mercy

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Saturday, 27 July 2013 : 16th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we who believe in Christ had been marked by the Lord our God, with a special mark, for each one of us, to distinguish us from those who do not believe and do not have faith and love for the Lord. That mark is none other than His own Precious Blood, the Blood of the Lamb of God, which He gave to us to mark His faithfulness and love for us, to mark the New Covenant He has established with all of us, with all mankind, a covenant that will never be broken.

The Blood of the covenant of Christ reminds us of the first reading today, when Moses sealed the covenant between the people of Israel and the Lord their God with the blood of animals, the blood of lambs and goats sacrificed on the altar made to God. The blood sealed the promise that God had made with their father Abraham, that his descendants would prosper and enjoy God’s blessing and be led to the Land of Promise.

On the other hand, the covenant involve a two-way promise and vow, and therefore, just as the Lord has vowed to bless His people and care for them, so the people too must keep their part of the covenant, to obey the laws of the Lord, and live according to His will. If they remain faithful to their part in the covenant, their lives will truly be happy and blessed, and they will receive the fullness of their covenant with God.

But if they break their part of the covenant, by disobeying the Lord and doing wicked things not in conjunction with the Lord’s will, then they will not receive the blessings that the Lord had promised them, and instead, they will truly suffer for having turned their back on the Lord and His covenant, the covenant of love He had offered freely to Abraham and his descendants that they will be blessed.

That was exactly what many of the people of Israel did, even just after Moses had sprinkled the blood of the covenant on them, as they complained against Moses and the Lord for having brought them in the journey through the desert to the Promised Land.

They complained because they did not keep themselves strong enough in the faith that the devil could come to them and sow the seeds of discord and evil in their hearts, and the seeds of desire and greed, desiring ever more things from the Lord, complaining to the Lord when they did not receive enough, even though the Lord had fed them with bread from heaven, the manna, and with quails and birds for them to eat, and also provide them with sweet and clear spring water to drink.

No, brothers and sisters in Christ, this is not the way that we should follow, the rebelliousness and the hard-hearted people of Israel during their sojourn in the desert. We must instead follow the path of Christ, of love and dedication, which we should give to the Lord and to our fellow men, and also thanksgiving to the Lord when it is due. That is because the Lord had given us much, very much indeed, that He gave us nothing else more precious, nor that there will ever be anything that is to be more precious, than His own Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Saviour, and new hope of life eternal.

We must fortify ourselves, brethren, in our hearts and minds, that we will not succumb to the evil one. Prevent the sower of evil from sowing seeds of evil and sin within our hearts. Do not let him to reign free over us, and enslave us to the chains of sin and death. The devil will always try and utilise everything that is within his power to corrupt us and turn us from the path of the Lord, that is salvation, towards the path to hell and eternal damnation.

We must have a strong and healthy prayer life, that our heart will be defended from the assaults of the evil one. In doing so, our faith and dedication to the Lord will be complete.” But remember, brothers and sisters in Christ, that faith cannot stand on its own, and without good and positive acts in our words, deeds, and actions, our faith will be dead and empty. Yes, as empty as that of the people of Israel in the desert. They had been given manna, the bread from heaven and quails as food during their desert journey, and yet they still complained and blasphemed against His Name.

Our Lord is faithful, just as He is loving, brothers and sisters in Christ. He loves us all so much, that He shed His own Body and His own Blood, through the cross, that all of us be redeemed in a new covenant that He established by His own sacrifice, for our sake. This is no blood of the lambs and goats that die, brothers and sisters, but here is the Blood of the Lamb of God who lives, the Lamb who has triumphed and conquered Satan and evil. This Blood, the divine blood given to us out of the Lord’s own will, is the blood that purifies and cleanses, washing our beings white and pure again from all the filth and darkness of sin within us.

We receive this Blood and the Body, in the Eucharist, which the priests turned from the humble bread and wine, into the very Being of our Lord and Saviour, who died as the lamb of sacrifice, the True Lamb, who is the only one worthy to redeem us from all the weights of our faults and evil, all the horrible things we had committed, things abhorred by the Lord our God. He established this new covenant, a covenant not only with the people of Israel of old, but with all mankind, without exception. He established this new covenant, especially for sinners. The greater the sin that a sinner has, the more the Lord wants to come to redeem him or her from their fate that is death and hell.

He paid for this new covenant and sealed it with His own Blood, not blood of any animals, but the most precious Blood possible, the divine blood of the Lord, poured down on us from the cross, given to us to drink in the Eucharist, in the form of wine transubstantiated into His Blood. We who partake in this divine gift is sealed in the new covenant with God, through Christ, and as long as we remain faithful to God, we will ever be in God’s grace, and we will receive the gift of eternal life Christ had promised all those who believe in Him.

Our Lord loves us so much and He wants all of us saved, from our fate of certain death in sin. He has given His best and His all in His part on the covenant. But as I have mentioned, a covenant is made between two parties, in which both parties have to commit to the covenant that it is made valid and true. Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, are we ready to commit ourselves to Christ, to His love? Are we ready to take up our own crosses and follow Christ, so that we will make whole the new covenant of the Lord?

Are we ready to commit ourselves to the Lord present in the Most Holy Eucharist? In His Body and Blood that He gave us that He may be in us and we in Him? Let us from now on strive to be the loving partner of our God in that holy covenant, and play our part, that is following the Lord’s commandments that is love. Love our God and love our fellow brethren as we love ourselves. For God is love! Amen.

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Friday, 26 July 2013 : 16th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Scripture Reflection)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we listened to the Ten Commandments given by our Lord to His people, the people of Israel, through Moses, His servant, written on the two stones that would bear the very writings of the Lord, the Commandments that He wanted His people to follow for all eternity. The Ten Commandments carry the basic tenets of what being the people and children of God is all about, that is indeed summarised by Christ as the commandments of love.

For the commandments in the Ten Commandments, when looked deeper into, would show that mankind need to love God with all their attention, their hearts, minds, and soul, and with all their strength, that they will obey and worship no other god but the Lord God, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world. Automatically too, they should honour the Holy Name of their God, YHVH, the God who AM, and whose Name has also been revealed to us, Jesus, the Name above every other name, and the Name upon which all knees will bend, be it on earth, in heaven, or in hell.

Loving God with all our hearts and our strength is important, but that is just one half of the entire law and commandment. That is because as Christ had taught His disciples and which we read in the Gospels, we must also love our brothers and sisters, all our neighbours, fellow mankind, just as we have loved our God and ourselves, in the same way, giving to them our love, care, and compassion. That is the other half of the commandments, that will make perfect our observation of God’s laws and commandments.

To love our brethren and our fellow men means to give unconditional love to others, especially to those who are starved of love, to those who hunger for love and compassion, and those who are in the midst of suffering and persecution. But this is not all that love is about, because love is about giving ourselves not just to those whom we love, or just to those who we think need our love, but to love is also to embrace our enemies, those who hate us, those who persecute us, and those who did evil things to us. Love means to be able to forgive them from their faults to us, and to embrace them as our fellow brothers and sisters of the One True God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is why the Ten Commandments also included commands such as not to kill nor to covet one another’s goods and properties, as these are likely to be borne out of animosity that arose between two parties in the first place. Hatred leads to animosity, and then it may result in something that hurt one or both parties, or even kill, in the case of murder. The Lord wants all of us to respect one another and let go of our hatred and our animosity, replacing them instead with love, the kind of love that Jesus Christ had shown us, on the cross at Calvary.

For Jesus Himself had forgiven His enemies, the Pharisees and the chief priests, as well as the people who cried for His death. He embraced them from the cross, and His Blood is poured down the cross to wash the sins of all mankind, because He redeemed all men, without any exceptions. He also embraced His enemy, Saul, the reaper of early Christians, who hunted many people who believed in Christ and tortured them. Christ embraced Saul with His love, and made him into the greatest instrument of His works in this world, from an enemy into the most valiant defender of the faith.

We have to nurture love, not hatred; peace, not violence; hope, not despair; light, not darkness; and faith in God; not in Satan and his devices and temptations. We have to plant the seeds of love, hope, and faith in our youths, in our own families, within our circle of friends, and within our respective societies. For actions not done in love, and life lived without love is empty, and neither does any actions or life that are not bound by hope and faith. To be loving is key to achieving salvation.

Today we commemorate the feast day of the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of our God, that is St. Joachim and St. Anne, the grandparents of Jesus Christ our Lord. They are role models for all families, Christian families in particular, in how to bring God’s love into our homes. They brought up the mother of our Lord from her infancy to be the blessed person our mother Mary came to be. They cared for her since her Immaculate Conception inside her mother’s womb, the womb of St. Anne.

The care and love that St. Joachim and St. Anne had shown to Mary, the mother of our Lord, is replicated in her care for Jesus, whom Mary cared since His humble birth at the stables in Bethlehem, protecting Him from King Herod and those who would wish to harm Him. She accompanied Him through His childhood and teenage years, being revealed that Jesus is truly the Son of God when He was left behind in the Temple at the age of twelve. Mary accompanied Christ through His ministries and eventually until His death, and resurrection.

All these are made possible by the tender love and care given to Mary herself by her parents, St. Joachim and St. Anne, who showed her the meaning of love, compassion, and faith in God, that she herself become role models for all of us, the mother of God, and the greatest among all saints and apostles of Christ. St. Joachim and St. Anne are truly role models for us, and we should indeed follow in their footsteps, as well as the footsteps of Mary, the mother of our Lord, towards Christ, who longs to welcome us back into His embrace.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us renew our commitment to our Lord today, and also to renew our commitment to love, that is to love everyone, without exception, even to those who hate us the most and those who wished for our misfortune and death. Let us be gracious and courageous to forgive and to embrace those who do not have love in them, that in doing so, we will obey the commandments of the Lord, as once given to Moses, His servant so that the people of Israel will know the Lord’s laws, and so may we too, obey the same law, that is the law of love.

May the Lord bless us all with abundance of graces and blessings, and plant the seeds of love, hope, and faith within us, that they may blossom, and through our words, actions, and deeds, may we spread love, joy, and hope to all mankind, bringing everyone closer to God who is our Lord and Father. St. Joachim and St. Anne, pray for us too. Amen.

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Wednesday, 24 July 2013 : 16th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Charbel Makhluf, Priest (Psalm)

Psalm 77 : 18-19, 23-24, 25-26, 27-28

They tested God, demanding the food they craved. They blasphemed against God, saying : “Can God spread a table in the desert?”

Yet He commanded the skies above and opened the doors of heaven; He rained down manna upon them and fed them with the heavenly grain.

They ate and had more than their fill of the bread of angels. Then from heaven He stirred the east wind, and by His power let loose the south wind.

To rain down meat on them like dust. Birds as thick as the sand on the seashore fell inside their camp, lying all around their tents.

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Tuesday, 23 July 2013 : 16th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Bridget of Sweden, Religious (Scripture Reflection)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, God our Lord is also our Father, and He cares deeply for all of us without exception. He blesses us with many things good and makes sure that all of us have enough for our daily lives. He strengthens us when we are weak, and supports us when we are down. He protects us from harm and delivers us from the evil one. The Lord has shown His power on the day when He saved the people of Israel from their bondage in Egypt.

With His powerful breath and His hand, He split open the Red Sea before His people, allowing them to pass through the dry sea, towards their freedom, towards the Promised Land He promised to His people and their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He raised them up from their slavery to be His beloved people, with power and majesty, as wielded by the greatest of their kings, David and Solomon, whose kingdom passed to Jesus, the descendant of David and the Son of God, the Saviour.

Those who remain in His love and favour will indeed receive much love and grace from our Lord, and their lives will be blessed. No one will be able to harm them, and they will live long and prosper until the day that the Lord calls them again to His side. But to those who disobey His will, and to those who had brought up the anger of the Lord, they will be cast aside into the lake of fire and eternal suffering with Satan and his fallen angels, all the evils of the world, because they will be judged and found unworthy of the Lord and His perfection.

Yet, many of us today have forgotten what it actually means to be the children of God, the same God who had delivered the people of Israel from the hands of the Egyptians. We have forgotten what it means to serve the Lord, and we have turned away from His truth and His path, that we are in danger of veering off into the path towards damnation in hell.

Throughout history of salvation, the history of mankind and the history of the people of Israel, countless prophets sent by the Lord had been slaughtered and murdered by the people who preferred to continue living in the state of sin rather than repenting and returning to the Lord their God. They worshiped pagan gods and did things abominable in the eyes of God. The warnings and the prophecies of prophets they had ignored, until the Lord brought plague upon them as punishment and ultimately scattered them among the nations.

The people who had been brought away from Egypt and their slavery upon the eagle’s wings had hardened their hearts against the very One who had saved them. They rebelled constantly and continued to do things horrible in the eyes of God. They turned deaf ears to the heeding of the prophets and messengers of the Lord. And eventually, they too would turn their backs against the One that the Lord Himself had sent, that is Himself in human form, Jesus Christ, the very Messiah that the prophets had been proclaiming and the very One that the people of Israel had supposedly awaited for.

Yet He remained ever faithful to us, despite all our numerous and countless transgressions against Him, despite all the evils we have committed that is loathsome in His eyes. Such is His compassion and mercy, that He is willing to welcome us back despite our faults. But yet, we must not continue what the people had done all those while brothers and sisters, because, there is a limit to God’s patience, and He is also a jealous God and a God of justice, who will not let transgressions, when done without regard for the Lord, to go free easily.

Today, brethren, we also commemorate the feast of St. Bridget of Sweden, a pious and faithful religious who lived more than six hundred years ago, and she is one of the six patron saints of Europe. She established religious order now known as the Brigittines, and she received many visions on the Lord and the Blessed Virgin Mary, and through these visions, the Church and the faithful had been indeed blessed with greater understanding of the Lord and His mission, that is to save all mankind from death and hell, just as He had once saved the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt.

To St. Bridget had been given the visions and knowledge of God, just as the Lord had given to the prophets of the past, so that we may also know Him and seek to return to Him, sinning no more and begin earnestly our path to salvation. Let us follow the Lord and His ways, and earnestly begin our path to salvation, by offering the Lord our repentance and our contrite hearts.

With inspiration of the examples made by St. Bridget and many other saints and holy men and women of God, let us go forth and proclaim Christ our Lord to all the nations, the Christ our Lord who died for our sake, as the Lamb of sacrifice, whose Blood saves all mankind from their fate that is death. Death no longer has any power over us who believe in Christ and His saving power, just as the Pharaoh no longer had any power over the Israelites after the Lord saved them from the land of Egypt. He smote Satan just as He had smitten the Pharaoh and the people of Egypt. How great is His love for us indeed! Amen.

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Monday, 22 July 2013 : 16th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Mary Magdalene (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the feast day of one of the greatest saints of Christendom, that is of St. Mary Magdalene, the faithful and close disciple of Christ. St. Mary Magdalene had gone through a lot in her life, and the story of her journey of faith and return to the Lord ought to touch many of us indeed, and many of her life examples can still be practiced even today.

St. Mary Magdalene was a great sinner, who lived in sin, earning her living by selling her own body to others through prostitution. She was occupied by many, some say seven evil spirits, who corrupted her and kept her away from following the path of the Lord. She seduced many men into sin and became the tool of the devil to destroy mankind.

Yet, the Lord who had come to heal the sick and forgive sinners, had also come to St. Mary Magdalene, in the depth of her sinfulness, and rescued her from both the darkness and the evil spirits that resided within her. He casted them out of her, and made her once again the proud daughter of the Lord, returned her to the path of salvation to God.

Nevertheless, her previous occupation as a prostitute did leave a significant social stigma on her, and on many occasions, she was prejudiced against, even by Christ’s own disciple, most evidently Judas Iscariot. St. Mary Magdalene was the one who anointed the feet of Jesus with a jar full of precious nard perfume, and dried His feet with her own hair, as an anointing before the death of Christ, which was lambasted by Judas as being wasteful. The Lord rebuked him, because He saw the true good and sincerity in St. Mary Magdalene’s heart in loving the Lord and in her commitment, and the devil that dwelled within Judas, waiting for his betrayal of Jesus.

She followed Christ through His Passion and suffering, walking through the Way of the Cross to Calvary, accompanying Mary, the mother of Christ. She accompanied Christ through the darkest hours unto His death. Her faith in God had become so strong, that although her faith was shaken by the death of Jesus, she remained a strong and faithful servant of the Lord.

Such is her devotion to the Lord that when the Lord was Risen and His earthly Body disappeared, she was in great sorrow, because she thought that someone could have stolen the body of Christ. She searched for the Lord and could not find Him, and her anguish can be illustrated as what the first reading today from the book of Song of Songs had mentioned, like a maiden searching for the love of her heart and could not find him.

The Lord granted her His grace by showing Himself to her first among all the disciples, and revealed to her all of His Resurrected glory. He showed her a new hope, that is salvation, that through Christ, who has died and risen from the dead, all mankind should have hope of transcending our fate that is death, and into a new and everlasting life with Christ at the end of time.

St. Mary Magdalene is a great role model for all of us, all of us sinners who are still awaiting and searching for God’s mercy and forgiveness. She had gone through much suffering and rejection, as what we will certainly also face, if we turn ourselves from our life of sin into a new life filled with the Holy Spirit and walking on the path of Christ, the only way to salvation.

And even today, many would try to discredit St. Mary Magdalene by spreading lies about her and also Christ. I am sure that all of you would have known the ‘acclaimed’ story by Dan Brown on the supposed story between St. Mary Magdalene and Christ in his bestseller ‘The Da Vinci Code’, how they secretly were married and St. Mary Magdalene bearing the child of Christ. Not only that this insulted the memory and the goodness of St. Mary Magdalene, but it also insulted the very person of Christ, our Lord.

That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, it is very important for all of us, not to be fooled by the devil into believing these stories made to confuse us and steer us away from the path of Christ, that is the only path to salvation. Remember brethren, that the devil has many tools in his pocket, and this is just yet another way he used to deceive mankind that they will remain in the state of sin and impurity so that we will fall to hell to be tortured with Satan for eternity.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us strengthen our faith and affirm our dedication and devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ, through the intercession of St. Mary Magdalene, whose great conversion would have inspired many of us to do the same in our own lives. Let us repent brothers and sisters, and present a humble, contrite heart from each of us sinners, on the feet of our Lord Jesus, as the true offering of ourselves, that He will heal us and bring us up from the trap of sin and the depth of the sea of darkness, into a new life in the light of Christ, a new life worth living because we have Christ. God bless us all, and may St. Mary Magdalene continue to pray for us for our own redemption. Amen.

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Monday, 22 July 2013 : 16th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Mary Magdalene (Gospel Reading)

John 20 : 1-2, 11-18

Now, on the first day after the Sabbath, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning while it was still dark, and she saw that the stone blocking the tomb had been moved away. She ran to Peter, and the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and she said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid Him.”

Mary stood weeping outside the tomb; and as she wept, she bent down to look inside. She saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head, and the other at the feet. They said, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She answered, “Because they have taken my Lord and I do not know where they have put Him.”

As she said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not recognise Him. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?” She thought it was the gardener and answered Him, “Lord, if You have taken Him away, tell me where You have put Him, and I will go and remove Him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned, and said to Him, “Rabboni!” – which means Master. Jesus said to her, “Do not touch Me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to My brothers and say to them : I am ascending to My Father, who is your Father, to my God, who is your God.”

So Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord, and this is what He said to me.”

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Monday, 22 July 2013 : 16th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Mary Magdalene (Psalm)

Psalm 62 : 2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9

O God, You are my God, it is You I seek; for You my body longs and my soul thirsts, as a dry and weary land without water.

Thus have I gazed upon You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory. Your love is better than life, my lips will glorify You.

I will bless You as long as I live, lift up my hands and call on Your Name. As with the richest food my soul will feast; my mouth will praise You with joyful lips.

For You have been my help; I sing in the shadow of Your wings. My soul clings to You, Your right hand upholds me.

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Monday, 22 July 2013 : 16th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Mary Magdalene (First Reading)

Song of Songs 3 : 1-4a

On my bed at night I looked for the One I love, I sought Him without finding Him; I called Him and He did not answer. I will rise and go about the city, through the streets and the squares; I will seek the love of my heart…

I sought Him without finding Him; the watchmen came upon me, those who patrol the city. “Have you seen the love of my heart?” As soon as I left them, I found the love of my heart.

 

Alternative Reading

 

2 Corinthians 5 : 14-17

Indeed the love of Christ holds us and we realise that if He died for all, all have died. He died for all so that those who live may live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again for them.

And so from now on, we do not regard anyone from a human point of view; and even if we once knew Christ personally, we should now regard Him in another way. For that same reason, the one who is in Christ is a new creature. For Him the old things have passed away; a new world has come.

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Sunday, 21 July 2013 : 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we heard today of two stories which in both involve receiving the Lord into one’s home and showing their acceptance to the coming of the Lord. Abraham in the first reading welcomed the Lord who passed by his tent, and gave Him a meal and offering. In the Gospel, Martha and Mary, the family of Lazarus, welcomed Jesus the Son of God and Messiah into their house. Both involved hospitality of the hosts and how they react to the coming of the Lord to their humble abodes.

Abraham recognised the Lord and welcomed him into his tent, giving the best he had for the Lord to eat, as an offering of his love and his heart for the Lord. Martha and Mary also welcomed Christ into their home, giving their best to serve Him and made Him at home. But here comes the difference, highlighted in the case between Martha and Mary, in how they give their service to the Lord.

Martha cooked and prepared many food for Jesus, to serve Him good meals and good food, but she ended up being absorbed so much into her preparation and her work, that she forgot what the Lord truly wanted from her. She became engulfed in the world and in her work so much, that she forgot about love, about her own love for God. That is what the Lord truly desired from her, and indeed, from everyone in this world, all of us.

Mary gave her love and full attention to Christ, giving all her heart to Him, that she was truly focused and attentive to all the words that left His mouth, listening to the words of salvation, the Good News. The same had been done by Abraham, giving his obedience and full attention to the Lord, as He came to proclaim the words of His promise, His covenant, proven through the gift of his son, Isaac, through his wife, Sarah.

The same too then is expected of us. We too should give all our minds, our hearts, our being, and with all our strengths, to God and dedicate ourselves fully and entirely to Him. God our Lord is a loving God, and He cares for all of us, until He even gave His own Son, Himself, for the sake of all of us, that we may have life in us, and do not have to suffer our eternal punishment of death, that is our faith.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us not lose our sight on the Lord, our one and true God, the God who created us, God who gave us life, and God who granted us this world that we may live in prosperity and happiness, and most importantly, to follow in His ways, that we can share the happiness that we have in us, with one another, that together, we may be saved, saved from the tyranny of death and evil, and be freed into new life in Christ.

Let us renew our faith and our love for God, dedicating our hearts as true offering for Him. He does not desire our sacrifices and prayers, of endless litanies made without meaning, of gifts made without love, but He desires truly our love, our repentant heart, seeking always for His mercy, the desire, the strong and endless desire to be reunited with the One God who loves us.

In Christ lies salvation and hope, and in Him lies all the fulfillment, in all its perfection, of God’s grand plan to save mankind and all creation, ever since Satan snatched them from Him at the time of creation, by his lies to Adam and Eve, the first mankind. The grand plan had been in motion for countless years and a long time, ever since creation, through Abraham, whom God promised that salvation for mankind would come through him and his descendants, and ultimately was perfectly fufilled in Jesus, the descendant of Abraham, of Adam and Eve, and the descendant of David, who inherited his kingdom, and made it into an everlasting kingdom of God.

Christ gave Himself up for our sake, that all of us can share in His glory upon His glorious resurrection, and that we will receive life eternal as we are brought to our rightful places in heaven, at the side of the Lord, God who cares for us and gave it all for our sake. It will not be easy to follow Christ, as we will be rejected as the world had rejected the Lord. What is important is that we do not go astray from our path, and remain faithful to Christ our Lord, through our actions, our deeds, and our words.

Let us not be distracted by the world and its offers of pleasure and sin, and not to forget the Lord and His love and kindness. Let us be focused on the Lord and offer Him our greatest love, out of our sincere and repentant heart, just as what Abraham and Mary had done, that the Lord will always be in our minds, our hearts at all times, and therefore we too, will always remain in the Lord.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, open our hearts, open our minds, and let the Lord to come into us, dwell within us, as the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Temple of God’s residence. We receive the Lord regularly in the Eucharist, and we accept Him into our hearts. That is why it is important that we remain focused at all times on the Lord, so that we will not be led astray by the temptations of this world.

Keep the Lord’s commandments of love, and practice our faith with devotion, loving our God with all our strength, in worship and praise, in the Mass, and in our daily lives, and love our brethren, especially those with great needs, through our actions, our service to the less fortunate, and through our deeds that bring happiness and love to those who lie in sorrow and those who are unloved.

Be strong, brothers and sisters, and may the blessing of the Lord our God, God who came down for our sake, for our salvation, the Lord of Abraham, the God of our fathers, be with us, and remain within us, giving us His love and light, to be shared among all the nations. God bless us all. Amen.

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Saturday, 20 July 2013 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Apollinaris, Bishop and Martyr (Scripture Reflection)

Brothers and sisters in Christ! Christ had delivered us from the hands of the devil and bring us to the land of the living, that is new life in Him, and the hope of eternal life together with the saints and the angels of the Lord, for eternity. He had come, He had been victorious, and He had conquered, a glorious king triumphant over His enemies, that is Satan and his followers, his fallen angels.

He did not let His people to live forever in suffering and oppression, as He once rescued the people of Israel, the people He had first chosen among the nations, from the oppression and tyranny of the Egyptians. So the same He had done too, for all of us, all mankind, without exception, to free us all from the tyranny of the true evil, that is Satan and all sins.

He sent forth His Son to be our hope, our rescuer, and our Redeemer. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born as a humble man, had died on the cross for all of us, that through His death, and ultimately, His glorious resurrection, He broke forever the yoke of sin on all of us. Our debts of sin were paid by the ultimate price of His Most Precious Body and Blood, which He offered freely on the cross for all of us, God’s beloved children.

To those who follow the ways of the Lord, and those who repented their sins and turned back to face the Lord their God, with all their hearts, with all their strength and power, and in the true spirit of repentance in sincerity, the Lord will reward them with forgiveness, love, and His eternal embrace. He will welcome them into His kingdom and bring all of them into the land of eternal happiness, just as He had once promised the people of Israel and Abraham, their father, that they will inherit the land of prosperity, of flowing milk and honey.

But those who ignored His call and His mercy, and those who disobeyed Him will receive what is their due, that is punishment for sins and death, a fate that awaited all of us, because of our rebellion against God through sin, but which our Saviour, Jesus Christ had voided for all of us through His sacrifice on the cross, but a fate that will not be voided for those who reject Christ and persecute His people.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us not harden our hearts the way that Pharaoh had done in his refusal to let the people of Israel go free from their slavery. Let us rather open our hearts to God’s love and His Holy Spirit, so that the Spirit will come into us and dwell within us, transforming us from the children of darkness and sin, into children of God, that is of love and light. He is a loving God and a merciful Lord, who will forgive us from our faults and rebellion, but only if we would open our hearts. He is a just God, and One who hates all evil and sin, and therefore, if we harden our hearts and close them against Him, there will be only one sentence that awaits us, which is death, eternal damnation in hell.

Today, brothers and sisters, we commemorate the feast day of St. Apollinaris, a bishop of the early Roman Empire, one of the early leaders of the Church, who was martyred in his ministry and kept his faith to the Lord till the end faithfully. St. Apollinaris with great zeal preached the Good News of the Lord throughout many parts of the then Roman Empire, across the Mediterranean Sea, not unlike what St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles had done just decades before St. Apollinaris did.

St. Apollinaris persevered with great courage and faith, despite numerous difficulties he received along his mission and his preaching. Many opposed him, not least the pagan priests and rulers, who viewed his teachings as a threat to their influences in the society, and who also viewed him as both a rival and a rebel to the Imperial authority.

Why rebel? Because St. Apollinaris preached the Word of God in Christ Jesus, that is the Saviour of the world, in the belief in the One, true and only God, which contradicted directly with the pagan worships at the time, particularly when the contemporary Roman Emperors were increasingly worshipped as divine even when they were still living. As Christians do not worship anyone other than God, they were somewhat seen as traitors by the Romans, for rejecting that the Emperor is divine.

As such, St. Apollinaris, who preached the Gospel and led the early Christians as bishop, the path was really tough, and persecutions and rejections were very common. In the end, even St. Apollinaris, following the Apostles and disciples of Christ before him, was put to death in sacred martyrdom. Following Christ is never easy, brothers and sisters, because we have to carry our own crosses, with Christ, on the long path to salvation. Yet Christ had made the path straight for us, if we believe in Him and remain faithful in Him, that we will not go astray, and remain in the true path towards the Lord and eternal happiness.

The people of Israel too endured suffering in the desert in their journey. Following the Lord is not easy, but in the end, if we remain faithful, the Lord would reward us greatly, with none other than everlasting life and eternal happiness, that our lives of suffering would truly be worth living for the sake of the ultimate reward at the end.

But if we are not faithful, and go astray in our path, then we risk death as our ultimate end. The people of Israel constantly grumbled about their suffering and disobeyed the Lord many times, through Moses, whom they disobeyed so often as their hearts were hardened against the Lord. They did not live to see the Promised Land, and died in the desert as their punishment. So, the lesson is that, all of us should do our best, to remain faithful always and ever loving to the Lord our God. Our Lord who loves us wants our love in return, that we remain in Him just as He remain in all of us, within our hearts.

May the Lord strengthen our faith, and through the example of St. Apollinaris, may we be inspired to always persevere in our mission to bring the Good News to all nations, to the ends of the earth, without fear, and with zeal and fire of the faith in our hearts. St. Apollinaris, pray for us, and may God bless us all. Amen.