material possessions

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Monday, 18 August 2014 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Matthew 19 : 16-22

It was then that a young man approached Jesus and asked, “Master, what good work must I do to receive eternal life?”

Jesus answered, “Why do you ask Me about what is good? One only is good. If you want to enter eternal life, keep the commandments.”

The young man said, “Which commandments?” Jesus replied, “Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honour your father and mother, and love your neighbour as yourself.”

The young man said to Him, “I have kept all these commandments. What is still lacking?” Jesus answered, “If you wish to be perfect, go and sell all that you possess and give the money to the poor, and you will become the owner of a treasure in heaven. Then come back and follow Me.”

On hearing this answer, the young man went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth.

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Thursday, 1 May 2014 : 2nd Week of Easter, Memorial of St. Joseph the Worker (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the feast day of St. Joseph the Worker, which also falls on the same day as the day set aside for the celebration of the right of workers and labourers around the world, commonly known as either the Labour Day or May Day. On this day, workers around the world celebrate their right to equal pay, treatment and rights, as well as even protesting to demand for more, if they did not receive enough.

Today we celebrate the memory of St. Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus, who was also a very diligent worker as a carpenter in the village of Nazareth. St. Joseph is the role model for all workers, not only that he is so diligent and hardworking, but he is also very upright in his actions and did not do things that were in opposition to the Law of God and the teachings of the prophets.

St. Joseph reminded all of us, not just the workers of who we are, namely the children and most beloved of all the creations of the Lord. We were created last by the Lord in creation, and we were made in His image, and as if that is not enough, He also endowed us with His own Spirit that bears life inside each one of us. And yet, we are at the same time, as the first reading from the Book of Genesis mentioned, also made of dust, which the Lord used to craft our mortal bodies of flesh and blood.

Thus the well-known saying that ‘We are dust, and to dust we shall return, which the priest utters every Ash Wednesday as he applies the ash onto our forehead. This is to remind us of our humanity, fragility and mortality, which should keep us to realise that we are in this world as its caretakers and everything that we do, we ought not to do it for our own sake and benefits, but for the sake of the Lord and all our brethren around us.

St. Joseph showed that above all, we should be the bearers of the good will of the Lord, and walk always in the way of God, be righteous in all of our actions and deeds, not turning left or right, or be persuaded or tempted by the world’s persuasions and temptations. As we work, we should always remember to have good work attitudes and openness to suggestions and advice, and not to close ourselves off from cooperating with others.

A truly major problem with our world and its working force is that we no longer work for the good of one another, but we ended up to be in the sole pursuit of one thing, that is money and even other forms of material possessions. As I have often mentioned, money is not necessarily evil, and indeed, it is perfectly neutral and is completely not a vice that we should avoid. The evil lies in us, that is in how we attempt to gain it, how we gain it, and eventually how we use it, and what we use it for.

This world has increasingly become a commercialised and materialistic world, where you can almost literally say that money is king, for those who have more will not just tend to have even more, but that they also are likely to have a better and more enjoyable life. For many of us, working and our actions in work had become nothing more than literally slaving away our lives and our precious time for money, and more money.

We forget that when we work we should be more like St. Joseph, who worked with great simplicity and humility, and while being serious and dedicated to his works, he dedicated it out of love towards God and to his fellow men. As a carpenter, he certainly did not earn much from his works, but certainly from every single furniture he crafted for those who ordered them from him, he gained much gladness and satisfaction, seeing the happiness on their faces seeing the completed product.

Surely we all can visualise and imagine how St. Joseph had worked hard to help provide for the Holy Family, for Jesus our Lord and Mary His mother. It is this kind of simple and yet genuine devotion to one’s work based in love that is the kind of work attitude that we need to have and follow. Sadly the truth is indeed that we have been so caught up in our busy life schedules and careers that we end up forgetting what is the most important thing in our lives.

As St. Joseph has shown us, we cannot discount God out of our lives, as without God our lives will be meaningless and empty, and this is also the reason why so many of us lost our true purpose as we work, that we no longer work for the benefits of others around us, and instead, for our own benefit, that is for our own selves, in our great ego, desire and greed.

It is easy these days to be tempted, brethren, for the temptations of goodness of this world is basically all around us, from all the promotions and commercials that we are exposed to every single day of our lives, that we really cannot escape but notice how much good that this world can grant us. Therefore we are prone to fall into this trap of materialism and commercialism, where we desire more and more the goods of this world, while forgetting that the true purpose we have in this world is to love and to dedicate ourselves completely to the Lord.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we celebrate today’s occasion on the feast of St. Joseph the worker and the day of celebration of labour, let us always be reminded that we should not be working for the sake of working and to seek for more and more material goods. Instead, as we work, let us have a good purpose to it, especially praising and glorifying the Lord our God.

St. Joseph the worker, the foster-father of our Lord, pray for us all, that we will seek less of our own glory and pleasure when we so something or work, that we do not become creature of ego or the servant of material possessions. Help us through your prayers that we may instead work for the good of one another, and be dedicated to our work just as you had been dedicated to yours. May God be with us all and bless our work at all times. Amen.

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Tuesday, 29 April 2014 : 2nd Week of Easter, Memorial of St. Catherine of Siena, Virgin and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Acts 4 : 32-37

The whole community of believers was one in heart and mind. No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but rather they shared all things in common. With great power the Apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, for all of them were living in an exceptional time of grace.

There was no needy person among them, for those who owned land or houses, sold them and brought the proceeds of the sale. And they laid it at the feet of the Apostles who distributed it according to each one’s need. This is what a certain Joseph did. He was a Levite from Cyprus, whom the Apostles called Barnabas, meaning : “The encouraging one.”

He sold a field which he owned and handed the money to the Apostles.

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Thursday, 1 August 2013 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Alphonsus Liguori, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we again listened to the continuation of the story of how the kingdom of God is like, of how the reign of Christ will be like, as it will be at the end of times. He will separate those who are wicked from those who are righteous, those who had followed faithfully the will and commandments of the Lord from those who rebelled against the Lord, and those who had shown love as opposed to those who had instead shown hatred for their brothers and sisters.

Yes, brethren, that is how the Lord will separate us from His seat at the throne of judgment, the Great Judge of all creation. And like a fisherman, He will separate the good fish from the bad fish, the fresh ones from the rotten ones, and like a shepherd, He will separate the sheep and lambs from the goats, the unblemished lambs from the blemished ones. He will differentiate those who had been His and had accepted Him as their Lord and God from those who had disobeyed Him and disregarded Him and His offer of salvation.

But our Lord cares for us, and He loves us, in the same way that He had once loved and cared for Israel, His people in the desert and beyond. He wants us to be reunited with Him, and that was why, throughout the history of mankind, He had approached our ancestors, from Noah and how He saved him by instructing him to build the Ark, and Abraham, our father in faith, with whom the Lord had made a covenant with, the first covenant of God and man.

The covenant which God had renewed by bringing His people, the children of Abraham out of Egypt with His mighty hand, and brought them to the land He had promised their fathers. He cared for them so much that He sent them many prophets and leaders to continue guiding them towards the right path, despite their constant rebellions and disobedience against His will and His words, and despite that they slaughtered His prophets and messengers.

Yes, those prophets who were slaughtered proclaimed God’s ultimate method in saving all of us, that is through His own Son, Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, and became the source of all hope and salvation, through His sacrifice on the cross. Jesus Christ who suffered for our sake and be lifted up high between the heaven and the earth for our sake, has bridged the infinite chasm between God and us sinners. He is the way through which the lost children of God may pass to return to their loving Father.

When Christ died on the cross, the veil covering the Holy of holies of the Temple of Jerusalem was torn into two pieces, revealing the most sacred interior of the location where the Ark of the Covenant used to be located at, and also where the Lord was supposed to reside in this world. The death of Christ marked the end of the separation that existed ever since we have rebelled against the Lord at the time of Adam and Eve, our first ancestors. The veil that separated us from the Lord had been cast aside, and now there exists a direct highway to God, that is through Christ, His Son, and the new covenant He had created with mankind, with the Precious Blood He shed on the cross.

Today, brothers and sisters, we commemorate the memory of St. Alphonsus Liguori, a well-known Italian bishop who lived during the early modern period. He was most renowned for being the founder of the Redemptorist religious order, many of which members now minister to us, the people of God daily in our own respective societies.

St. Alphonsus Liguori founded the Redemptorists as a congregation of missionaries and brothers dedicated to saving the souls of mankind, through their service, especially to the last, the lost, and the least in the society, to the poorest, both in material and in spirit, that is to give them the love of God, and enkindle in them the fire of the Holy Spirit, for those whom the fire had been dimmed by the world. St. Alphonsus Liguori stressed the importance of a strict and yet reasonable discipline in the faith and in life to be practiced by everyone, so that one would remain faithfully on the path to salvation.

St. Alphonsus Liguori was well-known for his powerful sermons and speeches, which so touched many people, that many of those who had been drifting away from their faith in God, returned devotedly into the Church, and therefore were once again ensured salvation in Christ. The same too was tasked upon the Redemptorists, which St. Alphonsus Liguori had founded, to seek more souls lost in the darkness of the world, and bring them to Christ, who had made the path to God our Father open, by piercing through the veil of separation and bridging through the chasm of separation, through His death on the cross.

Let us today also play our part, following the example of St. Alphonsus Liguori and the Redemptorists, to help one another in our reach for the Lord and for our salvation. Let us help one another to grow stronger in the faith, to grow more devout in our love for the Lord, and to be more courageous to stand up for our faith and for our God. St. Alphonsus Liguori, pray for us sinners and intercede for us before our Lord Jesus Christ, whose death had reconciled man with God, that we all too may share with you, the eternal glory and bliss of heaven forever and ever. Amen.