Matthew 8 : 18-22
When He saw the crowd press around Him, Jesus gave orders to cross to the other shore. A teacher of the Law approached Him and said, “Master, I will follow You wherever You go.” Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”
Another disciple said to Him, “Lord, let me go and bury my father first.” But Jesus answered him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
Psalm 102 : 1-2, 3-4, 8-9, 10-11
Bless the Lord, my soul; all my being, bless His Holy Name! Bless the Lord, my soul, and do not forget all His kindness.
He forgives all your sins and heals all your sickness; He redeems your life from destruction and crowns you with love and compassion.
The Lord is gracious and merciful, abounding in love and slow to anger; He will not always scold nor will He be angry forever.
He does not treat us according to our sins, nor does He punish us as we deserve. As the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His love for those fearing Him.
Genesis 18 : 16-33
The men went away and turned towards Sodom. Abraham walked with them to set them on their way. And YHVH said, “Can I conceal from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham, in fact, is going to become a great and powerful nation and through him all the nations of the earth will be blessed, for I have chosen him to command his sons and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that YHVH may bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.”
Then YHVH said, “How great is the cry for justice against Sodom and Gomorrah! And how grievous is their sin! I am going down to see if they have done all that they are charged with in the outcry that has reached Me. If it is not so, I will know.”
The men with Him turned away and went towards Sodom, but YHVH remained standing before Abraham. Abraham went forward and said, “Will You really let the just perish with the wicked? Perhaps there are fifty good people in the town. Are You really going to let them perish? Would You not spare the place for the sake of these fifty righteous people? It would not be at all like You to do such a thing and You cannot let the good perish with the wicked, nor treat the good and the wicked alike. Far be it from You! Will not the Judge of all the earth be just?”
YHVH said, “If I find fifty good people in Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
Abraham spoke up again, “I know that I am very bold to speak like this to my Lord, I who am only dust and ashes! But perhaps the number of the good is five less than fifty. Will You destroy the town because of five?”
YHVH replied, “I will not destroy the town if I find forty-five good people there.”
Again Abraham said to Him, “Perhaps there will be only forty.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.”
Abraham went on, saying, “May my Lord not be angry, but let me speak. Maybe only thirty good people will be found in the town.” YHVH answered, “I will not destroy it if I find thirty there.”
Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to my Lord, what if only twenty can be found?” He said, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy the place.”
But Abraham insisted, “May my Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found?” And YHVH answered, “For the sake of ten good people, I will not destroy Sodom.”
When YHVH had finished speaking with Abraham, He left and Abraham went home.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, our God loves us, and He loves all of us so much that He is willing to save all of us from the damnation of hell. He sent us His only Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Saviour, the One who redeemed us from the sins of our forefathers, from their rebellion against the love of God. Through Him we are saved, if we accept Him as our Lord, and His free offer of salvation to all of us.
To prepare for the Messiah, the Lord sent His messenger, in the person of John the Baptist, the precursor and the preparer of the way for Christ. His dedication to the mission for which he had been chosen for, and his tireless work had indeed straightened the way for Christ and paved the way for salvation.
Today we celebrate the feast of this great messenger of God and saint, John the Baptist, whose baptisms called the people back towards the Lord through repentance. Repentance allowed the people to set their hearts and minds right, so that they would be in the correct state of heart and mind to be receptive of the Lord and His message that is brought by none other than Christ, His Son and our Saviour.
St. John the Baptist had dedicated his whole life to the Lord, as someone set aside for the works of God, through whose hands God had worked His wonders to the people of Israel, the last of the prophets before the coming of the Messiah, who would eventually liberate God’s people from the tyranny of evil, sin, and therefore death.
God is faithful, and He remembered His covenant that He made with Abraham years ago, with the promise He had made that the descendants of Abraham, all of us, will be fruitful, and will be blessed. Even when the descendants of Abraham, as shown through Israel did not stay faithful entirely to the Lord, but fell into rebellion, in the similar way as their forefathers, God did not give up on us, just as He did not give up on mankind after the disobedience of Adam and Eve, our first ancestors.
We are all precious to God, so precious that despite the covenant broken by our rebellion and our stubbornness against God’s love and compassion, He was willing to forge a new covenant with all of us, and this covenant will never be broken, because this covenant is not made just by God’s words alone, but sealed with none other than the Most Precious Blood of the Lamb of God, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who shed His blood from up there on the cross, flowing from His holy wounds, pierced by our sins and our rebellion.
St. John the Baptist had a great part to play in this plan of salvation, not only as the one who helped to bring God’s mission to perfection, and helped to convert many to the cause of the Lord through repentance, but also through his direct role in the initiation of Jesus’ ministry on this world. Through his baptism of Christ on the Jordan, he initiated Christ on His ministry, which began after that baptism, when the Lord proclaimed to the world, that Jesus is indeed His Son, and that His favour is on Him.
His humility that he showed when he declared the identity of Christ to his own disciples, so that He would increase while John himself would decrease in importance is an example for all of us, that whenever we do things, let us remember that we should do it for the greater glory of God, and not to our own personal human glory, and seek the praise of the Lord, and not the praise of man.
We can follow the many examples of Saint John the Baptist, my dear brothers and sisters, that we should emulate him in our lives. To love and serve the Lord with all our hearts, with all our minds, and with all our being, that we truly become the children of God, and people beloved by the Lord our God. May the Lord guide us at all times in our lives, that we will not be led astray in our path towards Him. God bless us all. Amen.
Luke 1 : 57-66, 80
When the time came for Elizabeth, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbours and relatives heard that the merciful Lord had done a wonderful thing or her, and they rejoiced with her.
When, on the eighth day, they came to attend the circumcision of the child, they wanted to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, “Not so; he shall be called John.” They said to her, “But no one in your family has that name!” and they asked the father, by means of signs, for the name he wanted to give him.
Zechariah asked for a writing tablet, and wrote on it, “His name is John,” and they were very surprised. Immediately Zechariah could speak again, and his first words were in praise of God. A holy fear came on all in the neighbourhood, and throughout the hill country of Judea the people talked about these events.
All who heard of it pondered in their minds, and wondered. “What will this child be?” For they understood that the hand of the Lord was with him.
Acts 13 : 22-26
After that time, God removed Saul and raised up David as king, to whom He bore witness saying : ‘I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all I want him to do.’ It is from the descendants of David that God has now raised up the promised Saviour of Israel, Jesus.
Before He appeared, John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for all the people of Israel. As John was ending his life’s work, he said : ‘I am not what you think I am, for after me another One is coming whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.’
Brothers, children and descendants of Abraham, and you also who fear God, it is to you that this message of salvation has been sent.
Psalm 138 : 1-3, 13-14ab, 14c-15
O Lord, You know me : You have scrutinised me. You know when I sit and when I rise; beforehand You discern my thoughts. You observe my activities and times of rest; You are familiar with all my ways.
It was You who formed my inmost part and knit me together in my mother’s womb. I thank You for these wonders You have done.
My heart praises You for Your marvellous deeds. Even my bones were known to You when I was being formed in secret, fashioned in the depths of the earth.
Isaiah 49 : 1-6
Listen to me, o islands, pay attention, peoples from distant lands. YHVH called me from my mother’s womb; He pronounced my name before I was born. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword. He hid me in the shadow of His hand. He made me into a polished arrow set apart in His quiver. He said to me, “You are Israel, My servant, through you I will be known.”
“I have laboured in vain,” I thought and spent my strength for nothing.” Yet what is due me was in the hand of YHVH, and my reward was with my God. I am important in the sight of YHVH, and my God is my strength. And now YHVH has spoken, He who formed me in the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob back to Him.
He said : “It is not enough that you be my servant, to restore the tribes of Jacob, to bring back the remnant of Israel, I will make you the light of the nations, that My salvation will reach to the ends of the earth.”
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we learn how to be true followers and disciples of the Lord through our own deeds and actions. That we reflect in our actions love and compassion that is of the Lord, and do not promote violence and hatred. People then can recognise the presence of God within us, and will know that we belong to the Lord, and may then follow Him themselves, inspired by what they have seen within us.
The reference to the ‘eye for an eye’ and ‘tooth for a tooth’, was the ancient Law of Israel, contained in the Law of Moses, given to the people of Israel during the Exodus. The Law entitled those to whom had been afflicted, an equal retribution to what had been afflicted on someone. While this seems to be a just decision, but it can cause a perpetuation of hatred and violence if misused, as what had most certainly happened over the centuries of the usage of that Law.
If we misuse the Law, and perpetuate hatred with that Law, by the means of unending cycles of revenge brought by the demand for equal punishment for those who made faults upon us, then we are no longer children of God, because God is good and He is love. Instead, we become the children of the devil, because the devil represents destruction, hatred, and violence, represented in the misused law of justice, turned into a mockery of revenge.
Instead, we must be courageous to break away from that cycle of evil, of hatred, of vengeance, and of violence, by committing ourselves steadfastly in the ways of the Lord, in that of love, compassion, and kindness. We should be ready to forgive others when they made mistakes to us, and even when they hurt us, because when we hurt someone back because they hurt us, that will cause a lasting enmity which may simply continue without end, and will end up causing even more problems in the future.
We need to show that we belong to God, and that we reflect the works of the Holy Spirit through our words, actions, and deeds, and not belonging instead to the devil, who works ceaselessly to deceive God’s children and bring them into the pit of falsehood through the means of the world’s temptations that would ensnare the weak-hearted and those without a strong faith in God.
That is why we need to fortify ourselves through our faith, and by living that faith, through good deeds and actions, anchored and based in the Lord, that we reflect Him in all the things that we do. By having a firm anchor in God, we will not be easily led astray and therefore, will not fall into temptation of evil, and will not follow him into the path of evil, that is revenge, seeking vengeance, hatred, and perpetuation of violence, such as presented by the ‘eye for an eye’ law.
Instead, we will seek the truth of God, the love of God, and will aim for a perpetuation of love, or peace, harmony, and friendship among the children of God, that instead of a deadly and vicious cycle of evil and hatred, in its place, we follow a wonderful cycle of love, that perpetuates love and brings hope instead of death.
One may ask, why did then the Lord who is good, gave to His people this kind of law which would certainly have ended with vengeance, evil, and hatred? Surely He would keep away things of evil from His children? That is in fact because of the very stubbornness of the people of Israel, most evident during their Exodus from Egypt, when they repeatedly disobeyed the Lord, to the point of rebellion, so that the Lord had no choice but to impose a strict Law on them, so that they will not stray even further. God’s intention was good, and that was why He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to explain the true meaning of the Law, that it was intended for love, and not for vengeance, and that such laws are in fact unnecessary.
In particular, brothers and sisters, we also need to learn the value of forgiveness, because it is never easy to forgive someone of their faults to us, especially if it causes us pain and suffering. But if we do not forgive and instead choose to claim equal justice and vengeance, that would perpetuate the ill feeling between us, and will not promote the cause of love. God wants us to live in peace and loving harmony with one another, and the first step we must take in order to achieve that is, to forgive.
Once we know how to forgive, we would be able to halt the progression into the endless cycles of revenge and hatred, because we break that cycle, by our act of love through forgiveness and mercy. Remember that although we are sinners and deserve death, and that the Lord hates sin, and yet, the Lord is willing to forgive us from our sins, and gave us even His only Son as a sacrifice to redeem us from our sins, that we can be made worthy for Him.
If our Lord can do so much for our sake, then is it not right that we should also do what He has done for us? After all, we are His beloved children, and children ought to emulate what their father is doing, and there is no better father than God Himself, who is the Father of all mankind and of all creation.
Let us, brothers and sisters in Christ, become children of God through our love and dedication to God’s truth, peace, and love, by our actions and concrete deeds, so that through us, we will propagate a new light in this world darkened by evil and hatred. Sow love with our actions, and we will reap peace as a reward. Let us always strive for peace and harmony. If only all people would know to love one another and forgive, this world would have been a much better place. Amen.
Matthew 5 : 38-42
You have heard that it was said : ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you this : ‘Do not oppose evil with evil; if someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn and offer the other. If someone sues you in court for your shirt, give him your coat as well. If someone forces you to go one mile; go two miles with him.’
‘Give when asked, and do not turn your back on anyone who wants to borrow from you.’
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 