kingdom of Israel

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Friday, 23 August 2013 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Rose of Lima, Virgin (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Ruth 1 : 1, 3-6, 14b-16, 22

There was a famine in the land during the time of the Judges, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah departed with his wife and two sons to sojourn in the country of Moab.

Naomi’s husband Elimelech died. She was left with her two sons, who married Moabite woman, one named Orpah and the other Ruth.

After living in Moab for about ten years, Mahlon and Chilion also died and Naomi was left bereft of husband and two sons. Having heard that YHVH had come to help His people by giving them food, Naomi prepared to return home.

Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law returns to her people and her gods. You too must return. Go after

Ruth replied, “Do not ask me to leave you. For I will go where you go to and stay where you stay. Your people will be my people and your God, my God.” Thus it was that Naomi returned from Moab with her Moabite daughter-in-law and arrived in Bethlehem as the barley harvest began.

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Thursday, 22 August 2013 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Isaiah 9 : 1-6

The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. A light has dawned on those who live in the land of the shadow of death.

You have enlarged the nation; You have increased their joy. They rejoice before You, as people rejoice at harvest time as they rejoice in dividing the spoil.

For the yoke of their burden, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressors, You have broken it as of the day of Midian.

Every warrior’s boot that tramped in war, every cloak rolled in blood, will be thrown out for burning, will serve as fuel for the fire.

For a Child is born to us, a Son is given us; the royal ornament is laid upon His shoulder, and His Name is proclaimed : “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

To the increase of His powerful rule in peace, there will be no end. Vast will be His dominion. He will reign on David’s throne and over all His kingdom, to establish and uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time onward and forever. The zealous love of YHVH Sabaoth will do this.

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Wednesday, 21 August 2013 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Pius X, Pope (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Judges 9 : 6-15

Then all the lords of Shechem and the whole council assembled together by the oak at the pillar in Shechem, and proclaimed Abimelech king.

When Jotham was told about this, he went to the top of Mount Gerizim. There he cried out to them, “Listen to me, lords of Shechem, that God may listen to you!”

“The trees once set out to find and anoint a king. They said to the olive tree, ‘Be our king.’ The olive tree answered, ‘Am I going to renounce the oil by which – thanks to me – gods and people are honoured, to hold sway over the trees?’”

“The trees said to the fig tree : ‘Come and reign over us.’ The fig tree answered them, ‘Am I going to renounce my sweetness and my delicious fruit, to hold sway over the trees?’”

“The trees said to the vine : ‘Come and reign over us.’ The vine answered, ‘Am I going to renounce my juice which cheers gods and people to hold sway over the trees?”

“Then the trees said to the bramble bush : ‘Come, reign over us.’ The bramble bush answered the trees, ‘If you come in sincerity to anoint me as your king, then come near and take shelter in my shade; but if not, let fire break out of the bramble bush to devour even the cedars of Lebanon.’”

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Sunday, 14 July 2013 : 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan. This is a well-known story by Jesus to show that nobody is beyond help, and nobody is beyond salvation, for everyone is truly equal before God, and God loves them all the same.

Why Samaritan? In order to understand this, we need to look into the history of the people of Israel and the region of Jesus’ time, that is two thousand years ago. At that time, the region north of Judea, where most of the Jews lived in, and where Jerusalem is, is called Samaria, the former lands of the northern kingdom of Israel.

The northern kingdom was destroyed about more than seven hundred years prior to the birth of Jesus by the powerful Assyrian Empire, and the people of the northern kingdom were taken away from their homeland and scattered among the nations in exile. In their place, the pagan peoples of Assyria and its constituent nations came in and settled in that region, together with the local people of the land of Canaan.

The people of Samaria, as the region was to be known henceforth, were therefore a mix of people, but considered as evidently ‘non-Jewish’ by the Jewish people who would return from the exile in Babylon, those who settled in Jerusalem, and in the former Kingdom of Judah, in what was then to be known as Judea.

That marked the beginning of distrust between the Jewish people and the Samaritans, as they were called by the Jews at the time. They were considered as pagan and as a people without hope for salvation, because the Jews at the time believe that they, as the chosen people, the chosen race, are the only ones worthy of God, and no others are worthy of the Lord.

Yet, without going further into the long story of the history of the two peoples, we can see in today’s Gospel reading in particular, the disparity between the reaction of the Jews, and that of the Samaritan, when confronted with an injured person, a person in suffering. The Levite and the priest portrayed by Jesus were high ranked members of the Jewish society and were usually held in high regards, and yet they ignored the suffering of the robbed person and went on their way. But the Samaritan, cursed and held in contempt by the Jews, stopped and gave it his all to provide the best aid he could give to the suffering person.

The purpose of the readings today, brothers and sisters, is however not to put Jews against non-Jews, and not to discriminate against either the Jews or the Samaritans. The real purpose is to show that while it is not easy to become the disciples of the Lord, the Lord had not made it so difficult for us to follow His precepts and walk in His ways, just as the first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy had mentioned.

The Lord had given His commandments to the people, as a set of laws to govern how the people of Israel should live their lives, and He had given them to Moses, so that he could make sure that the people of God would continue to keep God’s laws in their hearts, as long as they live, and pass them down the generations, so that their children, grandchildren, and so on would continue to live according to the Lord’s way through His commandments.

But over time, the true meaning of God’s commandments had been lost, and they had been replaced with laws made by men. The laws had become empty rituals and observations that had lost their heart, the centre of all things, and of all the law. What is this thing? This thing is none other than love, for God’s commandments are truly the commandments of love!

To love our God, with all our hearts, with all our minds, with all our strengths, and with all our being, just as we do the same to our neighbours, loving them, our brothers and sisters, forgiving those who had wronged us, and bring love to one another, sharing them so that love will not perish inside us, but grow, nurtured by our love with one another, and together with our love for God, who loves us all, without exceptions.

It is not difficult to love, and it is indeed possible to love without making much effort, but love requires a true sincerity of the heart to be accomplished, because love requires our hearts to be free of the entanglements of evil and its rotten fruits, like hatred, jealousy, sloth, greed, and so many other corruptions that evil had brought into our hearts.

We like to make excuses, brothers and sisters in Christ, excuses so that we will not need to love one another, and even not to love God! Because we like to linger in our own sense of security and pleasure in this comfortable world, so that we will not want to step beyond that sphere of security, to go out of our way, whenever we see someone hurting, someone in pain and suffering, and someone without love.

We like to love ourselves more, to be selfish, and to think of ourselves before that of others. No, brothers and sisters in Christ, we cannot be like that. To be Christian means to be with one another in Christ, to become brethren in our Lord and God. To be Christian means to be like the Good Samaritan, not because he is a Samaritan, but because he showed mercy, love, and compassion to those in need, to those who are suffering, and to give their love to others, that the love in all will grow and blossom.

It is important for all of us to show love in all the things that we do, in all our actions, in all our words and deeds, so that we truly belong to God who is Love, and not to the devil. It is easy for us to just walk away and ignore those in need, just as what was done by the priest and the Levite, abandoning the suffering to their pain, and go on about their own business.

Does it not ring a bell to our own actions, how we often walk away from those in suffering, and pretending not to see what had happened, or pretending to be deaf to the cries of those who are suffering, and who greatly need our help? Even little actions of love from us, can mean a great deal of difference to them.

Let me relate to you, a real-life story, in which a toddler was ran over by a car on the street, because the toddler’s parents were busy shopping in the nearby market, and they did not notice that their child had been separated from them. The toddler did not die instantly from the crash, and indeed had hope of survival from the injuries sustained from the accident, but because nobody was aroused to give their help, the child bled to death on the scene.

Did that accident happen on an empty road? on an abandoned street? No, the accident happened in a very busy road, where lots of people were passing around, and while some glanced at the injured toddler on the street, nobody were aroused to give a hand to help. They just walked on, pretending that nothing had ever happened. The worst are those who would say, either openly or secretly in these ways, “Pity”, “How very unfortunate”, “Where are the parents” “So tragic”, when they could just nudge themselves into taking action, which might have meant a big difference between life and death.

It is not difficult, brothers and sisters, to follow the commandments of the Lord, to be His disciples, because all that we need to do, is to obey Him and His will, and do His bidding, that is to do the works of love, and helping one another, especially those in need, is already good enough. We do not have to make excuses that, “Sorry I cannot help, too busy”, or if we would like to give in terms of financial donation, “Sorry, I am not rich enough, or I am still poor, so why should I give to the poor? Wait until I become rich then I will donate.”

Because acts of love can be as simple as showing love to those who are unloved, those who are ostracised, and those who have been growing up without love. Love is increasingly a more difficult commodity to find in our world today, and it is up to us, to rekindle the love in the hearts of our brothers and sisters. For no matter how great we are, without love, and therefore, without God, as the centre of our life, we are nothing.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, today, let us pledge ourselves to the Lord, that we will always keep His commandments faithfully, by first believing in Him and loving Him with all our hearts, with all our minds, with all our strengths, and with all our being, and then to love one another, as brothers and sisters, children of the same God, reflecting the love that we have received from the Lord, in our own actions, in our own words, and in all the things that we profess in our lives.

Remember always Jesus Christ, our Lord, whose perfect selflessness and love for all of us, God’s children, made Him to obey fully the will of God His Father, to die on the cross for us, the ultimate form of love, the love one has for one’s friend, that one would give life to another that that other one may live. Christ showed His love for us through none other than His death, a humiliating death on the cross, but which was converted to the cross of glory and hope, when He rose again, and gave us all, the hope of salvation and eternal life, if we believe in Him. May God remain with us always, and we too, remain in His love. Amen.

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Monday, 8 July 2013 : 14th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Genesis 28 : 10-22a

Jacob left Beersheba and left out for Haran. When he reached a certain place the sun had set and he spent the night there. He took one of the stones that were there and using it as a pillow, he lay down to sleep.

While Jacob was sleeping, he had a dream in which a ladder stood on the earth with its top reaching to heaven and on it were angels of God going up and coming down. And YHVH was standing there near him and said, “I am YHVH, the God of your father, Abraham, and the God of Isaac. The land on which you sleep, I give to you and your descendants.”

“Your descendants will be numerous like the specks of dust of the earth and you will spread out to the west and the east, to the north and the south. Through you and your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed. See, I am with you and I will keep you safe wherever you go. I will bring you back to this land and not leave you until I have done what I promised.”

Jacob woke from his dream and said, “Truly YHVH was in this place and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How full of awe is this place! It is nothing less than a House of God; it is the Gate to Heaven!”

Then Jacob rose early and took the stone he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He named that place Bethel although before that it was called Luz. Then Jacob made a vow, “If YHVH will be with me and keep me safe during this journey I am making, if He gives me bread to eat and clothes to wear, and if I return in peace to my father’s house, then YHVH will be my God. This stone which I have set up as a pillar will be God’s House.”

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Friday, 5 July 2013 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Anthony Zaccaria, Priest (Scripture Reflection)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we reflect on the calling of Matthew, who was a tax collector, and according to the Pharisees, a sinner. He was called from his custom-house and followed Christ, eventually to become one of the Twelve Apostles and one of the Four Evangelists, who wrote the Gospel of Matthew, which passage we are reading today.

Why did the Pharisees consider the tax collectors as sinners? We should understand the history and condition of the region at the time, of the region called Palestine today, and Judea at that time. At the time of Jesus, Judea was still a semi-independent kingdom, led by a king, Herod Antipas at that time, the son of Herod the Great, who tried to kill Jesus as a baby. But despite the semblance of independence generated by the presence of a ‘king of the Jews’ in Herod, the Romans, which had become an Empire by that time, had the overall command and control as the master of the people of Judea.

The Romans established an efficient taxation system throughout their Empire, and that made up the main source of their annual income, and Judea is no exception to the rule. The people of Judea, including the Jews, had to pay their taxes to the Roman authorities, and this was greatly despised by the Jews, particularly the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law. Not just because it showed a subordination to the greater Roman authority, but it seemed that it also contradicted the fact that one should obey and give honour to the Lord alone.

The Roman coins used in the tax payment itself could be considered blasphemous by the Jews at the time, because every single coins were engraved with the facial image of the Emperor, and therefore could be considered as tantamount to idolatry, worship of the Emperor, as what was indeed happening in Rome at that time, as Emperors increasingly became more autocratic, they also attributed more divinity towards themselves, and would in time be established as the cult of the Emperors, where the Roman Emperors were worshipped as divine, living in the flesh.

All these sparked the notion that paying taxes to the Romans was a detestable idea at best, and the people did not like it for certain, for other than the religious reasons, taxes also burdened them financially, and that was why, out of all people, the tax collectors were always considered to be at the bottom of the society and were considered, particularly by the ‘pious’ Pharisees, to be morally corrupt and unworthy as well as incapable of redemption.

The tax collectors were treated and condemned as sinners, even though they might actually be good people. Remember that tax collectors often had no choice to be one, because they themselves had to earn a living, and it was indeed not an easy job to be done, as I had mentioned, being tax collectors meant that one had to endure the hatred and displeasure of the general population, the priesthood, and many other people, and endure the label of evil placed unfairly onto them.

The Jewish people themselves were very nationalistic in nature, and were very proud of their descent from Abraham, their forefather both in blood and faith. They kept mostly to themselves and married one another, in order to prevent themselves from being tainted by the pagans around them. This had happened since the time of Abraham himself, as you would have noted in our first reading today, who asked Eliezer his servant to find a wife for his son, Isaac, from among his own people, his own family, and not among the women of Canaan.

This had further made the contempt given to the tax collectors and other Roman collaborators even greater. They were barely tolerated in the society, cursed and rejected by many. They may be able to survive financially, but in terms of their lives, it was truly miserable. This was the condition that formed the backdrop of the situation as it was when Jesus called Matthew to be His disciple, and when He ate with him and his fellow tax-collectors in his house with the Pharisees.

Jesus then highlighted His mission in this world to His disciples, the Pharisees, and the tax collectors, that is to heal the world and those afflicted in this world, those who are condemned to damnation in hell, those who are suffering, those who are immersed deeply in the darkness of sin. That is because these are the ones who really need help and assistance in order to ensure that they will not fall into hell. God loves all, everyone, especially the greatest of sinners, who are in greatest need for God’s mercy and love.

That is because those of us who had been saved, and had been following the commandments of the Lord will remain safe, as long as we keep the Lord’s commandments and stay in His grace. As long as we remain faithful to the Lord, no harm can come our way. That is why it is those who are ‘sick’ from sin and evil would need much more assistance and help than we do. But we should not let Christ do that alone, but we ourselves, as the children of God, can also play our part in ensuring the salvation of all, especially those whose sins are the greatest.

The Pharisees themselves, who considered themselves most pious and blessed of all the children of God because of their strict adherence to the Law of Moses, were in fact in great need of salvation themselves. They had indeed observed ‘sacrifices’ so much that they had forgotten ‘mercy’, and forgotten love. God desires not sacrifices from man, but their love, both towards Him and towards His other children, our brothers and sisters.

The Pharisees did not love and do the true will of God, and instead became too focused on their own strict laws made by men, and even condemned those so-called sinners such as prostitutes and tax collectors as morally bankrupt and evil, while in fact, it is they themselves who were deep in the darkness, and worse still, blind to their own inadequacies and iniquities.

Today, brothers and sisters, we also commemorate the feast day of St. Anthony Zaccaria, a priest who lived in the late Renaissance era Italy. He was a priest who placed a great emphasis on the love of God and the teachings of the Church as espoused by St. Paul and the Apostles. He put the emphasis on acts of love and mercy, in addition to devotions and prayers, that made the faithful become even more devout and strong in their faith.

St. Anthony Zaccaria showed to the people of his time that to love God, is to both worship Him in prayer and supplication, in the offering of the ‘sacrifice’ of our hearts, the true sacrifice that our Lord wants from us, and also to make our love evident through our own deeds and actions, so that the love that is in us will not be an empty love, but a vibrant love in both word and action.

Therefore, following the zeal and example of St. Anthony Zaccaria, let us be loving person, loving children of God our Father, who is Love. May all of us truly show our love for Him through our complete dedication to Him, and also our loving service to our neighbours, particularly those in greatest need of help.

May the Lord be with us and remain with us, blessing us with His love and mercy at all times. St. Anthony Zaccaria, pray for us. Amen.

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Sunday, 30 June 2013 : 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

1 Kings 19 : 16b, 19-21

God said to Elijah, “Elisha, son of Shaphat, from Abel Meholah, you shall anoint as prophet in your place.”

So Elijah left. He found Elisha, son of Shaphat, who was plowing a field of twelve acres and was at the end of the twelfth acre. Elijah passed by him and cast his cloak over him. Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah and said, “Let me say goodbye to my father and mother; then I will follow you.”

Elijah said to him, “Return if you want, don’t worry about what I did.” However, Elisha turned back, took the yoke of oxen and slew them. He roasted their meat on the pieces of the yoke and gave it to his people who ate of it. After this, he followed Elijah and began ministering to him.

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Sunday, 2 June 2013 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi (Scripture Reflection)

Brothers and sisters in Christ! Today we celebrate a great mystery of our faith, that is the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, or Corpus Christi, in which God gave His own flesh and blood for us to consume, that He may live in us, and we in Him, that we can gain eternal life through Him. He gave up Himself that we may live, that we have a share in His death and His glorious resurrection.

The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist is the centre to our faith, and the Real Presence of Christ our Lord in the consecrated bread and wine is what makes our faith truly Catholic. That is because we believe that in the Holy Mass, whenever the priest offers the bread and wine and consecrate it before the Lord, in the same words that Christ had used on the Last Supper, the bread and the wine truly become the Real Body and Blood of our Lord, and not just a purely symbolic or memorial reenactment of the Last Supper, but a real transformation of the material of the bread and wine, into the Body of Christ.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, what we receive in the Eucharist is the real Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave us His Body to eat and His Blood to drink, and therefore, as the Eucharist is divine, being the essence of God Himself, we must treat it with the greatest deference and respect. For this is the God who came down to us as man like us, and died for us, by shedding His blood, the Blood of the Lamb of God, that all mankind may be saved.

The Lamb of God had been slaughtered, and He did not resist, nor did He protest against His unjust sentence of death, even though He is without sin, because without His death, without His sacrifice, as the only completely perfect sacrificial lamb, there is nothing that can match the severity of all the sins of all mankind combined together. Only Christ, God incarnate as man, has this power and authority over sin, and by His sacrifice, we are made pure again, white as snow.

But Christ did not give us His Body and His Blood in the Eucharist without reason, ever since He gave His disciples the first Eucharist in the Last Supper, and as He had always mentioned, that those who eat that Bread, the Bread of Life, and drink from the cup of salvation, will gain eternal life, because Christ Himself would dwell within all of us, and we would then have a share in His glorious resurrection, and therefore eligible for salvation. Only if we accept Christ, live according to His commandments, and receive Him in the Eucharist, then we gain the fullness of salvation.

As Christ would dwell within all of us who receive Him in the Holy Eucharist, our bodies must be worthy of Christ, of God who is good and perfect. We may be lowly and weak mortals, but as long as we keep our faith in God and strive to do only what is good in the eyes of the Lord, we are worthy of Him. Remember the saying, that our body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit? That is because the Lord Himself through His Real Presence in the Eucharist has been willing to come to us, through the bread and wine transformed that we consume, that He would then dwell in us forever more.

That is why, we must not defile our bodies and minds with sin and corruption of evil, because our very body itself has become the very Temple of God, where the Lord resides, just very much like the Temple of Jerusalem, at the time of King Solomon, when God was willing to come down and reside in the Temple built by Solomon, and His presence overwhelmed all the people who witnessed it, so great is His majesty and power.

The Lord had decreed that no filth of evil and sin should enter the Temple, and there were large dedicated places where the people can wash and purify themselves prior to entering the Holy Temple, so that they would not defile the place physically and spiritually with the filth of their sin. It is kind of parallel to how we purify ourselves with the holy water as we enter the church building at the holy water font, and seal ourselves in purity, with the Name of the Holy Trinity and the sign of the victorious cross, in which we rebuke evil and reject Satan, and therefore, would then enter the holy place of God and preventing us from defiling that Holy Temple.

The same therefore, should apply to all of us. Ever since the Lord is willing to dwell within all of us, through His Real Presence in His Most Holy Body and Blood, we have become the new Tabernacle, the new Temple of the Lord, each one of us, who had been baptised, and who had received the Eucharist in good standing in the faith through the Church. We must therefore respect the same with regards to ensuring the purity of our own beings, that we, as the Temple of God, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, will not be defiled by our human weaknesses and sin.

St. Paul, in the same book as our second reading today, in his first letter to the people of Corinth, confirm this, that our bodies are indeed the Temple of the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit also dwell within all of us who have received the Spirit, ever since the Holy Spirit came down upon the Apostles in Pentecost. Thus, our bodies became ever greater in terms of the need to maintain its purity, against the evils of the world, and against the temptations of the evil one through worldly pleasures and desires, that corrupts and bring darkness to our otherwise pure and holy Temple, where God resides.

Yes, brothers and sisters in Christ, our God has indeed dwelled within each one of us, and this is symbolised by yet another great event in the history of salvation, when Christ gave up His Spirit and died on Calvary, when He finally shed His own life and blood, for the redemption of all mankind. At that moment, the veil that separated the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant and the Lord Himself supposedly reside, from the rest of the Temple in Jerusalem, tore in two pieces from top to bottom, at the moment when Christ died on the cross.

That moment, when the veil was torn, was a defining moment. It symbolises that the Lord is no longer limited to just that holy space within the Temple in Jerusalem, as He had been, ever since He chose to dwell at the Temple, since the time of the King Solomon of Israel. Through the tearing of that veil, God made His new covenant, which He proclaimed in the Last Supper, complete, with all mankind.

That new covenant is the redemption offered by the death of Christ on the cross, through which we receive His Body and His Blood, given freely to all of us. So that, ever since, Christ, who is God, dwells within all of us who receive Him in the Eucharist, ever since the time of the Apostles, who was commanded by Christ Himself to continue the celebration of the Eucharist, in memorial of His Sacrifice on Calvary.

But beware, brothers and sisters in Christ, this is where exists a danger in misunderstanding the meaning of Christ, when He said about the Eucharist as a memorial. Many wrongly interpreted it as the sign that the celebration of the Eucharist is nothing more than a memorial, a symbolic celebration and imitation of the real sacrifice on Calvary. That the bread and wine that we consume are mere bread and wine, and not the Body and Blood of Christ.

Beware, brethren, that we do not fall into confusion and falsehoods spread by the evil one. For within that Eucharist, within the bread and the wine, Christ is present, really present, in His complete being, and that is what we call and know as the Real Presence of God in the Eucharist. We believe that our priests, with the same authority that Christ had given to the Apostles, in the consecration of the offerings of bread and wine, bring about the complete transformation of that bread and that wine, to become the Most Precious Body and the Most Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Yes, some of us may ask, why then the bread still look like bread, and the wine still look like wine? And there seems to be no change in the physical appearance or substance of the bread and wine? That is exactly the wonder of the mystery of our faith in Christ. Because, yes, the bread and wine’s outside appearance remains that of physical bread and wine in shape, but it has in fact been completely transformed into the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, in what we call as transubstantiation, because there is a real change or ‘trans’ in the substance of the bread and the wine, into the flesh and blood of our Lord.

Remember! That Christ Himself often repeated that those who did not partake in His flesh and His blood, those who did not receive His body and blood, will have no part in Him, and will not have eternal life. Only those who willingly, and in worthy state receive the Lord into themselves, through the Eucharist, will gain the eternal rewards from Christ, that is eternal life and glory with Him in heaven. That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, it is very important that we take the Eucharist seriously, that from now on, we begin to participate more in the Mass and in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, that we truly understand our faith, and why we have to regularly receive our Lord in the Eucharist.

The Body and the Blood of Christ, each is Christ complete in themselves, that means, if we only receive the Body, that is the ‘bread’ or the Blood, that is the ‘wine’ we do not receive half of Christ, but in fact, we have received the fullness of Christ in each of them. When we receive either the Body of Christ or His Blood, we receive Christ in His fullness, in His glorious majesty and power, into ourselves. That is why, brethren, we must be worthy! We must be worthy to have the Lord dwell within us, as His Temple!

Remember that if we willingly and knowingly receive the Lord when we are in the state of mortal sin, we will be damned instead of being saved, because we did not keep our house in order, and did not receive the Lord properly and worthily. That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, keep our bodies, our Temple of the Holy Spirit, away from fornication and corruption of sin. Keep ourselves pure, as best as we are able to, and welcome Christ every time we receive Him in the Eucharist, that He will see that our ‘house’ that is our heart, in good order, and therefore reward us with His grace and blessings.

If we had sinned and in the state of mortal sin, which prevents us from truly accepting the Lord into ourselves, into our defiled Temple, that is our being, we must first abstain from receiving the Eucharist, from receiving our Lord. What we must do is indeed, first to ask the Lord for His mercy and forgiveness, and seek a priest to be forgiven from our sins. Remember that to our priests, God has given the authority to absolve sins, if only we ourselves are humble and willing enough, to admit our own sinful nature, and seek to return once again to God’s love and embrace. Only once we have been absolved, then we can receive the Lord again, and He will once again dwell within us, transforming us from inside with His love.

Let us reflect on the mystery of our faith, that is the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ on this sacred occasion, that from now on, we will increase our dedication for our Lord, really present in the Blessed Sacrament, in the form of His Body and His Blood, which He had given freely, so that we may live, and we may share in Him, the fruits of eternal life and salvation. God bless us all, now and forever more. Amen!

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Sunday, 2 June 2013 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi (Psalm)

Psalm 109 : 1, 2, 3, 4

The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand till I make Your foes Your footstool.”

From Zion the Lord will extend Your mighty sceptre and You will rule in the midst of Your enemies.

Yours is royal dignity from the day You were born in holy majesty. Like dew from the womb of the dawn, I have begotten You.

The Lord has sworn, and He will not take back His word : “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.”

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Thursday, 30 May 2013 : 8th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Mark 10 : 46-52

They came to Jericho. As Jesus was leaving Jericho with His disciples and a large crowd, a blind beggar, Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth passing by, he began to call out, “Son of David, Jesus, have mercy on me!”

Many people scolded him and told him to keep quiet, but he shouted all the louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called the blind man, saying, “Take heart! Get up, He is calling you!” He immediately threw aside his cloak, jumped up and went to Jesus. Then Jesus asked him, “What do you want Me to do for you?” The blind man said, “Master, let me see again!”

And Jesus said to him, “Go your way, your faith has made you well.” And immediately he could see, and he followed Jesus along the road.