and all the other injustices, and yet, as the perfect example of Christian love and virtue, it was told that when one youth asked her if she would forgive her captors and slavers, she immediately said without hesitation that she would forgive them, for without them, she would not be a Christian, a religious, and indeed, later a saint.

The examples of these two venerable saints can be our inspiration in life, brothers and sisters in Christ. We must follow in their footsteps, doing good in our lives, and not be trapped by our pride, our folly and our stubbornness to accept God’s grace, forgiveness and love. We must learn to be faithful as St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita had been faithful, and learn to love as they have loved.

May the Lord help us all, so that we may emulate the lives of His wonderful saints, and practice what they themselves had done, in our own lives. May the Lord bless us all and our works, so that they will bring much good to this world, and bring righteousness and justice upon ourselves, that we will be worthy of the Lord, and worthy to receive His promise of eternal life, purified from all of our sins. May God bless us all. Amen.

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Wednesday, 8 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints or Virgins)
Mark 7 : 14-23

At that time, Jesus then called the people to Him again and said to them, “Listen to Me, all of you, and try to understand. Nothing that enters a person from the outside can make that person unclean. It is what comes from within that makes a person unclean. Let everyone who has ears listen.”

When Jesus got home and was away from the crowd, His disciples asked Him about this saying, and He replied, “So even you are dull? Do you not see that whatever comes from outside cannot make a person unclean, since it enters not the heart but the stomach, and is finally passed out?” Thus Jesus declared that all foods are clean.

And He went on, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him, for evil designs come out of the heart : theft, murder, adultery, jealousy, greed, maliciousness, deceit, indecency, slander, pride and folly. All these evil things come from within and make a person unclean.”

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Wednesday, 8 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints or Virgins)
Psalm 103 : 1-2a, 27-28, 29bc-30

Bless the Lord my soul! Clothed in majesty and splendour; o Lord, my God, how great You are! You are wrapped in light as with a garment.

They all look to You for their food in due time. You give it to them, and they gather it up; You open Your hand, they are filled with good things.

You take away their breath, they expire and return to dust. When You send forth Your Spirit, they are created, and the face of the earth is renewed.

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Wednesday, 8 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints or Virgins)
Genesis 2 : 4b-9, 15-17

On the day that YHVH God made the earth and the heavens, there was not yet on earth any shrub on the fields, nor had any plant yet sprung up, for YHVH God had not made it rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the earth, but a mist went up from the earth and watered the surface of the earth.

Then YHVH God formed Man, dust drawn from the clay, and breathed into his nostrils a breath of life and Man became alive with breath. God planted a garden in Eden in the east and there He placed Man whom He had created. YHVH God caused to grow from the ground every kind of tree that is pleasing to see and good to eat, also the tree of life on the middle of the garden and the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

YHVH God took Man and placed him in the garden of Eden to till it and to take care of it. Then YHVH God gave an order to Man saying, “You may eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you will not eat, for on the day you eat of it, you will die.”

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Sunday, 23 October 2016 : 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Mission Sunday, Memorial of St. John of Capestrano, Priest (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this holy day of the Lord, as we gather together as one people, we heard about that familiar parable from our Lord Jesus, about a Pharisee and a tax collector, who went to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray to God. The Lord contrasted the attitudes of the Pharisee who prayed with pride and haughtiness, clamouring and revelling in his achievements and supposed piety, looking down on others who were not like him, including the tax collector.

Meanwhile the tax collector prayed with great humility, bowing down himself and lowering himself before God and before others, for surely those who came to the Temple would be able to see that tax collector bowed and humbling himself, although tax collectors at that time were feared because of their money, their wealth and influence. But unlike the equally influential Pharisees, the tax collectors were often negatively seen as traitors to the country.

And the prevailing opinion then were obviously stacked against the tax collectors, prostitutes and all others whom were considered as unclean, outcast and unworthy of God’s salvation. And the people, the Jews became elitist in their attitudes, thinking that as the heir of Abraham and God’s covenant, they alone deserved to receive the love and the salvation of God. And chief among those who exhibited this attitude were the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law.

But as the Lord Himself made it clear to one of His prophets, Jesus son of Sirach, also known as the prophet Sirach, our first reading today, that all mankind are equal before Him, in His presence. No one can claim to be better than any other based on their race, background, skin colour, appearances, wealth, status, fame or any other parameters that this world often used in order to distinguish how each one are treated.

God did call Abraham to be His servant, and by his obedience, God rewarded him and his descendants with favour beyond that was given all the other nations. But that does not mean that God favoured the Israelites alone, and condemned the other nations, the other peoples. After all, if God did not love those people whom the Israelites often called as pagans and barbarians, then why would He even bother to create them in the first place?

God created us mankind because He loved us all, and He has loved us all so much that His intention for us was that all of us may dwell for eternity in perfect bliss and happiness, knowing true joy and love in what He has prepared for them since the beginning of time. Alas, all of that were not meant to be, as in our disobedience, sin has become a part of us, corrupting us and made us to be unworthy.

Yet, God Who still loved us all so much, each and every one of us, would not give up on us. If He no longer loved us, then there would be no reason at all for Him to prolong our existence, and just as He had willed us to being, He could have destroyed us all and wiped us out from this world. Instead, He gave us another chance, one after the other, help and assistance, guidance and hope through His prophets and servants, and ultimately, by sending His own Son to be our Saviour.

God loves all of His children very much, and He desires for all of these to be reunited with Him in perfect harmony. And this require these same children, that is mankind, to be changed, transformed and altered completely in their ways, that they abandon their past ways of sin and be converted into the light and truth of our Lord. And that is indeed the essence of the Scripture readings that we heard today.

God does not look at hubris, pride and arrogance, and neither does He need any abstract and fake faith that was not founded upon true and genuine commitment and devotion to His ways. That was why He rebuked the action of the Pharisee both in the parable and in reality, because they were so full of themselves, that they had forgotten their true purpose, the purpose entrusted to them as the leaders and guardians of God’s people.

They forgot that they themselves were sinners too, just as the tax collector, all the other tax collectors, prostitutes and those who have been shunned from the society were sinners too. All of us have sinned before God, and regardless whether they are small or big, minor or major, all of us have been equally tainted by sin and therefore had been rendered unworthy before the Lord.

And unless we are reconciled with our God, we shall be doomed to eternal damnation and oblivion, in hellfire reserved for Satan and his fellow fallen and rebel angels. Certainly, this is not the fate that we want for ourselves, but unfortunately, as we have often witnessed, there are many distractions and temptations that kept us from finding the path to our salvation in God.

And one of the major distraction is that pride and prejudice we have within us, as the Pharisees and their fellow allies have exhibited. As Christians, we cannot follow down this path, as we cannot become enclosed within ourselves, trapped in the quagmire of greed and human pride. Rather, as Christians, we should open ourselves to love and to show care and concern for our brethren, all those who need our help.

And rather that condemning others for their sins, perhaps we ourselves should reflect on our own sinful ways first. Jesus told the Pharisees and all those whom they have gathered in one occasion to test Him by condemning a woman caught with committing adultery, that those who had no sin, ought to cast the first stone against the woman. It is yet another reminder that we have to be humble before God, and not to judge others before we look at ourselves.

Instead, let us offer a helping hand to our brethren in need, and all the more this is necessary because we have received the fullness of God’s truth and revelations through the Church, and thus, as the Apostles and the saints before us, we have that same obligation and responsibility given to us by the Lord Himself, that we ought to help and lead and guide each other that all of us may be saved together in God.

May the Lord help us in our endeavours, that through faith, commitment and devotion to the ways of the Lord, through humility and awareness of our own sins, we may discover the path to reach out to the Lord and find salvation in Him. May He guide us as we walk through this challenging path of life, and may He bless us always in all things, that we will persevere and not give up as we approach His merciful and loving embrace. Amen.

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Sunday, 23 October 2016 : 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Mission Sunday, Memorial of St. John of Capestrano, Priest (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Luke 18 : 9-14

At that time, Jesus told another parable to some people, fully convinced of their own righteousness, who looked down on others : “Two men went up to the Temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself, and said, ‘I thank You, God, that I am not like the other people, grasping, crooked, adulterous, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and give the tenth of all my income to the Temple.'”

“In the meantime the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ I tell you, when this man went back to his house, he had been reconciled with God, but not the other. For whoever makes himself out to be great will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be raised up.”

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Sunday, 23 October 2016 : 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Mission Sunday, Memorial of St. John of Capestrano, Priest (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
2 Timothy 4 : 6-9, 16-18

As for me, I am already poured out as a libation, and the moment of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness with which the Lord, the just Judge, will reward me on that day; and not only me, but all those who have longed for His glorious coming.

Do your best to come to me quickly. At my first hearing in court no one supported me; all deserted me. May the Lord not hold it against them. But the Lord was at my side, giving me strength to proclaim the Word fully, and let all the pagans hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will save me from all evil, bringing me to His heavenly kingdom. Glory to Him forever and ever. Amen!

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Sunday, 23 October 2016 : 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Mission Sunday, Memorial of St. John of Capestrano, Priest (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 33 : 2-3, 17-18, 19 and 23

I will bless the Lord all my days; His praise will be ever on my lips. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the lowly hear and rejoice.

But His face is set against the wicked to destroy their memory from the earth. The Lord hears the cry of the righteous and rescues them from all their troubles.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves the distraught. But the Lord will redeem the life of His servants; none of those who trust in Him will be doomed.

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Sunday, 23 October 2016 : 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Mission Sunday, Memorial of St. John of Capestrano, Priest (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Sirach 35 : 15b-17, 20-22a (Greek Septuagint – Sirach 35 : 12-14, 16-18)

The Lord is Judge and shows no partiality. He will not disadvantage the poor, He Who hears the prayer of the oppressed. He does not disdain the plea of the orphan, nor the complaint of the widow.

The one who serves God wholeheartedly will be heard; his petition will reach the clouds. The prayer of the humble person pierces the clouds, and he is not consoled until he has been heard. His prayer will not cease until the Most High has looked down, until justice has been done in favour of the righteous.