Monday

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Monday, 14 December 2015 : 3rd Week of Advent, Memorial of St. John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Numbers 24 : 2-7, 15-17a

Balaam looked up and saw Israel camping, tribe by tribe; and the Spirit of God came upon him and he uttered his song : “Word of Balaam, son of Beor, the seer, the one who hears the words of God, and beholds the vision of the Almighty, in ecstasy, with eyes unveiled.”

“How goodly are your tents, Jacob, your encampments, Israel! Like valleys stretching far, like gardens beside a stream, like aloes planted by YHVH, like cedars beside the waters. His buckets are overflowing and His seeds are always watered. His King becomes stronger than Agag, and His kingdom grows.”

“Word of Balaam, son of Beor, the seer, the one who hears the words of God, who has knowledge from the Most High, and sees the vision of the Almighty, in ecstasy, with eyes unveiled.”

“I see a Figure, but not really. I behold Him but not near. A Star shall come forth from Jacob.”

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Monday, 7 December 2015 : 2nd Week of Advent, Memorial of St. Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day from our first reading taken from the Book of the prophet Isaiah, we heard about how God will bless His people who were downtrodden, afflicted, and who had been brought low. God will not abandon His beloved people to the darkness, and He will heal those who have been afflicted and make them whole once again.

We know that the prophet Isaiah lived during turbulent times in the history of the people of God, at the time when the northern kingdom of Israel had just been subjugated and conquered by the Assyrians, and many of its people brought into exile in distant and foreign lands. The same fate would eventually also come to the southern kingdom of Judah, where the people there too would be carted off into exile by their Babylonian conquerors.

Lest these people forgot about their Lord or thought that they had been abandoned and forgotten by their God, the prophet Isaiah reminded them that God Who is ever loving and Who always loves us will always care for them and His beloved ones throughout the ages, and He will succour and bless them accordingly. He shall not allow us who are faithful to be overlooked and forgotten.

And in the Gospel today, we witnessed the perfect manifestation of God’s love which He had spoken and which He had revealed through the prophets. In Jesus Christ, the Son of God, He showed Himself in the fullness of His love, that by healing of the paralytic man, He showed His might and authority, in absolving His beloved ones from their afflictions, both of the body and of the spirit.

For as we witnessed in that Gospel passage, we saw how God made it clear to the dissident Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, who refused to listen to the Lord and to His truth, that in Him alone lies the healing and the salvation, and in Him alone lies the authority to forgive sins, that is none other than the disease and affliction of our souls.

And through Jesus, the paralytic could walk again, the blind could see again, the deaf could hear again, the mute could speak again, and most importantly, the sinners were forgiven of their sins and made pure and clean once again. We have to realise that out of all those afflictions, none of those that afflict the body is lasting and can bring us eternal harm, except that of sin.

Did we know that sin is a disease and an affliction upon us? It is a disease that slowly corrupts and destroys our souls, our minds, our hearts and eventually our bodies and our whole beings as well. And ever since mankind first disobeyed the Lord, the sin of disobedience entered into our hearts, and we have sinned ever since, whether be it small or significant sins.

What we have to understand is that in God we can find the healing and the redemption from all of our sins, the healing that will make us whole again and remove from us the taint of darkness that had kept us separated from God. But in order to do this, we have to really commit ourselves to Him, and we have to strive and persevere to lead a worthy life from now on, sinning no more, but devoting ourselves fully to the way of the Lord.

Today, we commemorate the feast of St. Ambrose, one of the great fathers of the Church, one of the original Doctors of the Church, an important pillar of the Church especially in those areas which were then under the Western Roman Empire. He was the longtime Bishop of Milan, a very devout and courageous servant of God, who did not even fear the secular authorities and the forces of the world as he went about carrying out his mission.

St. Ambrose was once a secular official, a governor of the region which now encompasses the city of Milan and the surrounding areas, until at that time, the Arian and heretical bishop of Milan died, and a successor was required. As both the heretics and the faithful factions of the Church were unable to find a consensus on the candidate suitable, the choice fell to St. Ambrose who was acclaimed by the faithful as the new Bishop of Milan.

St. Ambrose immediately cast himself into the role he had been appointed to, and he championed the cause of the orthodox teachings of the Church, banishing and casting out all of the heretics from the governance and guidance in the Church, and imploring them to repent and to change their ways, and eventually many did repent and be forgiven of their trespasses in espousing heresy against God and His Church.

He even went up against the Empress Justina, who was known to be a follower of the Arian heresy, and implored her to change her ways, and when she refused and tried to depose St. Ambrose, St. Ambrose publicly chastised her in front of the faithful, and he persevered in maintaining the truth in God’s Church. And on another occasion, when the Roman Emperor Theodosius erred by instigating a great massacre of peoples in the city of Thessalonica, St. Ambrose excommunicated the Emperor and would not allow him to receive the Sacraments until he publicly repented for his sins and made a public confession.

In this, as we see the examples of St. Ambrose, we see how God showed His mercy to us through His many good servants, the prophets, the Apostles, the disciples of Christ, our bishops and priests. To the latter, God had, through His Apostles, gave the power and the authority to forgive sins, that through them and their works, they might absolve a people still living in sin and darkness.

But forgiveness does not come without repentance, and this is a fact that we must always remember. We cannot expect the forgiveness for our sins if we do not commit ourselves to change our ways and to devote ourselves to the Lord. The paralytic man was healed, and many other people Jesus had healed, was healed because they desired to be healed and they wanted to make that commitment to not sin anymore and to lead a good life from then on.

Therefore, during this season of Advent, let it be a time for us all to change ourselves, to be a better person, sinning no more but from now on be a faithful and committed disciple and follower of our God. Let us use this time of preparation, to prepare ourselves to celebrate Christmas with true joy and devotion, that we will always put Christ at the centre of everything, at the centre of our focus and celebrations. God be with us all, now and forever. Amen.

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Monday, 7 December 2015 : 2nd Week of Advent, Memorial of St. Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Luke 5 : 17-26

At that time, one day, Jesus was teaching, and many Pharisees and teachers of the Law had come from every part of Galilee and Judea, and even from Jerusalem. They were sitting there, while the power of the Lord was at work to heal the sick.

Then some men brought a paralysed man who lay on his mat. They tried to enter the house to place him before Jesus, but they could not find a way through the crowd. So they went up on the roof, and removing the tiles, they lowered him on his mat into the middle of the crowd, in front of Jesus.

When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the man, “My friend, your sins are forgiven.” At once the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees began to wonder, “This Man insults God! Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”

But Jesus knew their thoughts and asked them, “Why are you reacting like this? Which is easier to say : ‘Your sins are forgiven’ or ‘Get up and walk?’ Now you shall know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”

And Jesus said to the paralysed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” At once the man stood before them. He took up the mat he had been lying on, and went home praising God. Amazement seized the people and they praised God. They were filled with a holy fear, and said, “What wonderful things we have seen today!”

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Monday, 7 December 2015 : 2nd Week of Advent, Memorial of St. Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 84 : 9ab-10, 11-12, 13-14

Would that I hear God’s proclamation, that He promise peace to His people, His saints – lest they come back to their folly. Yet His salvation is near to those who fear Him, and His Glory will dwell in our land.

Love and faithfulness have met, righteousness and peace have embraced. Faithfulness will reach up from the earth, while justice bends down from heaven.

The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its fruit. Justice will go before Him, and peace will follow along His path.

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Monday, 7 December 2015 : 2nd Week of Advent, Memorial of St. Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Isaiah 35 : 1-10

Let the wilderness and the arid land rejoice, the desert be glad and blossom. Concerned with flowers, it sings and shouts with joy, adorned with the splendour of Lebanon, the magnificence of Carmel and Sharon. They, my people, see the glory of YHVH, the majesty of our God.

Give vigour to weary hands and strength to enfeebled knees. Say to those who are afraid : “Have courage, do not fear. See, your God comes, demanding justice. He is the God who rewards, the God Who comes to save you.”

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unsealed. Then will the lame leap as a hart and the tongue of the dumb sing and shout. For water will break out in the wilderness and streams gush forth from the desert. The thirsty ground will become a pool, the arid land springs of water.

In the haunts where once reptiles lay, grass will grow with reeds and rushes. There will be a highway which will be called the Way of Holiness; no one unclean will pass over it nor any wicked fool stray there. No lion will be found there mor any beast of prey. Only the redeemed will walk there.

For the ransomed of YHVH will return : with everlasting joy upon their heads, they will come to Zion singing, gladness and joy marching with them, while sorrow and sighing flee away.

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Monday, 30 November 2015 : Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle, Feast Day of the Church of Constantinople (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Apostle Andrew, St. Andrew the First-Called, known as such because he was among the first of the Apostles to be called by the Lord, as we heard the story in the Gospel passage of today, where Jesus called him and his brother Peter from their job as fishermen on the shores of the Lake of Galilee.

St. Andrew was the brother of St. Peter, who would later be the one to establish many churches and structure of the Universal Church in many places, and in the end became the first Bishop of Rome, and also as the first Pope as he was given the authority by the Lord to be the chief shepherd and the leader of all His faithful ones. St. Andrew himself went on to establish his own dioceses and churches, and the most famous and lasting one is the Church of the city of Constantinople, then known as Byzantium.

St. Andrew would become the patron of that city and as its first bishop, and as that city grew in importance, and especially after the Roman Emperor Constantine, the very first Christian Emperor and the one to rescind the persecution against the faithful, conquered the whole Empire and chose the site if Byzantium to be his new capital city, the city he named after himself as Constantinople, to be the site of New and Second Rome.

And thus from then on, the episcopal see of St. Andrew, the See of Constantinople rose in prominence and importance until it became second in importance only after the See of Rome. And the Patriarchate that grew from Constantinople, patronised by St. Andrew, would become eventually a great Church that helped to spread the Faith to many peoples in what is now Eastern Europe, and as the centre of the Eastern half of Christianity.

It is therefore with a sense of great regret that we now exist as a divided and shattered Church, where the Universal authority of St. Peter of Rome was not recognised and acknowledged by the successors of St. Andrew, his brother, as since about a thousand years ago, due to the worldly ambitions of the then Patriarch of Constantinople, the See of Constantinople tore itself apart from the Universal Church, a division that we now seek to heal and restore.

Therefore, today, on the feast of the faithful and devoted St. Andrew, brother of the first Vicar of Christ, who shared with him the blood of martyrdom and in the defense of his Faith in God, having both been tortured, incarcerated and crucified as the chief disciples and Apostles of our Lord, we pray that firstly the Church established by St. Andrew will be reunited to the whole Universal Church under the primacy, supremacy and leadership authority of the Pope, whose authority extends over the entire Church and over all the faithful without exception, as the Vicar of our Lord Himself.

And then, let us also pray for ourselves, as the examples of the Holy Apostles and disciples of Christ should have made us to realise that there are still so many of the works which they have initiated that are still left undone and incomplete. And if we look carefully and listen to what St. Paul had exhorted the faithful in Rome in our first reading taken from his Epistle to the Romans, then we should know what is to be expected from us.

Yes, St. Paul reminded that salvation cannot come to the people of God unless they believe in the Lord God Who saved them from sin and death, but they cannot believe before someone bring to them the truth and the wholeness of the Good News, and while the Good News is already there, but without someone to convey the message and the truth, no one would know and thus no one will be saved.

This is the fact that all of us should understand and know, and we have to realise that God has not just called the Apostles to be His bearers of the Good News of His salvation, but in fact, He has called even all of us, all of us here living in this world today, many years after the time of the Apostles, to continue their good works and missions, following in their footsteps and in the examples of their successors.

Let us all therefore on this day, ask for the intercession of the Holy Apostles, particularly that of St. Andrew, that through us and through our works, we may bring light into the world, and also unite all the faithful ones of the Lord, especially those who have separated themselves from the unity of the Church under His Vicar. Let us all pray for the unity of all Christians and for the conversion of the whole world. Amen.

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Monday, 30 November 2015 : Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle, Feast Day of the Church of Constantinople (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Matthew 4 : 18-22

At that time, as Jesus walked by the lake of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. He said to them, “Come, follow Me, and I will make you fish for people.”

At once they left their nets and followed Him. He went on from there and saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John in a boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. Jesus called them. At once they left the boat and their father and followed Him.

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Monday, 30 November 2015 : Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle, Feast Day of the Church of Constantinople (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Psalm 18 : 2-3, 4-5

The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament proclaims the work of His hands. Day talks it over with day; night hands on the knowledge to night.

No speech, no words, no voice is heard – but the call goes on throughout the universe, the message is felt to the ends of the earth.

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Monday, 30 November 2015 : Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle, Feast Day of the Church of Constantinople (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Romans 10 : 9-18

You are saved if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and in your heart you believe that God raised Him from the dead. By believing from the heart, you obtain true righteousness; by confessing the faith with your lips you are saved.

For Scripture says : ‘No one who believes in Him will be ashamed.’ Here there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; all have the same Lord, Who is very generous with whoever calls on Him. Truly, all who call upon the Name of the Lord will be saved.

But how can they call upon the Name of the Lord without having believed in Him? And how can they believe in Him without having first heard about Him? And how will they hear about Him if no one preaches about Him? And how will they preach about Him if no one sends them?

As Scripture says : ‘How beautiful are the feet of the messenger of Good News.’ Although not everyone obeyed the Good News, as Isaiah said : ‘Lord, who has believed in our preaching?’ So, faith comes from preaching, and preaching is rooted in the word of Christ.

I ask : Have the Jews not heard? But of course they have. Because the voice of those preaching resounded all over the earth and their voice was heard to the ends of the world.

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Monday, 23 November 2015.: 34th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Clement I, Pope and Martyr and St. Columban, Abbot (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs) or White (Abbots)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about the Scripture readings which highlighted the fact that giving should come from the heart, and that from a purity of heart, one can give enormously in terms of the righteousness and light that emanates from those who are righteous, just and good in the eyes of the Lord.

In the first reading, we heard the beginning of the narrative of the story of Daniel the prophet and servant of God, who was called and chosen from among the many exiles of Israel at the time of their Babylonian exile, and he was blessed by God, for his faith and devotion to God, through his never ending commitment to the ways of the Lord, and God blessed him to show an example to the nations that He is the one and only True God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the choice facing Daniel and his friends are the same choices which all of us are facing on daily basis. It is a choice between following the way of righteousness of our Lord, following His commandments and laws, and obeying all the tenets and precepts as taught by the Sacred Scriptures. The other option is for us to disobey the Lord and follow our own desires, living without the bounds of the Law.

It is a choice for us whether we lead a life filled with the purity of love, of care for others, commitment to peace and harmony between peoples and nations, and leading a life filled with faith and joy knowing that we have lived in accordance to God and His words, or we can choose to live a life filled with the worldly pleasures of gluttony and greed, of hatred and jealousy, of insatiable desire and selfishness.

And in this, we should heed the examples of the poor widow as shown and told by our Lord Jesus Himself, as He related the parable to His disciples, about a poor widow who even though gave only two pieces of small coins, but she sincerely gave them for the Lord, without even worrying about what she would do without these coins which would be essential for her own livelihood and survival.

Jesus did not mean to mark a difference or distinguish between the rich and the poor, between the privileged and those who have little or none. On the other hand, He wanted to point out that to have faith in the Lord require much effort and much devotion, commitment and hard work on our part, by giving of ourselves unconditionally and with complete confidence in God.

Many of us are often distracted by the many worldly goods and things that kept us away from truly being able to give ourselves fully to the Lord, and many of these things tempted us away from the true goal that is to reach out to salvation in our Lord. It is in our nature to be easily lured away and tempted by these pleasures and goods of the world, which the evil one is using to his full advantage to prevent us from being saved and fall into damnation.

Therefore, all of us ought to follow the examples of the two saints, faithful men whose lives are an inspiration to us all, namely the lives of St. Columban the Abbot, and Pope St. Clement I, one of the first Popes and a martyr of the Holy Church and a defender of his Faith in God. Both of these saints have lived through times both good and evil, and they have lived their lives faithfully and had had their faith tested through many trials.

Pope St. Clement I was one of the first Bishops of Rome, the successors of St. Peter the Apostle, the first Pope and Vicar of Christ. As the leader of both the growing local Church in the heart of the Roman Empire and as the leader of the whole Universal Church, Pope St. Clement I toiled and laboured hard for the sake of the Lord, and for the sake of His people.

He wrote extensively, and in His many writings, He encouraged the faithful of the Church all over the world to follow closely to the teachings of Christ found in the Church, and amidst persecutions of the faithful, he continued to inspire many of the people of God to walk courageously in faith, and he led by example, when he himself was arrested and imprisoned, he continued to defend his faith in God passionately. Yes, even unto death.

Meanwhile, St. Columban was a religious monk whose life was truly exemplary, filled with prayers and great spiritual focus on the Lord. He advocated the faithful to be true to their faith, and seek to be forgiven from their sins and mistakes through the use of confession by priests. He was one of the first to encourage regular confession before priests to ensure that our souls are clean from the taints of sin.

These two holy men led an example through their own respective lives, and there are many things which they had done that we can also emulate for ourselves. Indeed, let us all heed their examples, and show the same actions in our own lives as well. It is time for us to commit ourselves more to the Lord and walk ever more faithfully in His ways. May God be with us all, and may through the intercession of Pope St. Clement I and St. Columban the Abbot, we may be brought closer to God’s holy presence. Amen.