Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Luke 6 : 36-38
At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not be a judge of others and you will not be judged; do not condemn and you will not be condemned; forgive and you will be forgiven; give and it will be given to you, and you will receive in your sack good measure, pressed down, full and running over. For the measure you give will be the measure you receive back.”
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Matthew 5 : 20-26
At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “I tell you then, if you are not righteous in a much broader way than the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to our people in the past : Do not commit murder; anyone who does kill will have to face trial. But now I tell you : whoever gets angry with a brother or sister will have to face trial.”
“Whoever insults a brother or sister deserves to be brought before the council. Whoever calls a brother or a sister, ‘Fool!’ deserves to be thrown into the fire of hell. So, if you are about to offer your gift at the altar, and you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar, go at once and make peace with him, and then come back and offer your gift to God.”
“Do not forget this : be reconciled with your opponent quickly when you are together on the way to court. Otherwise he will turn you over to the judge, who will hand you over to the police, who will put you in jail. There you will stay, until you have paid the last penny.”
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as we come to celebrate the last Sunday after Pentecost, the final Sunday before the season of Advent, we are always reminded of the fact that time is ticking and opportunity for us is running out, in order to secure our inheritance and salvation in God. The readings for this Sunday always focuses on the coming future, on the fact of the future coming of Jesus our Lord when He comes again to judge all the living and the dead.
As we always recite at the Creed, we believe that our Lord Jesus who have died and risen from the dead, and then ascended into His glory in heaven, He will come down in glory at the end of time, to judge the living and the dead. This is the final judgment, or the Last Judgment, when all the people will be divided and separated based on what they have done or what they have not done.
We fully believe in this, and we keep our faith in this. Yes, it is the hope for the coming of Christ, when He will again dwell among us and bring all those who are faithful to Him, to be united with Him in perfect love, harmony and glory. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, we have been made righteous before God, and if we all are truly faithful to Him, we shall be richly rewarded.
However, it is highlighted in the readings of this day, that we have to pray and pray often, that God will strengthen us and our spiritual defenses, so that we will not fall prey to the attacks and the lies of the devil. There will be a lot of challenges and false leads that will threaten to derail us away from the true path towards salvation, and we have to be careful in choosing our steps.
As mentioned, there will be false prophets and those who claimed to be the Christ, in order to mislead us and to fulfill their own selfish desires, and indeed these serve not God but themselves and Satan. There had been many cases both in the past and present, of those claiming to be the Lord who comes again into the world, declaring the coming of the end times, in their doom-filled messages.
Many of these tried to drive fear into the hearts of men, by claiming that God’s coming is around, and claimed to be the messengers of divine will. Unfortunately, many of the people of God were weak in their faith and they failed to understand the truth which the Gospel today highlighted. The coming of the Son of Man, that is the Great Judge, our Lord Jesus Christ, will be sudden and unexpected, fast and rapid like that of a lightning.
Yes, His coming into this world will come unannounced and even though there will be clear signs that He is to come again, as mentioned in the Gospel, no human being or worldly authority may ever claim to know the wisdom and knowledge of God with relation to the second coming of Christ. That is because Jesus Himself mentioned in another part of the Gospel, that only the Father knows the Son and therefore, vice versa, only the Son knows the Father.
This means that, whatever God has planned, He has planned everything thoroughly and meticulously, including our salvation from the hands of evil and death. Only He knows the fullness of truth of His plans for us. And Jesus also said that, the Son reveals to those whom He wants to reveal to. Who do you think that Jesus reveals part of His truth to? It is to the Church of God, through the Apostles, those beloved servants of Christ who were with Him and knew what He had done.
It is why a very important aspect of our faith is that we have to adhere closely to the teachings of the Church and reject all forms of temptations and falsehoods of the world, as the Church has that deposit of the Faith, which it had carefully guarded through the years and generations, that through the Church, God will have a strong anchor in this world, around which His faithful may cling to and remain faithful.
And finally, the Gospel today highlights what is required from us. Jesus was very clear, when He spoke of what will happen at the end of time. Those who had done what is good to those who are weak, downtrodden, abandoned, ostracised and disadvantaged against will receive rich rewards, for when they do so, they showed their love for their fellow men, just as what the Lord had asked us all to do.
Those who did not do so, and preferred to let the poor and the weak to suffer, while they enjoyed themselves, will be punished, and the Lord is sternly clear, that our action upon our brethren in need makes the difference between whether we will be judged among the sheep, the righteous ones, or to be judged among the goats, the wicked and unfaithful ones.
Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, as we end this liturgical year and approach the beginning of Advent, let us all reconsider how we all live out our lives. If we have done what the Lord had asked us to do, then well done, and we ought to continue living justly and righteously, not letting carelessness or our human frailties to cause us to be diverted from the path towards salvation.
Then, if we can still consider ourselves to be counted among those on the left, among the wicked, then while we still have the time, let us all take action. Our faith cannot just be mere words or observations alone. Remember that faith without action is dead, and a dead faith is meaningless and useless for us. The Lord who sees our dead faith will chide and rebuke us for our lack of action and judge us to be among the damned, if this is the case.
Remember, the Lord will come again at a time unknown to us, and He will come like a thief, unannounced and sudden. This is a reminder for us not to delay or postpone in changing our lives and our actions, if we have not done so. Otherwise, when He suddenly appears again in His glory, at a time unknown to us, we shall be caught unprepared and be judged to be among damned.
Hence, let us all be proactive in our faith, helping one another as we make our journey towards the Lord. Let our actions speak loudly of our faith, showing our Lord, Master and Judge, that we have all been faithful and devoted, and are worthy of His kingdom and promised inheritance. May Almighty God, our Lord Jesus Christ, bring us back to Him, our Good Shepherd, that we may forever enjoy the fullness of His love and care in the bliss of eternal heaven. God bless us all. Amen.
Epistle :
Gospel :
Liturgical Colour : Green or White
Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard how Jesus rebuked the Pharisees who criticised His disciples for not fasting and saying long prayers as they and the disciples of John had done. He rebuked them for their lack of real and living faith, as well as for their hypocrisy. Yes, the hypocrisy of those who claimed to be the leaders of God’s people and the teachers of the faith, who in fact did not practice what they had taught and preached.
In this we have to be mindful of what St. Paul said in his letter to the Church in Corinth, where he mentioned of the inappropriate nature of judgmental attitude, to the point that being judgmental represented human pride and arrogance in refusing to be faithful to God and His ways, where men prefer to trust in their own wisdom, intelligence and supposed ability to judge others than to trust in the wisdom and the will of God.
And such an attitude was truly prevalent among the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law in Jesus’ time, as they being the apex of the teaching authority of the laws of Moses, acted aloof, high and mighty to the point of condescension in their dealing with the people they had been entrusted with. They condemned others and persecuted others who did not conform to their way of teaching the faith, and they criticised those who question or challenge their authority, including Jesus.
These priests, teachers of the Law and the class of the Pharisees are in fact what Jesus was referring to when He talked about the old and new coat, as well as the old and the new wineskins. The incompatibility between the new and the old in this parable of the coat and the wineskin highlights the incompabilities between the ways of the Pharisees and the way required for salvation that is through Jesus and His teachings.
The way of the Lord is the way of love and mercy, that is through caring and forgiving others from their mistakes to us, as the Lord Himself is willing to forgive us our sins and bring us back into His love and grace. The way of the Lord is not the same as the way of the Pharisees, who in their proud, arrogant and self-serving manners, oppressed and abused those who had been put under their trust and care.
And that is why this ties in perfectly with the holy woman and servant of God whose feast and memorial we celebrate today. This day, seventeen years ago, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta passed away in her old age after long suffering and declining health after her long years of service to the people of God who were themselves in great suffering and pain.
Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta was greatly renowned through the whole world for her dedication to charity work, and especially her care, love and concern towards the poor, and to the poorest among the poorest, the weakest among the weak, and the abandoned and ostracised among the society. She did not show any fear or disgust in any kind when she came to help these smallest and most suffering among the children of God.
The actions of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta brought her to great renown, but she remained humble as ever, and she famously proclaimed that, despite all the praises and the prizes she had received, and all the limelight she had enjoyed, she is merely a pencil in the hands of the Lord, as a mere tool to bring greater glory to God through her actions and service to both mankind and to God. Her actions should inspire us to do more, for the betterment of those around us, especially those who are weak and rejected by the society.
Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us should follow in her footsteps as told to us as well by Jesus, and do not follow the path of the Pharisees. For the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law acted on their ego and human desires, resulting in desire for self-preservation at the detriment to others, becoming hypocrites in the faith they pretended to believe in. Rather, let us all live our faith concretely and as real as possible through our actions, which must be based on love, by loving our brethren, especially those in greatest need for our love and mercy.
May Almighty God bless us this day and all the days of our lives, so that we may truly live our faith according to the ‘new’ ways of Jesus that is of love and mercy, and abandoning the model of the Pharisees, who practiced their faith in hypocrisy, pride and filled with arrogance. God be with us all, forever and ever. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, most beloved ones in the Lord Jesus. Today, we partake together and celebrate together this Sacred occasion of the Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus together, and we are called to reflect on our lives today, on whether we have lived as what Jesus wanted from us and according to what He had told us as we heard in the Gospel today.
We heard about the famous and the well-known story and parable of the Samaritan and the man who travelled from Jerusalem to Jericho and beset by the bandits along the way. Three men passed through the same road, the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan, but out of all three, only the Samaritan stopped by and showed great mercy to the man wounded and left to die on that road.
The priest and the Levite, considered holy and sacred personas in the society of the people of God at that time, did not even stop by to care or show love and mercy to the wounded man. They pretended not to see the plight of the man and proceeded on to where they wanted to go, leaving the man to fend for himself and die a death in great suffering had the Samaritan not be there to help the man.
The Samaritan went out of his way, not just to stop by and help the man, but he even helped him to recover to full health by carrying him on his own beast of burden, on which he surely had sat upon. Therefore, we can imagine that the Samaritan was in fact walking along while the wounded man was sitting on the beast of burden. And not only that, he even paid the full fee of the man’s lodging fee in the inn and promised to come back and pay more if the man has not fully recovered yet in the allotted time.
And Jesus taught all of us to love, to love not just God but also that of our neighbours, those who are around us, with all of our hearts, with all of our strengths, with all the capacities of our minds, and with all of our abilities and in all the time we are able to spend with these brethren of ours, and of course ultimately to God. With this our faith will be real and living and will not be a dead faith.
What Jesus wanted from us is a living faith, based on the foundation of love and action. The commandments He had mentioned was the same as the Ten Commandments of God, which God had given to mankind, to His people through His servant Moses. The Ten Commandments are the ten tenets and key laws that govern how we mankind should live our lives, but all of them, are truly and is indeed about love. Loving God and one another with all of our beings and strengths.
Jesus also did not intend to belittle or make the priests and the Levites look bad by comparing their actions with that of the Samaritans. As we all should know, the Samaritans were the pariah of the society at the time, rejected by the Jews and they were seen as pagans who did not follow the faith and the way of the Lord, and this enmity had been ongoing for hundreds of years by the time of Jesus.
Why He used the Samaritans is in fact with a clear purpose to chide and rebuke the faithful, who were so proud of their faith, and who were feeling so righteous just because they thought they have the faith that they used their faith as a justification to condemn and persecute those others whom they deemed to be unworthy. And Jesus rebuked those who had been so proud of their faith and did so little to live according to that faith.
The examples would be the Pharisees, the teachers of the Law and the elders, who are together in the similar group as the priests and the Levites. These people were very honoured and respected in the society because they were supposedly the stewards and guardians of the law and the precepts of the Lord. Yet these people instead of truly living out the faith through their actions and deeds, they persecuted and oppressed the people by numerous rules and punishments so as to burden them and yet they did not make the people any more worthy than they had been.
We too, brothers and sisters in Christ, have to reflect on our own lives, whether we have done our part to live according to our faith, or whether we have not done so. We need to be proactive and active in our faith, that is in every words we speak, in every deeds that come from our hands and limbs, we must proclaim the Lord and thus show to all who see us, that we truly are belonging to God.
Let us all work together, and work consciously so that we may live this life we have on earth faithfully, casting out all impropriety and evil, and filling our lives and our hearts with good deeds and desire only to seek the Lord, He who is our loving God and Father, and the One who will judge us according to our actions. We should follow the footsteps of the Samaritan, in walking the extra mile to help one another, especially if we see someone in need around us, and when we are in the position to help. Let us never ignore the plea of those who seek for help.
May Almighty God awaken in us the spirit of love, that is both the love we have for Himself and for our brethren around us. And may He also awaken in us the spirit of pity and mercy, that we may be merciful to those suffering around us and forgive those who have wronged us. May God be with us all, all the days of our life. God bless us all. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Matthew 18 : 21 – Matthew 19 : 1
Then Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, how many times must I forgive the offenses of my brother or sister? Seven times?”
Jesus answered, “No, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. This story throws a light on the Kingdom of Heaven : A king decided to settle the accounts of his servants. Among the first was one who owed him ten thousand pieces of gold. As the man could not repay the debt, the king commanded that he be sold as a slave with his wife, his children and all his goods, as repayment.”
“The servant threw himself at the feet of the king and said, ‘Give me time, and I will pay you back everything.’ The king took pity on him, and not only set him free, but even cancelled his debt.”
“When this servant left the king’s presence, he met one of his companions, who owed him a hundred pieces of silver. He grabbed him by the neck and almost choked him, shouting, ‘Pay me what you owe!'”
“His companion threw himself at his feet and begged him, ‘Give me time, and I will pay everything.’ The other did not agree, but sent him to prison until he had paid all his debt.”
“Now his fellow servants saw what had happened. They were extremely upset, and so they went and reported everything to their lord. Then the lord summoned his servant and said, ‘Wicked servant, I forgave you all that you owed when you begged me to do so. Were you not bound to have pity on your companion, as I had pity on you?'”
“The lord was now angry, so he handed his servant over to be punished, until he had paid his whole debt.”
Jesus added, “So will My heavenly Father do with you, unless you sincerely forgive your brothers and sisters.”
When Jesus had finished this teaching, He left Galilee and arrived at the border of Judea, on the other side of the Jordan River.
Liturgical Colour : White
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the love of God is eternal, and it is non-discriminatory, for God loves all, without looking at whether we are this or that certain race or upbringing or background. He knows all of the things inside our hearts and minds, and He knows all of us perfectly, and thus to those whom He know that we are obedient and true to His will, He will grant us His love and grace.
The Apostles in the first reading, revealed to the people, how the Lord loved all without differentiating between them, and how He loved the Gentiles as much as He had loved the Jews, so long as they believe in the Lord, and trust in His ways. The Lord blesses all who put their trust in Him and walk in His ways. He shows His favour to all of them.
Brethren, this is why it is essential for us to listen to God’s will and be with Him in all our dealings and actions in the future. We must adhere to the commandments and precepts of the Lord that we may always remain in the favour of God. Focus on the obedience of our hearts and minds more than the obedience of our bodies. This is because as I mentioned yesterday, the purity of the heart matters much more than mere purity of the exterior.
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Rita of Cascia, a holy, pious and fervent religious who was also a wife and a mother, who decided to join the consecrated life to God after the death of her husband and her sons. St. Rita of Cascia is truly an example to all peoples through her actions, as although she had a very wicked and immoral man as a husband, and enduring the torture and abuse that her husband heaped on her, she managed to convert him through her exemplary actions and deeds, which brought about a conversion in her husband into a much better man.
St. Rita of Cascia had quite a difficult life, as she lived through a period in Italy when feuds were very common among leading aristocratic families in different city-states of Italy. The feuds claimed the life of her husband, and while her husband’s family desired for revenge and they encouraged her sons to take revenge for their father, but St. Rita of Cascia tried in vain to persuade them not to do so.
She prayed to God to take her sons away rather than seeing them commit a mortal sin in their revenge and risk falling into hell. Her prayers were answered by the Lord who took them away when they died of dysentry just a year after that. In that, they were taken away to God’s presence and did not commit a sin that would have resulted in them falling into hell.
St. Rita of Cascia devoted herself to God after all that, and in her love, she united and reconciled the feuding families that had been involved in the death of her husband and many others in the city where she lived. She lived as a religious nun faithfully until the end of her life on earth. She received in a vision, the mystical and spiritual wound of Christ, the stigmata of our Lord Jesus Christ, on her forehead, at the site where the Lord wore His crown of thorns during His Passion.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, St. Rita of Cascia showed us, that we have to love, and propagate that love, and also promote forgiveness of others, especially those who had hurt us and caused troubles for us. We too should ask for forgiveness from others whom we have hurt and caused troubles for. We must not discriminate between peoples, but love all equally, for we are all children of the same God.
Let us now therefore pray, and with the intercession of St. Rita of Cascia that we may be genuinely transformed into beings of love, who follow the Lord in all His ways, seeking to love and to forgive, that we may ever bring goodness into this world. May God be with us and keep us in His grace, always. God bless us all. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 56 : 2, 3-4, 6 and 11
Have mercy on me, o God, have mercy, for my soul takes refuge in You; I will find shelter in the shadow of Your wings till the disaster has passed.
I call on God the Most High, on God who has done everything for me : may He send from heaven a Saviour and put my oppressors to shame. May God send me His Love and faithfulness.
Be exalted, o God, above the heavens! Your glory be over all the earth! For Your love reaches to the heavens, and Your faithfulness, to the clouds.
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 