Monday

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Monday, 17 July 2017 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Matthew 10 : 34 – Matthew 11 : 1

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “Do not think that I have come to establish peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. Each one will have as enemies, those of one’s own family.”

“Whoever loves father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me. And whoever loves son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me. And whoever does not take up his cross and follow Me, is not worthy of Me. Whoever finds his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life, for My sake, will find it.”

“Whoever welcomes you, welcomes Me; and whoever welcomes Me, welcomes Him Who sent Me. The one who welcomes a prophet, as a prophet, will receive the reward of a prophet; the one who welcomes a just man, because he is a just man, will receive the reward of a just man.”

“And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones, because he is My disciple, I assure you, he will not go unrewarded.”

When Jesus had finished giving His twelve disciples these instructions, He went on from there to teach and proclaim His message in their towns.

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Monday, 17 July 2017 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 123 : 1-3, 4-6, 7-8

Had not YHVH been on our side – let Israel say – had not YHVH been on our side, when people rose up against us, then, they would have swallowed us alive; such was their anger against us.

A bit more, and the flood would have engulfed us; the torrent would have swept over us; the raging waters would have swept us away. Blessed be YHVH, Who did not let us be devoured.

Like a bird, our soul escaped from the snare of the fowler; the snare that was broken and we were freed. Our help is in the Name of YHVH, Who made heaven and earth.

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Monday, 17 July 2017 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Exodus 1 : 8-14, 22

Then a new king who had not known Joseph came to power and said to his people, “The Israelites are more numerous and stronger than we are. Let us deal warily with them lest they increase still more and, in case of war, side with our enemy, fight against us and escape from the land.”

So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labour. In that way they built the storage towns of Pithom and Rameses. But the more they oppressed the Hebrews the more they increased and spread, until the Egyptians dreaded the Israelites and became ruthless in making them work. They made life bitter for them in hard labour with bricks and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields. In all their work the Egyptians treated them harshly.

Pharaoh then gave this order to all the people : “Every infant boy born to the Hebrews must be thrown into the Nile, but every girl may live.”

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Monday, 10 July 2017 : 14th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard the story of the Lord Jesus and how He healed the woman who had suffered from continuous bleeding for the past twelve years of her life. The Lord healed her because she believed in Him and in the power of healing which came from Him, and she went to great length in order to seek out that healing.

Then in the first reading today, God showed Himself to Jacob in a dream, showing him a vision of a great stairway to heaven, revealing His glory to him. He introduced Himself as the God of his fathers and forefathers, as the One Who had established a covenant with Abraham, Jacob’s grandfather. He reiterated the covenant which He had established with His servant Abraham, that He would bless him and his descendants forever, and would grant them the promise of the land in which he and his descendants were living in.

In this story, God showed His faithfulness and adherence to His covenant and promise which He had made with His faithful servant. In return, He wants us to also be faithful to the covenant, for all of us are the descendants of Abraham by faith. Jacob was touched by God’s love and kindness, and he promised that if God would bring him back to the land, he and his descendants will serve Him forever. Jacob was then fleeing the land because he has tricked Esau his brother, and stole his inheritance and blessing.

And if we read on the next part of the Book of Genesis, we can see how God guided Jacob through those difficult times, giving him not just many wealth and cattle, livestock and property, but also giving him a family and his many children, eventually guiding him back to the land of his forefathers and reuniting him with his father Isaac as well as his brother Esau.

Through these stories, all of us ought to realise just how much God loves each and every one of us. He is always ever faithful to us, even though we have often betrayed Him, wronged Him and left Him behind for other gods, idols and all the other distractions which kept us away from being able to be faithful to God. From time to time, He always seek to reconcile Himself with His people, calling them to repentance and to be forgiven.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us ought to realise that every one of us are afflicted with disease, the disease of our souls, and this is the disease of our sins. Even though all of us may be perfectly healthy in our physical beings, flesh and bodies, but sin has corrupted us, in our souls, hearts and minds, essentially our whole being. Sin is caused by our disobedience against God, and by our refusal to be faithful to His covenant with us.

And thus, that is why we suffer, brothers and sisters in Christ. We suffer as how the woman had suffered from her physical bleeding, filled with pain and sorrow. For us, it is a spiritual bleeding, the spiritual suffering caused by our sins, which led to a separation from God’s love and grace. But God is willing to welcome us back, and He did nothing less than giving Himself to us, making Himself available to us, through Jesus Christ, His Son.

He has touched many people, healing them from their afflictions, including that of the woman with bleeding problems. He has saved Jacob from his troubles and helped him to go through the difficult years of his life, and brought him back to his homeland with joy. In the same manner therefore, He has also endeavoured to heal us from the afflictions of our sins.

How did He do this, brothers and sisters in Christ? He has come into this world in order to save us, by nothing else than His sacrifice on the cross. He bore with Himself all of our afflictions, all of our sins and faults, and took them all up to the cross. As He hung from the cross, He showed us all the ultimate love and commitment which God had for us all, establishing a new Covenant of love with us.

Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, if our God has loved us so much, and has done so much for us mankind, then should we not indeed seek Him with all of our efforts and strength? Should we not spend our lives and effort to be reconciled with Him and to be forgiven for all of our sins which have caused us to be separated from Him? Let us be inspired by the example of the woman with the bleeding problem, whose faith in the Lord was so great that she tried her best to look for Him for healing, and indeed, she was healed because of her great faith.

Let us all go towards the Lord, our ever loving and merciful God, with a contrite heart and a sincere desire to be forgiven and to be healed from our sins and wickedness before it is too late for us. Let us not wait until the time of our death, which we will never ever know, before seeking God’s mercy, and then realising that it is already too late for us, and hellfire is our only future. May God continue to remind us of this fact, and may He forgive us our sins when we seek Him with genuine, contrite hearts. Amen.

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Monday, 10 July 2017 : 14th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Matthew 9 : 18-26

At that time, while Jesus was speaking to the disciples of John and the Pharisees, an official of the synagogue came up to Him, bowed before Him and said, “My daughter has just died, but come and place Your hands on her, and she will live.”

Jesus stood up and followed him with His disciples. Then a woman, who had suffered from a severe bleeding for twelve years, came up from behind and touched the edge of His cloak; for she thought, “If I only touch His cloak, I will be healed.”

Jesus turned, saw her and said, “Courage, my daughter, your faith has saved you.” And from that moment, the woman was cured. When Jesus arrived at the official’s house and saw the flute players and the excited crowd, He said, “Get out of here! The girl is not dead. She is only sleeping!” And they laughed at Him.

But once the crowd had been turned out, Jesus went in and took the girl by the hand, and she stood up. The news of this spread through the whole area.

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Monday, 10 July 2017 : 14th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 90 : 1-2, 3-4, 14-15ab

You, who dwell in the shelter of the Most High, who rest in the shadow of the Almighty, say to YHVH, “My Stronghold, my Refuge, my God in Whom I trust!”

He will rescue you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with His pinions and give you refuge under His wings.

“Because they cling to Me, I will rescue them,” says YHVH. “I will protect those who know My Name. When they call to Me, I will answer; in time of trouble, I will be with them.”

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Monday, 10 July 2017 : 14th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Genesis 28 : 10-22a

Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place the sun had set and he spent the night there. He took one of the stones that were there and using it as a pillow, he lay down to sleep.

While Jacob was sleeping, he had a dream in which a ladder stood on the earth with its top reaching to heaven and on it were Angels of God going up and coming down. And YHVH was standing there near him and said, “I am YHVH, the God of your father, Abraham, and the God of Isaac. The land on which you sleep, I give to you and your descendants.”

“Your descendants will be numerous like the specks of dust of the earth and you will spread out to the west and the east, to the north and the south. Through you and your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed. See, I am with you and I will keep you safe wherever you go. I will bring you back to this land and not leave you until I have done what I promised.”

Jacob woke from his dream and said, “Truly YHVH was in this place and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How full of awe is this place! It is nothing less than a house of God; it is the Gate to Heaven!” Then Jacob rose early and took the stone he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He named that place Bethel although before that it was called Luz.

Then Jacob made a vow, “If YHVH will be with me and keep me safe during this journey I am making, if He gives me bread to eat and clothes to wear, and if I return in peace to my father’s house, then YHVH will be my God. This stone which I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house.”

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Monday, 3 July 2017 : Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate the feast of one of the Holy Apostles, namely St. Thomas the Apostle, known also as the Twin and who was famous for his doubt of the Lord’s resurrection, and wanted a proof of it before he believed in Jesus, the Risen Christ. He had always been the skeptical one among the Apostles, as he sarcastically remarked when the Lord Jesus was about to go to Jerusalem for the final time before His Passion and death, that ‘let us all follow Him to our death!’.

We may be wondering, why did Jesus call St. Thomas to be His Apostle, to be the one to whom He entrusted His Church, if this Apostle of His has doubted Him so much and had been so skeptical about Him? But that is where we need to realise that when God called His disciples and Apostles, He called all those whom He deemed to be worthy, and not those who have deemed themselves to be worthy and faithful.

Let us ask ourselves, are we not the same as St. Thomas as well? Are we not like Him at times, doubting our God and not realising that we have done so? How many times has it been in our lives that we have questioned God’s love and decision for us? We are just like St. Thomas in our ways, and just like the other disciples and Apostles whom Jesus had called, all sinners alike before God and men.

God came to call all those who have sinned and lived in the darkness, that they may come into the light, and that was how He approached the prostitutes and tax collectors, people who have been sinning before God, and those whom the people had considered to be worthy to be saved. But God showed forth His love and called all of them to be His disciples, to be healed from their sins and faults, and to be reconciled with God.

St. Thomas himself did not doubt any longer, and believed from then on wholeheartedly. It was told by sacred tradition that St. Thomas travelled to many places evangelising among the pagan peoples, spreading the Good News to them, particularly what is now the southern parts of India, where even until today, thriving Christian communities can be found, as the so-called ‘St. Thomas Christians’ who preserved the faith given to them through St. Thomas the Apostle.

And St. Thomas himself would go on to die in martyrdom defending his faith against those who opposed his good works and evangelisation. From a doubter of the Lord and from a feeble faith, God had transformed the faith of St. Thomas into one that was firm and true, to the point that he was even ready to lay down his life for the sake of the Lord and standing true to his faith.

Otherwise, how we would explain his hard work and effort, and the thriving Christian communities which he had established two millennia ago and yet still thriving even until this very day? All those Christians did not come about from nothing, but through the effort and the hard works of the Apostles and their successors, from all the faith and hard work done by St. Thomas the Apostle, a doubter turned a firm believer of Christ.

Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us must realise that the works of St. Thomas, the Apostles and all the disciples of the Lord are yet incomplete, as the commands of the Lord still stand true even to this day. He has commanded all of them to go forth to all the nations and to preach the Good News to all the peoples, calling them to repentance and to accept the Lord as their Saviour and their God.

Let us all therefore be exemplary in all of our words, actions and deeds, be filled with love and joy in all of them, truly showing everyone that we really are faithful people of God, who completely place our trust in Him, and who walk in His path without hesitation and doubt. Let us ask the Lord to strengthen our faith in Him, especially when we are faced with challenges, with difficulties, temptations and doubt. St. Thomas the Apostle, pray for us always, pray that we will be strong in faith. Amen.

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Monday, 3 July 2017 : Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red
John 20 : 24-29

At that time, Thomas, the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with the other Eleven when Jesus came. The other disciples told Him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he replied, “Until I have seen in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in His side, I will not believe.”

Eight days later, the disciples were again inside the house and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you!” Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see My hands; stretch out your hand, and put it into My side. Do not continue in your unbelief, but believe!”

Thomas said, “You are my Lord and my God.” Jesus replied, “You believe because you see Me, do you not? Happy are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

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Monday, 3 July 2017 : Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Psalm 116 : 1, 2

Alleluia! Praise YHVH, all you nations; all you peoples, praise Him.

How great is His love for us! His faithfulness lasts forever.