Lamb of God

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Wednesday, 8 January 2014 : Wednesday after the Epiphany (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 John 4 : 11-18

Dear friends, if such has been the love of God, we, too, must love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love comes to its perfection in us.

How may we know that we live in God and He in us? Because God has given us His Spirit. We ourselves have seen and declare that the Father sent His Son to save the world. Those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in them and they in God.

We have known the love of God and have believed in it. God is love. The one who lives in love, lives in God and God in him. When do we know that we have reached a perfect love? When in this world, we are like Him in everything, and expect with confidence the Day of Judgment.

There is no fear in love. Perfect love drives away fear, for fear has to do with punishment; those who fear do not know perfect love.

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Tuesday, 7 January 2014 : Tuesday after the Epiphany, Memorial of St. Raymond of Penyafort, Priest (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

God is Love, and He is the embodiment of Love, and in Him is the purest form of love as ever existed in this universe. That is what today’s readings try to bring to us, as we continue to learn more and more about the Lord and what His plans are for us.

God loved us so much that He was willing to come down, in the form of man like us, His own Word, the divine becoming a humble and mortal man, so that through Him, the world may know love, understand love, and most importantly, be saved in the love of God.

Jesus brought the love of God into reality and complete in concreteness. The love of God was made real through Jesus, whose very presence was the ultimate proof of God’s undying love for us, even though we often reject and spurn His love for us. Despite of that, He still came offering His love to all mankind, even to those who rejected Him and persecuted Him and those who followed Him.

God showed His love even by feeding His people, when they followed Him to hear His teachings even for days. He miraculously multiplied loaves of bread and fishes, to feed them until there were even great excess and leftovers. In His love for us, He showed it through concrete action, and in the end, He gave none other than Himself, offering Himself to all of us, in the form of His own Body and Blood.

We who receive these Body and Blood of our Lord, that is in the Eucharist, receive the Lord, and indeed, the fullness of His love. We can indeed say that as the Lord loves us, His love is now inside each one of us. That is the message that St. John the Evangelist in his letter tried to convey to us, that because we belong to the Lord and the Lord is in us, we have love and we know what is love. And therefore, with that love, we ought to love one another.

Love cannot just remain within us or it will be dormant, wither and die. This is because love is meant to be shared with one another. There is no love or real love if we selfishly keep it to ourselves. Certainly our Lord who is love did not keep the love He has for us, from us. He was moved with compassion and love every time He saw His children, that is us, in pain, sorrow or difficulties. The proof of which could be found throughout the Scriptures, including what Jesus had done in the multiplication of the bread and fish to feed His beloved ones.

Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Raymond of Penyafort, a religious who lived during the time of the Medieval era Europe. St. Raymond was a major figure in the faith in that era, having numerous contributions to the cause of the Church, by his numerous writings and works, in particular related to the Church laws and regulations, meant to regulate and maintain purity in the faith of the people of God.

But besides this, St. Raymond was also very renowned for his missionary zeal, that is to spread the word of God and the truth about God to those who lacked faith in Him. St. Raymond was particularly aiming at the conversion of the Jews and the Muslims. The first group of people was the people first chosen by God to be His people, but many rejected Him when He came to His people in Jesus. They rejected the One who had fed them with food, as well as with His own Body and Blood.

And the second one was a group of people who were misled by heresy instigated by the false prophets in what is now modern day Arabia. They were misled by falsehood spread by the evil one in purpose to confuse the people of God, that they would reject the very One who is the true and complete manifestation of God’s love in this world, that is Jesus Christ. They rejected Him and His divinity, rejecting that their Lord came into this world to save them, being led into the lies that it was unimaginable for their Lord to lower Himself to be a humble man.

These are the people whom St. Raymond wanted to convert to the cause of the Lord, to show them the truth of the love our God has for everyone, including these misled and rebellious children of His. We too should take part in delivering the truth to everyone and have the same aspiration as St. Raymond of Penyafort. We have to show the love of God to them, just as we should also show the same love to one another. We do this through our own actions, deeds, and words, that they too may believe.

May the Lord our God who loves us with all of His heart, also enkindle in our hearts His love, that we may love one another just as He asked of us, as well loving Him as our God and our Father. Amen.

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Tuesday, 7 January 2014 : Tuesday after the Epiphany, Memorial of St. Raymond of Penyafort, Priest (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 John 4 : 7-10

My dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Those who do not love have not known God, for God is love.

How did the love of God appear among us? God sent His only Son into this world that we might have life through Him. This is love : not that we loved God but that He first loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

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Sunday, 5 January 2014 : Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, a great feast commemorating the divinity and Lordship of our Lord and God Jesus Christ. On this feast we remember the faith of the great men from the east, the three wise men, or often known as the three ‘kings’, who come from a far-off land to honour and glorify the Saviour who was born in Bethlehem.

They came to praise the Lord, whose birth was foretold by the prophets, and whose birth was marked by the appearance of the great star in the heavens. The Light of the world had indeed come into this world, and no more appropriately marked by a sign of great light. That was why the wise men came to Him who is Lord, bearing with them great gifts worthy of our Lord Jesus.

The wise men brought with them the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These were great and precious gifts, each of which had a deep, symbolic meaning, each of which also highlighted the truth about Jesus, who is both King and Lord God of all, who came into this world, so that through Him all may be saved.

Gold is the offering fit for a king. Ever since ages past, due to its appearance and its rarity, gold had been used for many important purposes, especially as money or decorations, or as works of art. They were so precious that they fetched a great price, and this is true even until today. So why is gold given as a gift to our Lord? That is because He is indeed a King, the One and True King of all, the King of kings, whose authority encompasses all of creations.

In giving the Lord Jesus the gift of gold, the wise men honoured the Lordship and kingship of Jesus, of the authority and power which He wields over all things, in all of creations. They honoured the Lord as King of glory, the One from whom ultimately all power and authority originate from. The Lord’s power and rule is absolute, and this is what this gift of gold is meant to teach us.

Then frankincense, just as the incense we use at our celebration of the Mass, is meant to be used for worship. Frankincense is in particular the best and the greatest among incense, the best quality of all. And indeed, the gift of frankincense highlighted the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, the divine Lord and Almighty God, who alone is worthy of worship.

The Lord Jesus is divine, and this fact cannot be refuted or denied, despite the attempts of many to do so. Jesus is not just merely a holy man or a prophet, because He is truly far greater than all of that. He is the Logos, the Word of God made personal in Jesus, as the Divine incarnate. As such, He is one with God and is God, and through Him the world was created. He was present before the beginning of time and before all things came into being.

We should not have any other gods except God, and we should worship Him and Him alone. And Jesus is divine, and as such is worthy of worship, and indeed we are actually obliged to give Him the proper honour and worship. That is the message and understanding behind the gift of the frankincense to the baby Jesus, man but also fully divine at the same time.

But it is not all about majesty and glory that Jesus came into the world. The last gift of the three, that is myrrh, highlighted this reality. The myrrh is a precious material used to help preserve the dead bodies, and to prepare them for burial. It is indeed a weird gift, is it not? Who would give a baby a gift that is used to preserve and prepare a man’s burial?

But that is how wonderful the feast of Epiphany is, because just as the meaning of the word Epiphany, this feast marks the opening of our understanding to the true nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, that first He is King, as represented by the gift of gold; and that He is Lord and God, as represented by the offering of frankincense; and last but not least, the gift of myrrh, which symbolises the singular important event, for which Jesus Christ came into the world.

That event was the Passion of our Lord, when He suffered, persecuted, punished, and eventually died on the cross, all for the sake of the reparation of our sins. He died and was buried, and it is this burial which was highlighted by the gift of the myrrh. For it is important that the Lord Jesus die, that in His death, we too will join Him in dying to our old, sinful selves, and then risen in glory together with the resurrection of Jesus.

The gift of myrrh signified this great event, when our Lord made Himself the Lamb of sacrifice, to bear the sins of the world. He who is Divine was willing to come down into this world, and to suffer human rejection and condemnation, and to suffer a most humiliating death, that is death on the cross. All these so that we, the most beloved among those He had created, can be once again reunited with Him.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, as the Epiphany and the gift and offerings of the three wise men highlighted the true nature of God and the centre important issues of our faith, let us all use this opportunity, to reflect on our own relationship with God. Have we realised the great love that God has for all of us? Do we then choose to obey and follow Him? Or do we instead prefer to reject Him and continue to walk in the darkness?

Christ is the Light of the world and He has come to liberate us from darkness. Just as the three wise men had followed Jesus from afar and came to worship and pay their obeisance to Him, we too should follow their examples. Offer God our love, obedience, and devotion, and offer Him the gifts from our hearts. Be faithful to God, and follow His ways, for in His love, He had given much love for us and show us how to lead a faithful life to Him, that we may be saved. God be with us all. Amen.

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Saturday, 4 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we hear about the call that Jesus made to His first disciples, when St. John the Baptist announced to the people, the truth about Jesus, that is the Lamb of God. One may ask, why Lamb of God? To answer this, we have to look at the role of the lamb in the society of Israel and the faith that they had, that is following the laws of God as given through Moses.

The lamb is one of the few animals mentioned at the Book of Leviticus, used in the offerings to God, which in this book, were used for various purposes. The most important of these sacrifices were the sin and burnt offerings to God, in which the animals were slaughtered and their blood on the Altar of God represent the cleansing of the sins of God’s people, and the purification of their souls.

But these offering of lambs and other animals as sin offerings, were only temporary. They did not completely erase the sins of the people, nor did they justify the people in God. The people were only given a breather in their sinful daily lives, and they have to offer the sacrifices again and again to keep themselves worthy of the Lord.

That is because, even though unblemished lamb supposed to be used, they are not perfect, not in the way that the Lamb of God is perfect in all aspects. Then, to add to the point of the truth about the Lamb of God, we have to also remember about what happened when God saved His people Israel from their slavery in Egypt. God asked the people through Moses, to find unblemished lamb, and slaughter it so that its blood could be used to mark the houses of God’s people.

The blood let it known to the angels of death sent by God to kill the firstborn of the Egyptians, that the houses marked by the blood belong to God. Yes, death passed the houses of the faithful who obeyed the Lord, and the people of Israel were saved and liberated by the Lord who loved them. In this light therefore, we too, should see the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God.

For indeed we can define the role of Lord Jesus Christ in these two characteristics. First that Jesus is the Lamb of sacrifice, the most worthy of all, to be the offering for all of our sins. As Jesus is Himself God incarnate, He is perfect and indeed the only One perfect to redeem us from our sinfulness, and to make worthy again all the people of God.

Then secondly, Jesus is the Lamb whose Blood becomes the mark of all the faithful ones in God, that when the Day of Judgment comes, God will know those who belong to Him, and those who had remained faithful and true to His ways. Remember that Jesus in the Last Supper gave His own Body and Blood in the transformed bread and wine for His disciples to eat and drink.

This is very much in the same way as the lamb of the Passover, where the lamb was slaughtered, and it was eaten by the family of the people who slaughtered it, and the blood used to mark the houses of the faithful. Jesus is our Passover Lamb, or more precisely the Paschal Lamb of sacrifice, who brought with Him the joy and hope of Easter. In this perfect sacrifice of Christ, which He made on the cross, He reunited mankind to the Lord, and made the whole creation to be filled once again with hope.

Jesus did not come into this world for leisure or without a clear purpose. He had a clear aim, that is to liberate mankind from their slavery to sin and evil, ever since mankind were sundered from God after they had sinned. Jesus laid Himself freely for us, as a lamb led to the place of slaughter, just as He went through grievous scourging and suffering during His Passion and way towards the cross. All these, He did for our sake, that we may be free forever from the dominion of sin and evil.

Yet, as we all know, brethren, many of us still live in darkness and prefer to be in the darkness rather than to be in the light. We turn ourselves away from the Lamb. He offered us freely the graces He had poured onto us with His sacrifice, and yet we still prefer to rebel against Him and reject His offer of salvation and eternal life.

We prefer to live in our sinfulness and our current way of life, instead of seeking the Lord in the way that the disciples had done. Remember what happened when John the Baptist proclaimed to the disciples, that Jesus is the Lamb of God. The disciples straight away went and follow Him, without questioning and without doubting!

Can we too, brothers and sisters, profess our faith in Jesus in the same way? Jesus offered Himself to us, for our sake, and died for us on the cross, that we will be saved and received new life in Him. He went quietly and obediently to the slaughtering table, so that we ourselves will not have to endure death and its punishment for eternity. We are sinners yes, but we do have the capacity and ability to change ourselves for the better.

Therefore, let us today seek first to know more about our Lord, the Lamb of God, and then learn to love Him and seek Him more and more, that we will be more intimate in our relationship with Him. Let us not be ignorant of His love but instead seek to increase even more the love we have for Him. May the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, free us from the hands of Satan, and bring us into new life eternal. Amen.

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Saturday, 4 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 1 : 35-42

On the following day John was standing there again with two of his disciples. As Jesus walked by, John looked at Him and said, “There is the Lamb of God.” On hearing this, the two disciples followed Jesus.

He turned and saw them following, and He said to them, “What are you looking for?” They answered, “Rabbi (which means Master), where are You staying?” Jesus said, “Come and see.” So they went and saw where He stayed, and spent the rest of that day with Him. It was about four o’ clock in the afternoon.

Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard what John had said, and followed Jesus. Early the next morning he found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means the Christ), and he brought Simon to Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon, son of John, but you shall be called Cephas (which means Rock).”

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Friday, 3 January 2014 : Weekday of Christmas Time, Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Jesus (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 John 2 : 29 – 1 John 3 : 6

You know that He is the Just One : know then that anyone living justly is born of God. See what singular love the Father has for us : we are called children of God, and we really are. This is why the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

Beloved, we are God’s children and what we shall be has not yet been shown. Yet when He appears in His glory, we know that we shall be like Him, for then we shall see Him as He is. All who have such a hope try to be pure as He is pure.

Anyone who commits a sin acts as an enemy of the law of God; any sin acts wickedly, because all sin is wickedness. You know that He came to take away our sins, and that there is no sin in Him. Whoever remains in Him has no sin, whoever sins has not seen or known Him.

 

Alternative Reading (Mass of the Most Holy Name of Jesus)

 

Philippians 2 : 1-11

If I may advise you in the Name of Christ and if you can hear it as the voice of love; if we share the same Spirit and are capable of mercy and compassion, then I beg of you make me very happy : have one love, one spirit, one feeling, do nothing through rivalry or vain conceit.

On the contrary let each of you gently consider the others as more important than yourselves. Do not seek your own interest, but rather that of others. Your attitude should be the same as Jesus Christ had :

Though He was in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking on the nature of a servant, made in human likeness, and in His appearance found as a Man.

He humbled Himself by being obedient to death, death on the cross. That is why God exalted Him and gave Him the Name which outshines all names, so that at the Name of Jesus all knees should bend in heaven, on earth and among the dead, and all tongues proclaim that Christ Jesus is the Lord to the glory of God the Father.

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Saturday, 28 December 2013 : Feast of the Holy Innocents, Martyrs (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

1 John 1 : 5 – 1 John 2 : 2

We heard His message from Him and announce it to you : God is Light and there is no darkness in Him. If we say we are in fellowship with Him, while we walk in darkness, we lie instead of being in truth.

But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we are in fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, the Son of God, purifies us from all sin. If we say, “We have no sin,” we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all wickedness.

If we say that we do not sin, we make God a liar, His word is not in us. My little children, I write to you that you may not sin. But if anyone sins, we have an intercessor with the Father, Jesus Christ, the Just One. He is the sacrificial victim for our sins and the sins of the whole world.

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Tuesday, 24 December 2013 : Vigil Mass of the Nativity of the Lord, Christmas Vigil (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Isaiah 62 : 1-5

For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace, for Jerusalem I will not keep silent, until her holiness shines like the dawn and her salvation flames like a burning torch. The nations will see Your holiness and all the kings Your glory. You will be called by a new name which the mouth of YHVH will reveal.

You will be a crown of glory in the hand of YHVH, a royal diadem in the hand of your God. No longer will you be named Forsaken; no longer will your land be called Abandoned; but you will be called My Delight and your land Espoused. For YHVH delights in you and will make your land His spouse.

As a young man marries a virgin, so will your Builder marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so will your God rejoice in you.

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Sunday, 8 December 2013 : Second Sunday of Advent (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Today, we hear about the story of St. John the Baptist, the one who became the herald and the messenger of the coming of the Messiah, the Christ, the One who was to save the world. St. John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus was the one who prepared the way for the Lord, not with loud trumpets and the song of angels, but with the call in the desert, the call for the repentance of peoples.

For mankind had been long under the thrall of sin, such that they were long enslaved by the evils of sin. They were not prepared to receive the Lord in that state. They have to be prepared first, that when the Lord came, they were in a state where they would be more receptive to the messages of the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

John gained great successes, because throngs of people came to him to be baptised at the Jordan, and committed themselves to the repentance over their sins. Yet, this does not mean that he had an easy job, as you all would notice, how, just as Jesus had encountered opposition and challenges from them, John too faced the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who trusted only in themselves and in their religious knowledge and truth, and not in the revelation brought first by John and made whole by Christ.

They were the people whose sense of self-righteousness brought the people of God to ruin. They thought that they had been very pious and faithful to the Lord by obeying all of His commandments and laws without fail, but they had gotten it all wrong. When they did all those rituals and commandments, they did them not for God, but for themselves.

They liked to be praised on the streets, in the Temple, and by whoever they met along the way. They were the pious ones, the influential ones, the powerful ones, the ones with authority over the people, as leaders and teachers of the people especially in the matters pertaining to the faith, and yet they failed, miserably. They looked and thought highly upon themselves and condemned others who did not do what they had done.

They questioned John because they first saw in him, a rival to their teaching authority and their influence. They also questioned him because they did not look highly and kindly on him, just as later on they would not have high regards for Jesus either. For them, the faith is all about obedience, observation, and most importantly, to them, the obedience of the people to their way and method of teaching, including the way of thinking and the way they had interpreted the faith for the people.

In this, they had misled the people, and brought them to damnation instead of to salvation, and that was why John was so angry at them, for these people had abused their authority as leaders of the people, leading them to the wrong way. John showed the people a preview of the work of salvation in Jesus, that is mercy and love.

If the Pharisees condemned sinners and people they thought as unworthy as sinners, thinking that they did not deserve salvation, unlike them, and if the Sadducees jeered on those who put their faith in the resurrection and new life in God after this world, John and later Jesus Himself, showed that the nature of God is love, compassion, kindness, and mercy.

The Lord is slow to anger and rich in mercy, and if only that we repent and turn our back from our lives of sin, the Lord will welcome us with wide, open hands, to welcome us into His kingdom, the rewards He had repeatedly promised us through Jesus Himself. In the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly said to His disciples and to the people, that all who believe in Him will not die but live, a new and eternal life. Jesus also repeatedly stressed that the Lord shows mercy to those who seek His forgiveness

Jesus did not make all those promises as if they are empty promises. That is because they are all real, brethren! Jesus made these promises to us, and seal them with none other than His own sacrifice on the cross. Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection three days after that are the culmination of the long-planned plan of salvation God had crafted for us all, ever since we fell into sin. And John, who cried in the desert asking the people to repent, made the first step in the fulfillment of that plan.

Yes, brethren, Jesus offered Himself freely to us, and His salvation He also offered freely to us, from up there on the cross. He did not die for nothing. He died so that we can live. We ought to heed the call of St. John the Baptist, and begin to reflect on our own selves if we had not done so, on whether we have repented from our sinfulness and change our ways for the better, or whether we have ignored the heeding of the Lord made clear through John.

We often play the part of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, that is to be jealous of others who steal our glory, to fear those who are going to humiliate us or take away the authority away from us. We often become judgmental of others, thinking of the faults in others while failing to see the failures that we ourselves possessed. This is why, we, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, despite our sinfulness and weaknesses, did not go and make an effort to change ourselves.

We are often too busy to spend some time with the Lord, and instead our faith becomes more like a chore and a routine rather than true faith and devotion. We go to church every Sunday, attend the Mass, receive the Holy Communion, and then we go back, go back to our daily routines, and we repeat this again and again, over and over again. If I ask you, what is the meaning behind all of these routines?

The Lord has given His all to us, He even died for us, for our sake, to spare us the fate of death, and He even sent a messenger to prepare the way for Him, and to act as an extra set of mouth to remind the people of the importance for them to repent, and to realise how much their God loves them. But we are often not serious in our love for Him, because we are too busy with our own businesses, with our own daily routines, and with the world!

Yes, just as the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the teachers of the Law. They were too busy in their own world of righteousness and in their fallacy of salvation, that they failed to notice the Messiah when He came into the world, and they rejected Him, just as they had doubted and rejected John at the Jordan. This is the path to damnation, and we have a choice here, brothers and sisters. Will we choose to go the same way as they had done?

This Advent season has entered its second week, and in another three weeks, we will be celebrating the birth and the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ into this world at Christmas. He abandoned the glory of heaven and even His own divinity so that He can be with us, and eventually to sacrifice Himself for us. That is how serious and strong is His love for us. Are we able to do the same for Christ?

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us today onwards, heed the call of St. John the Baptist, to repent for the kingdom of God is near. It is coming soon, and we do not know when it will exactly come. We certainly do not want to be caught unprepared when Christ comes again in His glory to judge all creations. It is up to us, whether we want to be judged with the righteous and enter the eternal glory of heaven, or with the damned, to suffer eternally in hell, a total separation from the love of God.

May the Lord watch over us, and help us to make a wise decision, that our lives will be able to change for the better, and no longer sin, but to love more tenderly from now on, that we will truly be worthy of being called, the children of God. God bless us all. Amen.