Monday

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Monday, 3 August 2020 : 18th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Jeremiah 28 : 1-17

Early in the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, in the fifth month of the fourth year, the prophet Hananiah spoke to me.

Hananiah son of Azzur from Gibeon proclaimed in YHVH’s house in the presence of the priests and the people, “This is what YHVH the God of Hosts and the God of Israel says : I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two years I will bring back to this place all the objects that king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took away from YHVH’s house and carried to Babylon.”

“I will likewise bring back Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and all who were taken from Judah and deported to Babylon. For I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon – word of YHVH.”

Then Jeremiah replied to Hananiah in the presence of the priests and all the people, “So be it! May YHVH fulfil the words you have spoken and bring back from Babylon to this place the objects taken from the house of YHVH and all the exiles. Yet hear now what I say in your hearing and the hearing of all the people.”

“The prophets who came before you and me continually prophesied war, disaster and plague to many nations and great kingdoms. So the prophet who prophesies peace will not be recognised as truly sent by YHVH, until his predictions are fulfilled.”

Then Hananiah took the yoke from the neck of Jeremiah and broke it. Hananiah proclaimed in the presence of all the people, “YHVH says this : In the same manner, within two years, will I break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar from the neck of all the nations.” Then Jeremiah the prophet went on his way.

Some time later, a word of YHVH came to Jeremiah, “Go and tell this to Hananiah : This is what YHVH says : You have broken a wooden yoke but in its place you will get a yoke of iron. For this is what YHVH the God of Hosts and the God of Israel says : I am placing a yoke of iron on the neck of all the nations to make them serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and they will serve him. I will even give him control over the wild animals.”

Then Jeremiah said to Hananiah, “Listen, Hananiah, you have not been sent by YHVH and yet you have deceived these people, giving them false hope with your lies. That is why YHVH says with regard to you : I am removing you from the face of the earth. You will die this very year because you have counselled rebellion against YHVH.”

And in the seventh month of that year Hananiah died.

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Monday, 27 July 2020 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day all of us heard the readings from the Scriptures in which we heard the manifestation of God’s anger at His people’s disobedience and lack of faith as they constantly and consistently refused to listen to Him and continued to follow the path of sin instead of the path of the truth. Through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord wanted to make it clear to His people that it was by their stubbornness and refusal to believe in Him that they would face ruin and destruction.

And the destruction did come upon the people of God, of both Israel and Judah, crushed by their enemies and exiled from their lands, as a result of them putting their trust in their own might and power, in worldly power and alliances, in their pagan idols and gods rather than to trust in God. God had sent so many prophets and messengers to them, showed them signs and revelations and yet they still would not believe.

In our Gospel passage today, we heard something similar to this as the Lord spoke to His people in parables, teaching them about the kingdom of heaven and its meaning. And the Lord highlighted to His disciples that He always taught in parables and spoke in cryptic terms so as to both reveal the meaning of the truth He brought to those who are willing to listen to them, and to hide them from those who have hardened their hearts and refused to listen to Him.

This brings us then into the realisation that unless we are willing to embrace the Lord and His ways, then we will not be able to appreciate fully His truth and love, and we will not be able to embrace Him fully as we should have. And this is also shown through the parable that the Lord used in explaining the kingdom of heaven, the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the yeast and three measures of flour.

In all these parables, the Lord brought forth the fact of how those little things like mustard seed and yeast, mustard seed being one of the smallest among the seeds and yeast being very small and microscopic in size, were able to grow into immense proportions beyond imagination. The mustard seed grow into a relatively large tree with many branches while the yeast allow the dough to rise quite significantly in size.

The significance of this is such that subtly, the Lord is telling us that we need to make ourselves small and insignificant before God, minuscule and tiny, if we want to grow and be truly great before Him. It is by discarding all sorts of pride and greed, ego and ambition, selfishness and hubris, and instead embracing humility and meekness that we will be able to grow in faith. Unless we humble ourselves, we will be too full of ourselves to be able to nurture ourselves with the love of God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, then, similarly, for the mustard seeds to grow and for the yeast to be able to make the dough to rise, they require specific conditions that if not fulfilled, then those things will not be able to happen. The mustard seeds need water, the right temperature and oxygen in the air to germinate, and later on will also need nutrients from the soil and sunlight to grow well into a great tree. Similarly, yeast also need the absence of oxygen and warm conditions for them to be able to function and make the dough rise. If the conditions are not fulfilled for either of them, then nothing good would have come out of them.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, are we able to live faithfully in God’s presence so as to provide the best condition for ourselves to grow in the sight of God, to grow like the mustard seed and to rise like the dough with yeast? We are all called to be good and fruitful Christians in life, and we should indeed do what we can to serve God and to dedicate ourselves to Him and to His ways, to be righteous and to be exemplary in how we act in our everyday living that by our faith, we become God’s shining examples.

Let us all therefore not harden our hearts and minds as what the people of God had once done, and instead, allow God to enter into our hearts and minds by making ourselves small before Him, humbling ourselves and dedicating ourselves to Him with all of our heart and with all of our strength. May the Lord be with us always and may He strengthen us all each and every moments of our lives that we may truly grow well in the faith and bear wonderful, bountiful fruits, now and always. Amen.

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Monday, 27 July 2020 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Matthew 13 : 31-35

At that time, Jesus offered His disciples another parable : “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is smaller than all other seeds, but once it is fully grown, it is bigger than any garden plant; like a tree, the birds come and rest in its branches.”

He told them another parable, “The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast than a woman took, and hid in three measures of flour, until the whole mass of dough began to rise.” Jesus taught all these things to the crowds by means of parables; He did not say anything to them without using a parable. This fulfilled what was spoken by the Prophet : ‘I will speak in parables. I will proclaim things kept secret since the beginning of the world.’

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Monday, 27 July 2020 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Deuteronomy 32 : 18-19, 20, 21

They have disowned the Rock Who fathered them; they have forgotten the God Who gave them birth. The Lord saw this, and in His anger rejected His sons and daughters.

He said, “I will hide My face from them and see what will become of them. They are so perverse, so unfaithful!”

“They made Me jealous with their false gods and angered Me with their idols. I will, therefore, make them envious of a foolish people, I will provoke them to anger with an empty-headed nation.”

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Monday, 27 July 2020 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Jeremiah 13 : 1-11

This is what YHVH said to me : “Go! Buy yourself a linen belt and put it around your waist; do not put it in water.” So I bought the belt as YHVH ordered and put it around my waist. The word of YHVH came to me a second time, “Take the belt you bought, the one you put around your waist, and go to the torrent Perah; hide it there in a hole in the rock.”

I went and hid it as YHVH instructed me. After many days YHVH said to me, “Go to the torrent Perah and get the belt I ordered you to hide there.” I went to the torrent and dug up the belt but it was ruined and good for nothing; and YHVH said to me, “In this way I will destroy the pride and great glory of Judah, this wicked people who refuse to heed what I say, this stubborn people who go after other gods to serve and worship them. And they shall become like this belt which is now good for nothing.”

“For just as a belt is to be bound around a man’s waist so was the people of Israel and Judah bound to Me – it is YHVH Who speaks – to be My people, My glory and My honour; but they would not listen.”

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Monday, 20 July 2020 : 16th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Apollinaris, Bishop and Martyr (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard the lamentations of the Lord for the unbelief and the stubbornness of many of His people in them not having faith in Him. The Lord through His prophet Micah spoke out His displeasure at the people who seemingly had forgotten the mighty and wonderful deeds by which He has rescued their ancestors and their predecessors, and instead, betraying Him by siding with the pagan gods and idols.

And in our Gospel today, there is yet another example of this stubbornness and lack of faith, as the Lord was confronted by the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, who doubted Him and wanted to keep on testing Him, asking Him for miracles, signs and wonders. The fact was that they had seen many such miracles and signs as they followed the Lord persistently throughout His ministry, in their futile yet constant attempts to undermine His good works.

They were the most learned and those considered the most intelligent and wisest among all the people, and yet, ironically, they were the ones who were the most stubborn and resistant to accepting the truth of the Lord. Why is that so, brothers and sisters in Christ? That is because they were blinded and impeded by their own ego and pride, their own ambition and sense of superiority, their own worldly attachments and concerns that tied them down.

No matter how many signs and miracles the Lord performed before them, it would be meaningless unless they get rid from themselves the pride and hubris, the ego and ambition in their hearts and minds. People had sinned and fallen into sin from time immemorial just as the Israelites in the past had sinned because of this great fault and sin of pride, which had ensnared so many people and prevented them from attaining salvation in God.

That is why it is worth noting the Lord’s mention of the city of Nineveh and Jonah, as well as that of the Queen of the South and king Solomon, in the same Gospel passage today. The city of Nineveh was the great capital of the mighty Assyrian Empire that had conquered hundreds of nations and peoples, and yet, when the Lord sent the prophet Jonah to their midst to proclaim their upcoming judgment and destruction, the whole city and the mighty king humbled and lowered themselves, putting on sackcloth and mourning before God.

In the same way, the Queen of the South, also known as the Queen of Sheba, who was a powerful ruler of a rich and influential country in the time of king Solomon, with vast wealth and great wisdom of her own, humbled herself before God and His chosen king Solomon, when she came to behold the greatness of God showed through Solomon, his wisdom, glory and kingdom. She paid homage to the king of Israel and praised God for His wondrous deeds.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, through what we have heard in our Scripture readings today therefore, we are reminded that pride and ego, ambition and greed, attachments to the world and material goods will earn us nothing but our own failure and downfall. The path to seek the Lord’s salvation and true happiness is by humility and faith, by love for God and by realising that we all need the Lord and need to put Him at the centre of our lives.

This is why we should also seek the Lord and be inspired by one of His faithful servants, our predecessor, namely St. Apollinaris, a bishop and martyr of the Church. St. Apollinaris was one of the earliest Church leaders and was the Bishop of Ravenna in what is today northeastern Italy. St. Apollinaris by tradition was appointed to his position by St. Peter himself and he was remembered chiefly for his leadership of the Christian people during the time when the Church was persecuted by the Roman authorities.

St. Apollinaris remained firm in his faith despite the persecutions and dedicated himself to serve the flock even in situations of danger. He cared for them and continued to minister among them, and his sufferings, arrest and trials, during which he endured many bitter sufferings and persecutions for the sake of the Lord, all these did not hinder him from giving himself to serve the Church and the faithful people of God, even unto martyrdom.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us are reminded by the faithful and good examples of St. Apollinaris and many other faithful servants of God, and through their great inspirations, all of us are called to follow the Lord and to devote ourselves as much as possible, and to entrust ourselves to the Lord, not to be prideful and filled with ego, but rather be humble and to be filled with the multitudes of God’s love and to have genuine faith and commitment towards Him in life.

May the Lord bless each and every one of us, and may He give us all the courage and strength to follow Him faithfully and to devote our time, effort and attention to walk in His path, at all times. May the Lord guide us and lead us into the right path, leading us into His greater glory, now and forevermore. Amen.

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Monday, 20 July 2020 : 16th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Apollinaris, Bishop and Martyr (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs)

Matthew 12 : 38-42

At that time, some teachers of the Law and some Pharisees spoke up, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” Jesus answered them, “An evil and unfaithful people want a sign; but no sign will be given them except the sign of the prophet Jonah. In the same way, as Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man spend three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

“At the judgment, the people of Nineveh will rise with this generation, and condemn it; because they reformed their lives at the preaching of Jonah, and here, there is greater than Jonah. At the judgment, the Queen of the South will stand up and condemn you. She came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and here, there is greater than Solomon.”

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Monday, 20 July 2020 : 16th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Apollinaris, Bishop and Martyr (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs)

Psalm 49 : 5-6, 8-9, 16bc-17, 21 and 23

I lie prostrate in the midst of lions that greedily devour people; their teeth are pointed spears and arrows; their tongues, sharpened swords. Be exalted, o God, above the heavens! Your glory be over all the earth!

Not for your sacrifices do I reprove you, for your burnt offerings are ever before Me. I need no bull from your stalls, nor he-goat from your pens.

What right have you to mouth My laws, or to talk about My covenant? You hate My commands and cast My words behind you.

Because I was silent while you did these things, you thought I was like you. But now I rebuke you and make this charge against you. Those who give with thanks offerings honour Me, but the one who walks blamelessly, I will show him the salvation of God.

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Monday, 20 July 2020 : 16th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Apollinaris, Bishop and Martyr (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs)

Micah 6 : 1-4, 6-8

Listen to what YHVH said to me, “Stand up, let the mountains hear your claim, and the hills listen to your plea.” Hear, o mountains, YHVH’s complaint! Foundations of the earth, pay attention! For YHVH has a case against His people, and will argue it with Israel.

“O My people, what have I done to you? In what way have I been a burden to you? Answer Me. I brought you out of Egypt; I rescued you from the land of bondage; I sent Moses, Aaron and Miriam to lead you.”

“What shall I bring when I come to YHVH and bow down before God the Most High? Shall I come with burnt offerings, with sacrifices of yearling calves? Will YHVH be pleased with thousands of rams, with an overabundance of oil libations? Should I offer my firstborn for my sins, the fruit of my body for my wrongdoing?”

“You have been told, o man, what is good and what YHVH requires of you : to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

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Monday, 13 July 2020 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Henry (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day as we listened to the passages of the Sacred Scriptures, we are all reminded of God’s call for us to repent from our sinful ways, to turn away from our wickedness, all the selfish attitudes we have shown all these while we embraced the ways of worldliness and sin. Through His prophets and messengers, His saints and the Church, God has called us and reminded us yet again and again to be faithful to Him.

In our first reading today, we heard from the prophet Isaiah’s words, speaking God’s intentions and will to His people, which can be summarised as such that He sought not the sacrifices and offerings, festivals and customary celebrations from His people, but rather, real love and genuine faith. He essentially wanted His people to be truthful in their faith and dedication to Him, and not be hypocrites who claimed to believe in Him and yet, acted in ways totally contrary to His teachings and ways.

The Lord has told them that what He wanted from them was real love, dedication and commitment, and not merely just empty show of faith, for it is indeed possible for one to obey the precepts of the Law but without the right intentions, or because it was merely done out of obligation and fulfilling what we considered as a mere formality. These are not what the Lord wanted, and He made it clear to His people through His prophet Isaiah, and this was because many among the people still committed sin against God and lived in state of sin despite outwardly obeying the Law.

This is similar to what the Lord Jesus also saw and encountered among the people when He came into the world, bearing the truth and Good News of salvation. Many among the people paid just lip service for God, and some among them like many among the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law became distracted with their role, misunderstanding the intention of God’s will and Law, and they made a show of their faith for praise and respect from the other people, and not because they genuinely and wholly loved God from their hearts.

And the disagreement that rose out of these led to friction and difficulties, challenges and trials facing the followers of God, that had begun even since the time of the ancient prophets, as they faced stubborn people who refused to change their ways, and ended up with them being persecuted and troubled by those who refused to accept them and listen to their truth. The same treatment would be faced and endured by the Lord and His Apostles, His disciples and followers, even as the Lord Jesus performed His ministry, and afterwards as the early Christians continued the Lord’s works.

And the Lord in today’s Gospel passage also told His disciples a kind of jarring message as He told them that whoever loved father, mother, brothers or sisters, or their loved ones and spouses more than they loved God, were not fit to become His followers. Actually what the Lord wanted to tell them and all of us was really that, not that He wanted us to abandon our family and loved ones or to hate them. On the contrary, He definitely wants us all to love our parents, our brethren, our loved ones and family members, our friends and other people. But, what is important that, beyond all these, we must love God even a lot more.

And through what He had explained and revealed, and what we have discussed today, through the readings of the Scripture we can see that being followers of Christ is not necessarily easy for us to do. There will be plenty of challenges and trials ahead, and often we may have to make choices that will put us in quandary of having to choose between God and those whom we know. But if our faith in God is genuine and strong, our commitment to Him and dedication are pure, then we will surely have the right focus and attention, that is on God and not on other things.

Today, all of us celebrate the feast of St. Henry, a great leader and a humble man before God, whom as Emperor Henry II, the Holy Roman Emperor, was the secular leader of Christendom ordained by God, and by influence, power and prestige, were probably second throughout Christendom just after the Pope, the Vicar of Christ himself. He was a great leader who was dedicated to his people and kingdom, and responsibly carried out the duties of Christian leadership placed in his hands.

He generously gave to the poor and strengthened the foundations of his realm, while at the same time, supporting the Church and its works, spreading the Christian faith far and wide, sending missionaries to pagan areas and converting many to the true faith, while consolidating the areas already under Christian rule. He established a strong relationship with the Pope and the Church, and in the meantime remaining humble and virtuous, with strong personal piety and dedication to God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, St. Henry the pious and God-loving Holy Roman Emperor is our great inspiration on how we ourselves can also be righteous and just, dedicated and committed to God. Are we willing and able to follow in his footsteps and be dedicated to God through our daily actions and interactions with one another? Let us all reflect on these, and let us be truly faithful from now on, not just merely paying lip service and empty formality, striving to be good and genuine Christians moving on with our lives.

May the Lord be with us always, and may He strengthen us all with our faith, and may He grant us His providence and with much courage to carry on living as good and faithful Christians from now on. May God bless us all and all of our good works and endeavours, inspired by the examples of our holy predecessors, the holy saints of God, especially St. Henry, our role model in faith. Amen.