Lententide

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Thursday, 3 March 2022 : Thursday after Ash Wednesday (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we listened to the words of the Lord in the Scriptures speaking to us regarding the matter of following God and His commandments, to obedient to Him, His Law and all that He has given and revealed to us through His Church. All of us as Christians are called to follow the Lord wholeheartedly, to devote ourselves, our lives and actions to adhere to His path. And as we begin this season of Lent, it is indeed most timely for us to consider this carefully.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Book of Deuteronomy in which the Lord spoke to His people, the Israelites, through Moses, the leader whom God had appointed and sent to free the Israelites from their enslavement in Egypt, bringing them all out through the power of God as they journeyed towards the Promised Land of Canaan. The Lord placed His Law and commandments to them all, passing them His Law and precepts to be followed and obeyed, that they might remain on the right path in life.

Unfortunately, as we all likely have known, no sooner that God revealed His Law, His Covenant and love for the people, that the same people disobeyed Him, refused to follow Him and fell back into their sinful path, as they forced Aaron to build a golden calf idol to be their god and master, just so soon after the Lord had liberated them from the slavery in Egypt and from the hands and forces of the Egyptians and their Pharaoh. Even though they had seen the love and the might of God, they still betrayed Him and abandoned Him for a pagan idol.

Thus, that was why Moses spoke to the Israelites, in that occasion, just as he was already getting old and having led the Israelites on their forty years of detour and journey in the desert due to the infidelity and the lack of faith that the Israelites had shown. He reminded the whole people of Israel how fortunate they were for having been chosen as God’s own people and how He has favoured them and guided them all the way. God has presented His Law, commandments and ways, and the choice was therefore the people’s, on whether they would want to follow Him or not.

In our Gospel passage today, we then heard how the Lord told His disciples very plainly that He was to suffer rejection and even death at the hands of His enemies and opponents, the ones who despised Him and would make it difficult for Him to perform His works and missions, namely many of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, the many members of the Sanhedrin, the chief priests and elders, the Sadducees and all those who opposed the truth and the wonders that the Lord had brought unto this world.

All those things happened because of the stubbornness of mankind, their attachments to worldly glory, power and fame, all that led to the people mentioned opposing the Lord and His good works, because they feared losing their influence and power in the society, the status and privileges that they had experienced and gained from the world. They saw the Lord as a rival and threat to all these, and that was why, despite being the ones who were the most knowledgeable about the Law, ironically they were the ones who rejected the Lord with the greatest fervour.

Just like the people of Israel of old, their ancestors, it was their desire for worldly things and their attachments that led them to disobey the Lord, and therefore fell deeper and deeper into the path of sin. Thus, the Lord reminded His disciples and all of us truly require that commitment and the genuine desire to follow Him wholeheartedly. We cannot truly call ourselves Christians and God’s disciples unless we are willing to carry our crosses together with the Lord, knowing fully that in following Him, sooner or later, we would face rejection and condemnation from the world, just as the Lord Himself had experienced.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, in this season of Lent, all of us are called to renew this commitment we have in the Lord, to purify our hearts, minds, bodies and souls, our whole entire beings, in following God from now on with greater fervour and dedication. All of us are called to make that conscious choice to stand with the Lord, willing and ready to carry our crosses in life, devoting our effort, time and attention to serve the Lord by being exemplary as Christians in life. We are all called to follow the path that God has shown us and definitively reject sin and all of Satan’s many temptations and efforts to turn us away from God.

May the Lord continue to be with us and bless us in our respective journeys of faith. May He continue to watch over us and grant us the strength to persevere through the challenges and trials of our faith and life, and help us that we may draw ever closer to Him and His salvation, from now on and always, that we may help and inspire one another to become ever closer to God and be better Christians, through this wonderful time and season of Lent. Amen.

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Thursday, 3 March 2022 : Thursday after Ash Wednesday (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Luke 9 : 22-25

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “The Son of Man must suffer many things. He will be rejected by the elders and chief priests and teachers of the Law, and be put to death. Then after three days He will be raised to life.”

Jesus also said to all the people, “If you wish to be a follower of Mine, deny yourself and take up your cross each day, and follow Me! For if you choose to save your life, you will lose it; but if you lose your life for My sake, you will save it. What does it profit you to gain the whole world, if you destroy or damage yourself?”

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Thursday, 3 March 2022 : Thursday after Ash Wednesday (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 1 : 1-2, 3, 4 and 6

Blessed is the man who does not go where the wicked gather, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit where the scoffers sit! Instead, he finds delight in the Law of YHVH and meditates day and night on His commandments.

He is like a tree beside a brook producing its fruit in due season, its leaves never withering. Everything he does is a success.

But it is different with the wicked. They are like chaff driven away by the wind. For YHVH knows the way of the righteous but cuts off the way of the wicked.

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Thursday, 3 March 2022 : Thursday after Ash Wednesday (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Deuteronomy 30 : 15-20

See, I set before you on this day life and good, evil and death. I command you to love YHVH, your God and follow His ways. Observe His commandments, His norms and His laws, and you will live and increase, and YHVH will give you His blessing in the land you are going to possess.

But if your heart turns away and does not listen, if you are drawn away and bow before other gods to serve them, I declare on this day that you shall perish. You shall not last in the land you are going to occupy on the other side of the Jordan.

Let the heavens and the earth listen, that they may be witnesses against you. I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life that you and your descendants may live, loving YHVH, listening to His voice, and being one with Him. In this life for you and length of days in the land which YHVH swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

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Wednesday, 2 March 2022 : Ash Wednesday (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we begin the blessed season of Lent with the Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten season. On this day we mark this special occasion with the imposition of ashes on our heads, as a very symbolic act of us recognising our own mortality and the fragility of our existence. And as we impose the ashes on the crown of our heads, it represents our willingness to embrace God’s love and mercy, with repentant hearts and open minds, desiring to follow Him once again and to walk in His presence.

In our first reading today from the Book of the prophet Joel, we heard the Lord speaking to His people calling on them all to return to Him, to repent from their sinful and wicked ways so that they would not end up being separated forever. The prophet Joel, according to history and tradition, lived during the years after the return of the exiles of Israel and Judah from their humiliating exile in Babylon and other places, where for many decades they had to endure the sufferings and humiliation of having no place that they could call home.

They also had to endure the destruction of their homeland, their cities and capital Jerusalem, the Temple and House of God destroyed, and them scattered among the nations. They had to endure all that shame, but God did not forget about them, and as He Himself had promised to their ancestors, that He would rescue them and bring them back to the lands they and their ancestors once owned, thus, God fulfilled His promises to the people, who had atoned for their sins by their struggles and by remaining faithful to Him despite their predicaments. Many of them have regretted their ancestors’ and their own infidelity.

Thus, the Lord has shown mercy and compassion on them, embracing them as He moved the heart of Cyrus, the King of Persia to allow them all to return to their homeland, and not only that, but also to rebuild their cities and the Temple and House of God in Jerusalem. The Lord showed how He still loved them no matter what, and regardless of all that they had done in disobeying Him and betraying Him. However, the Lord also called on them to repent and to change their ways, so that they would sin no longer.

God has always remembered us, and He has given many opportunities to us to listen to Him and to change our ways for the better. St. Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians called on all the faithful to embrace this mercy, compassion and love that God has shown. And today as we listened to these words, we are all reminded of just how fortunate we are that God has always made this available to us, for us to return to Him and to find our way back to Him, and this season of Lent is a perfect opportunity and time for us to return to our most loving and merciful God.

That is why as we begin this season of Lent today, we are all reminded of the importance of this season as a time to prepare ourselves, our hearts and minds, our bodies and our whole entire beings so that we may be ready to welcome the Lord into our midst, to walk with Him and to be in His presence once again. The ashes that came from the remnants of the blessed palms of last year’s Palm Sunday are blessed and then imposed on our heads as the clear sign of our desire to come closer to God and to embrace His mercy, compassion and love especially during this penitential and blessed season of Lent.

And it is important that we understand fully the practices involved in this season of Lent and also on this particular Ash Wednesday. We fast and abstain on this day to mark this occasion of the Ash Wednesday, as we commit ourselves to a time of purification and reorientation of our lives, of our desire to abandon the excesses of worldly attachments and temptations. That is indeed why we practice fasting and abstinence today, and with regards to abstinence which we practice on each Fridays not just during the season of Lent but throughout the entire year as well.

We fast by restricting our intake of food to just one full meal a day with two smaller collations because we want to remind ourselves not to be overcome by greed and by our desires, and to remind ourselves that our physical bodies and existence, the desires of our flesh can and should be transcended, and through this we can also help ourselves to focus better on the Lord. And by abstaining from meat on this day and on other Fridays of the year, we are reminded to focus our attention on the Lord, especially to His most loving sacrifice on the Cross for us, on Good Friday. By the shedding of His Body and Blood, Our Lord has brought salvation upon all of us.

In our Gospel passage today, the Lord is therefore reminding us that as we enter into this season of Lent, we should not blindly do what the Church and the Law had instructed us to do, in our fasts and abstinences. We should not fast and abstain because we want other people to see just how devout, holy and committed we are to the Lord, and we should not fast and abstain just because we want to be seen by others and to be praised by them. If we fast and abstain, or do any other forms of Lenten observations and piety for the sake of doing it, or for appearances, then we are not doing it right, brothers and sisters in Christ. Our fasting and abstinence, among other things, are meant to bring us closer to God.

That is why today, on this Ash Wednesday, we must not be superficial in faith any longer. If we have not committed ourselves to a change in our attitudes in life, our outlook and focus, our efforts and others, then we have to seriously begin that change at this very instant. This season of Lent is that time of renewal of our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our souls and indeed, of our entire beings, as we are all called by God to return to Him, to His love and truth, to embrace once again His righteous and virtuous path, His grace and salvation. We may have fallen astray on the path, and have been tempted and dragged once again into the depths of sin, but God has never given up on us. He has kept giving us, again and again, the many opportunities for us to return to Him.

Hence, as we receive the imposition of these blessed ashes, let us not just show our repentance outwardly only, but also strive for a total internal repentance, reorientation and change of our lives, our actions, and indeed, everything that we are, all that we have done thus far. We have to wear those ashes on our heads, as a sign of total humility before God instead of pride. It is not a sign to be shown off as a symbol of piety or superiority over others, as quite a few would have inadvertently ended up making it a show of their faith, or as a measure of holiness and worthiness before God. And in that pride and ego, there can be no true forgiveness and reconciliation, brothers and sisters in Christ.

That is why, more than just receiving the imposition of the ashes on our heads, the crown of our body as a visible and tangible sign of our repentance, what is even more important is for us to rend our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our souls and our entire beings, casting out from them all the vestiges of pride and ego, of ambition, hubris and greed, of all the things that have kept us away from God for so long all these while. We have to cast all these away and renew our hearts, our whole entire beings by humbling accepting God’s freely offered love, forgiveness and mercy. We have to let Him enter into our hearts, to touch our minds and be present within us, in our being, as He dwells in us and among us. We have to allow the Lord to transform our lives.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore commit ourselves this Lent, to be a better person and to be better Christians, ever more committed and dedicated disciples, followers, and children of Our most loving God and Father. Let us all draw ever closer to His throne of mercy, seeking Him and beseeching Him to welcome us back into His presence, as we come to Him not just with ashes on our heads, but even more importantly with the ashes that cover the whole of our hearts, our minds and our entire inner beings, as we show great regret and shame over our many, innumerable sins. Let us all ask the Lord to forgive us and to help us, so that we all may come ever closer to Him and find our true life and salvation through Him.

May God be with us all, and may He bless our Lenten journey and experience starting today, so that we may strive to be ever better Christians, not just in name, but also in words and deeds, in all things. Let us be more loving and charitable this Lent, and also resist the temptations to sin, in various forms and ways, by our faithful practice of fasting and abstinence, done right with the right focus and intent, not for ourselves but for the greater glory of God. May God bless us all, all of our actions, words and deeds, our many upcoming Lenten observances and works, that we may be worthy of Him in the end, when He comes again to gather all of His faithful. Amen.

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Wednesday, 2 March 2022 : Ash Wednesday (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Matthew 6 : 1-6, 16-18

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “Be careful not to make a show of your righteousness before people. If you do so, you do not gain anything from your Father in heaven. When you give something to the poor, do not have it trumpeted before you, as do those who want to be seen in the synagogues and in the streets, in order to be praised by the people. I assure you, they have already been paid in full.”

“If you give something to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your gift remains really secret. Your Father, Who sees what is kept secret, will reward you. When you pray, do not be like those who want to be seen. They love to stand and pray in the synagogues or on street corners to be seen by everyone. I assure you, they have already been paid in full.”

“When you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father Who is with you in secret; and your Father Who sees what is kept secret will reward you. When you fast, do not put on a miserable face as do the hypocrites. They put on a gloomy face, so that people can see they are fasting. I tell you this : they have already been paid in full.”

“When you fast, wash your face and make yourself look cheerful, because you are not fasting for appearances or for people, but for your Father Who sees beyond appearances. And your Father, Who sees what is kept secret, will reward you.”

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Wednesday, 2 March 2022 : Ash Wednesday (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

2 Corinthians 5 : 20 – 2 Corinthians 6 : 2

So we present ourselves as ambassadors in the Name of Christ, as if God Himself makes an appeal to you through us. Let God reconcile you; this we ask you in the Name of Christ. He had no sin, but God made Him bear our sin, so that in Him we might share the holiness of God.

Being God’s helpers we beg you : let it not be in vain that you received this grace of God. Scripture says : At the favourable time I listened to you, on the day of salvation I helped you. This is the favourable time, this is the day of salvation.

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Wednesday, 2 March 2022 : Ash Wednesday (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 50 : 3-4, 5-6a, 12-13, 14 and 17

Have mercy on me, o God, in Your love. In Your great compassion blot out my sin. Wash me thoroughly of my guilt; cleanse me of evil.

For I acknowledge my wrongdoings and have my sins ever in mind. Against You alone have I sinned; what is evil in Your sight I have done.

Create in me, o God, a pure heart; give me a new and steadfast spirit. Do not cast me out of Your presence nor take Your Holy Spirit from me.

Give me again the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. O Lord, open my lips, and I will declare Your praise.

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Wednesday, 2 March 2022 : Ash Wednesday (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Joel 2 : 12-18

YHVH says, “Yet even now, return to Me with your whole heart, with fasting, weeping and mourning. Rend your heart, not your garment. Return to YHVH, your God – gracious and compassionate.” YHVH is slow to anger, full of kindness, and He repents of having punished.

Who knows? Probably He will relent once more and spare some part of the harvest from which we may bring sacred offerings to YHVH, your God. Blow the trumpet in Zion, proclaim a sacred fast, call a solemn assembly. Gather the people, sanctify the community, bring together the elders, even the children and infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his bed, and the bride her room.

Between the vestibule and the altar, let the priests, YHVH’s ministers, weep and say : Spare Your people, YHVH? Do not humble them or make them an object of scorn among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples : Where is their God?

YHVH has become jealous for His land; He has had pity on His people.

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Friday, 2 April 2021 : Good Friday of the Passion of the Lord (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate the very important day of the Good Friday of the Passion of the Lord, the day when Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, was crucified for our sake, when He took up His Cross up the hill of Calvary and died for all. It was all these that made today truly a ‘Good Friday’ because without the offering and selfless sacrifice of Our Lord, there would not have been any hope for us, and it was because of Him that we have seen the light of hope and salvation once again.

Today, on Good Friday we remember the Lord Who willingly emptied Himself of all glory, in obeying the will of His heavenly Father, stripping Himself of all dignity and glory so that He may bear the punishment for all of our sins, and by taking up all those with Him, He might offer a most perfect sacrifice, worthy for the redemption of all of us mankind, and for the atonement of our multitudes of sins. Today we remember God’s love that has manifested in the crucifixion, in a love so wonderful and selfless that He willingly endured all humiliation for us.

Through what the Lord had done that day, He has completed what He had begun the day earlier, in the Last Supper when He instituted the Holy Eucharist, giving His own Precious Body and Blood to be shared by the disciples. As we all just celebrated and remembered yesterday in the events of Holy Thursday, the Lord had the Passover meal with His disciples, in which He instituted the New Passover, one that no longer remembered the past event of how God rescued the people of Israel from the slavery in Egypt, but an even much greater event, that God has come to rescue all of His people from the slavery of sin.

At that Passover meal, we may have noticed yesterday that unlike the usual Passover meal of the Jewish Passover, where a lamb is slaughtered and eaten by the household, at the new Passover, the Lord offered Himself as the sacrificial Lamb, the Lamb of God to be slaughtered for all of us, to be the source of forgiveness for all of our sins and iniquities. This has been prophesied by many of the prophets, particularly that of the prophet Isaiah who spoke at length about the Messiah or Saviour Who would come into the world and Who would suffer persecution, rejection and death.

In comparison with the old Jewish Passover, the significance of the events of Good Friday together with the preceding events at the Last Supper cannot be underestimated or ignored. For at the old Passover, at the beginning of the meal, represented by the Last Supper, is the moment when the first of the four cups of wine is drunk, led by the father and head of the house, where the unleavened bread is taken out and eaten with the lamb as mentioned earlier, which is what the Lord Himself had done, offering His Body and Blood to His disciples in the bread and wine at the Last Supper.

Then, the second cup, the Cup of Proclamations and third, the Cup of Blessings was drunk afterwards, at the moment when the family spoke of the significance of the Passover, reminding the people and especially the young children on why the Passover was so important, for God has saved His people in the past through such great deeds from their certain destruction and annihilation. As indicated from the Scriptures and the accounts of the Last Supper, the last and fourth cup, the cup of Praise had not been drunk yet when the Lord and His three disciples went out of the meal and headed to the Gardens of Gethsemane.

That last cup, also known as the Cup of Consummation, was the cup that the Lord referred to in the Last Supper as of why He would not drink the fruits of the vine again until the coming of the kingdom of God, referring specifically to how the Passover meal, the New Passover He was bringing into this world, had not ended yet as of that night of the Last Supper, and instead would culminate on the Cross at Good Friday, with the death of the Lord as the completion of the New Passover. That was why at the Gardens of Gethsemane, when the Lord was in agony, He prayed that the ‘cup may pass Him by’ and yet, He remained firm in His obedience and dedication to His mission, no matter how tough and painful it would be.

When at the ancient, first Passover the lamb was slaughtered on the day of preparation for the Passover, it was on Good Friday that was the day before the Sabbath day, as has been noted in the Scriptures, that the Lord died on the day of the preparation for the Passover. Thus, indeed it was very symbolic and real how the Lord had chosen that very day to highlight how He was truly the Paschal Lamb, the One to be sacrificed for the salvation of all, the Lamb of the New Passover. While in Egypt, the Israelites used the blood of the lamb to mark the doors of their houses that they were spared the great plague of death coming upon Egypt, thus all of us have been marked by the Blood of the Lamb of God.

How is that then significant for us? It is significant because the Precious Blood that the Lord has shed sealed the New Covenant between us and God, reconciling us to Him, and bridging the gap that had once existed between us and Him. Through the Cross, by His Passion, His suffering and death, and importantly through His Resurrection, Christ has showed that there is hope beyond death, and there is the assurance of eternal life with God.

He has perfectly obeyed the will of the Father, to be the Mediator of the New Covenant between all of us and God. And as the New Adam, according to St. Paul the Apostle, Christ became the source of new life in God, bringing all mankind to a renewed life in grace. Just as the first Adam fell into sin by eating the fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, out of desire and disobedience against God, falling into the temptations of Satan. Christ, the New Adam, persevered to the very end, nailed to another ‘tree’, that is the Cross, in full and perfect obedience to God, His Father.

Thus just as the first Adam led all mankind into sin, the New Adam, Christ, led all of us into the path out of the tyranny of sin, showing us that sin and death do not have the final say over us. For through His death and Resurrection, He proved that He truly is the Lord and Master of life and death, and that His grace is greater than sin and death. And that is why, He has willingly suffered for us that by uniting our humanity to Himself, we share in His death, death to our old, sinful selves, and then share in His glorious Resurrection, entering a new life and existence, with the promise of eternal life.

Hence, we should not treat the events that happened during this Easter Triduum as separate, unrelated events, but rather as one great event, the New Passover and the New Covenant that the Lord has established with us, beginning at the Last Supper, through Our Lord’s suffering and persecution, right through His crucifixion and completed through His death on the Cross. Through all these, right up to the events on Good Friday that we commemorate today, the Lord showed His mighty hands in delivering all of us His people from the tyranny of sin and the darkness of evil.

This is why on the Cross, as He was about to die, the Lord said, ‘I thirst’, and a mixture of sour and bitter wine was given to Him, symbolically showing the drinking of the Cup of Consummation, and the completion of the New Passover, which Christ spoke of as He said, ‘It is finished.’ Right after that very moment, the Lord gave up His Spirit and died, with the words, ‘Father, into Your hands, I commend My Spirit’ completing the sacrifice and offerings of the New Covenant and the New Passover.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all now look to the crucifix, to the Cross of Our Lord, bearing our Saviour Who had suffered and died for all of us. He is the Lamb of God, sacrificed and offered for us, as the perfect and worthy atonement for our sins. And He is also our High Priest, the Mediator of the New Covenant, just as Moses and Aaron once sealed the Covenant between God and Israel with the blood of the sacrificial lamb on the Altar. And thus, Christ, Our High Priest and the Lamb at the same time, offered Himself on the Altar of the Cross, to seal the New Covenant between us and God, and to be the source of healing and absolution for our many sins.

There, on the Cross, lies a reminder of the bloody and sorrowful offering of the Lamb of God, of God Who loved us so much that He is willing to suffer and die for us. And every time we celebrate the Holy Mass, brothers and sisters, we remember this very same sacrifice, for as I mentioned yesterday, on Holy Thursday, that the whole liturgy of the Eucharist in the Holy Mass is no less than the same sacrifice and offering, the same thing that happened two millennia ago, from the Last Supper to the Cross, from the moment that the Lord offered the bread and wine and turned them into His own Precious Body and Blood, and up to the completion of that Passover sacrifice on the Cross.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we focus ourselves on the very important events that happened on that day at Calvary, let us all bear in mind always how God loves us so much, that everything He had done and which we remember today, are for our sake and nothing else. Every time we sin and disobey God, let us remember that all those sins are what our Lord Himself bore on His Cross, the wounds He endured, and all the bitterness and humiliations He suffered, so that we may be forgiven and enter into a new life of grace through Him.

Let us all therefore unite our sufferings and ourselves to the Lord, through His crucifixion, His suffering and death. Let us all be truly ashamed of our many sins and all the things that we have done in contradiction to our Christian faith and calling, and in rebellion against God and His will. Let us not harden our hearts any longer, but seek our Lord, the Mediator of the New Covenant, that He may heal us through His Cross, and allow His outpoured Precious Blood to wash us clean and to purify us just as the saints and martyrs had purified themselves in the Blood of the Lamb.

As we all share and partake in the Holy Communion today, let us remember that we receive none other than the Lord Himself, the same Lord and the same sacrifice He made at Calvary, on the Altar of the Cross. The Eucharist we receive is the same crucified Lord and Saviour Who have marked us by His Blood, and bring us forth from the slavery to sin and bring unto us the New Passover, that we are ‘passed over’ from death into new life, which we will be further reminded on as we enter into the time of the glorious Resurrection in Easter.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all move forward in life, no longer looking back at sin and at all the wicked ways of the world, and instead, fill ourselves with the resolve and renewed conviction to follow the Lord wholeheartedly and to glorify Him through our lives, our actions and deeds. May the Lord, our Crucified Messiah, Jesus Christ, Lamb of God, be with us always, and bless us all, His beloved ones, on this most good and wonderful day of our salvation, the salvation of His Cross. Amen.