mercy of God

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Sunday, 25 May 2014 : Sixth Sunday of Easter (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, God loves all of us, and He had shown that repeatedly, again and again, in many occasions, including all that we heard in the readings of the Scriptures today. He cares for us, and genuinely He does so, without concern even for Himself. What else can we expect from the Lord and God who gave even His own life for us, in exchange for our eternal bliss and happiness?

But we have to play our parts as well, brethren, for God gives of Himself freely for all, but only for those who accept those gifts that the Lord will exercise His grace and blessings. And therefore, only those who accept Christ as their Lord and Saviour, through the waters of baptism, believe in His words and His teachings as taught to us by the Apostles and which we received through the Church, and finally carry out those will and commandments of God faithfully, will receive the grace everlasting that God had promised all of us.

We are still in the midst of the holy Easter season, a season of the celebration of life, that is the new life in Christ, and we are fast approaching its end, when we will celebrate the solemnity of the Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, and more precisely, as we all know, the descent and the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles and the disciples of Christ as He Himself had promised.

The Lord precisely meant this when He said that He will be with them, and that He will not abandon them as orphans. He cared for them so greatly that even after Jesus had left for His heavenly glory and throne in the Ascension, which we will also celebrate soon, He sent His people the Holy Spirit, which enlightens and bring truth to all those with the ears, hearts and minds to listen to the word and the will of God.

We too have received this faith in its great purity and enlightened nature through the Church, and through the many priests and bishops who had carried forward the truth and the faith which they received from the Apostles. And we too are therefore charged with keeping this faith alive and strong, that many others may also hear and know of the Lord’s saving passion and love.

This will not be easy, because the world itself is part of the dominion of the evil one, and the devil is definitely opposed to any goodness that we do in the Name of the Lord. He will use everything in all of his power to prevent and delay his eventual downfall, as he know it, and in the process bringing down as many souls of mankind with him into hell to suffer and perish with him for eternity.

Thus, that is why it is important for us to keep the faith within us strong and alive, and endowed by the Holy Spirit, and not just leave it at that, but also allow the Spirit to bear His fruits within us. We all know the fruits of the Holy Spirit, with faith, hope and love being the principal ones that we need to have and bear fruits of. We who have been baptised either at birth, or when we made that conscious effort and choice to accept the Lord in our adult years, have received a great grace from the Lord, who washed away our sins and planted His Spirit in us.

And those of us who had received the Sacrament of Confirmation has been affirmed even more strongly by the gift of the Holy Spirit, similar to what the Apostles had received on the day of Pentecost. But all this will go to naught if we do not use whatever things and graces that God had granted us through His Spirit and let it go to waste or worse, by committing things evil and wicked in His eyes.

We have to be faithful servants of the Lord, and loving children of His, who are committed to fulfill His laws and commandments every days of our lives. That is living faith, the kind of faith that God needs from us, the love that we show for Him, and the dedication that we have for Him. He desired from us this, and that we show in our words, deeds and actions the love God had shown for us, so that many more will come to believe in God and be saved like us.

Let us all today come together with a spirit, and the courage and strength to evangelise, to spread the love of God to all the peoples of all nations. Let us all bring the light of God to our brethren, and share the joy of Easter with them, not just by mere words or preaching, but also through our own actions and deeds, that in all the things we do and say, we proclaim the Lord who is Risen and who loves us all so much that He gave Himself for our salvation.

May the Lord continue to foster and strengthen the faith in us all, and strengthen and empower us with His Holy Spirit, that we may bear the wonderful fruits of the Holy Spirit, for our own good, and the good of our fellow brethren around us. May God be with us all, bless us and enlighten our path, always and forever. Amen.

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Friday, 18 April 2014 : Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion, Easter Triduum (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate Good Friday, the day when Jesus Christ our Lord, laid down His life for us by dying on the cross in atonement for our sins, and suffering the effects and the punishments for our sins, He was tortured and scourged for the consequences of our sins, and He died so that we will not suffer the ultimate consequence of sin, that is death.

Jesus was the suffering servant mentioned in the first reading today taken from the Book of the prophet Isaiah. Jesus was the Son of God, mighty and all powerful, but for our sake and for His love, He was willing to go through all those sufferings and great pains in our place. Remember always, brethren, every time we look at the cross and the crucifix, that He died for us.

Many nowadays have no more regards for God and His love, and this is because we have lost our sensitivity to His love and in our worldliness and our lifestyles, we centre ourselves more and more on our ego and our desires, no longer witnessing and realising the great love and mercy which God had extended to us, with no greater example than that of the death of Jesus, His own Son, on the cross for us.

In today’s situation, in our world, many have abandoned God and sought refuge in other places and found other sources of inspiration and belief outside of God. That is the sad truth about humanity, and more and more are leaving God for the refuge in the pleasures and goodness of this world, and they depend more and more on their human wisdom and understanding rather than on the love and wisdom of God.

Why? Why is this so, brothers and sisters in Christ? Why such violent rejection of the Lord and His love that had been shown through the cross? That is because mankind had sealed themselves off from God’s love, and instead of understanding and appreciating the love of God in them, they grew distant and apathetic to love, not just God’s love, but also love in general.

Again, why so? This is in fact because we lack faith, we lack hope, and we lack love. We fail to realise that God loves us so much, that He gave it all through Jesus and His death on the cross. We think of God as someone who is distant and wrathful, because He hates our sins and trespasses, and yet we failed to realise that as much as He hates our sins, even more it is that He loves us more than He hates the sins we commit.

On the other extreme of course, this does not mean that we should take advantage of God’s love for us by continuing to commit sins without cease, but indeed the Lord’s mercy and love is an opportunity for us to cast away our past sinfulness and mistakes and accept the fullness of God’s forgiveness. We must not close the doors of our hearts to God’s mercy.

Yes, brethren, for we have to always remember that God makes His mercy and forgiveness available to all freely, if we are just to accept this mercy with all of our hearts. We often fear God more than we love Him, and to many of us, God is not real and close, and this is the heart of the problem. Mankind has closed their hearts to God, and concerned only about themselves.

We are sinners, and we should have deserved death for our disobedience and rebelliousness, and yet God resolved to rescue us, even while we are still sinners and lived in sin. Every time we look at Jesus on the cross, hanging between the heaven and the earth, we see the One who loves us so much that even for unworthy servants like us, He was willing to save us by His own death.

The cross that Jesus bore was our sins, the collections of our faults, mistakes, failures and rebelliousness, which have added up to such a great weight that Jesus had to bore. And as mentioned in the first reading, the wounds and the piercing that Christ endured are all because of our sins too. Every sin we committed in our lives, be it small or big, they all cause great pains to the Lord, who yet bore those pains and sorrows with Him as He walked on the way to His death.

See how much God cares for us, for if not for His love, He would not have bothered to even worry about us, and less so to suffer all the scourges and humiliations for us. Therefore today we celebrate this occasion of Good Friday because we rejoice in the goodness of God, and how much good He had brought upon us this day. For He cast away the pall of death from our eyes and enable us to hope once again.

For once we were condemned to death and after Jesus died for us on the cross, the way to God that was once closed is once again open for us. Through His death, Jesus became the bridge that link all of us back to the Father, the way through which is the only way back to God the Father who loves us. All this was because Jesus died for us.

Again I want to reiterate how much God truly loves us. Jesus prays for us daily, and when He was in His suffering and Passion, He entreats God with His prayers for our sake, and cared only about us, and as St. Paul said in the second reading, that God listened to His prayers, and because of that, we are saved. Jesus prays for us all the time, and He cares for us and thinks about us, even as He carried up that great burden on His shoulders towards Calvary.

We have to open ourselves to God’s love and understand how much He truly is concerned for all of us. Certainly He would not want any of us to suffer eternal separation of death caused by our sins, that we end up in hell. That is why, brethren, we must never fear the Lord or His anger, but instead we have to give it our all, to seek His mercy and be truly repentant of our sinfulness. In this way, then the Lord will be able to work His mercy and we shall be forgiven.

May this Good Friday be a good opportunity for all of us to wake up from our deep slumber in the darkness and realise once again the great love and concern that the Lord had shown us. Let us turn our sight towards the Lord on the cross, and look at He who had died for us, and then make a commitment that we will always love He who had first loved us, that He gave His life for us, that we may not die but live! Amen.

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Wednesday, 2 April 2014 : 4th Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Francis of Paola, Hermit (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 144 : 8-9, 13cd-14, 17-18

Compassionate and gracious is the Lord, slow to anger and abounding in love. The Lord is good to everyone; His mercy embraces all His creation.

The Lord is true to His promises and lets His mercy show in all He does. The Lord lifts up those who are falling and raises those who are beaten down.

Righteous is the Lord in all His ways, His mercy shows in all His deeds. He is near  those who call on Him, who call trustfully upon His Name.