Monday

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Monday, 6 December 2021 : 2nd Week of Advent, Memorial of St. Nicholas, Bishop (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet or White (Bishops)

Isaiah 35 : 1-10

Let the wilderness and the arid land rejoice, the desert be glad and blossom. Covered 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 nor 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, 29 November 2021 : 1st Week of Advent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we listened to the words of the Lord in the Scriptures, we are all reminded to have faith in the Lord, in Whom alone is our salvation and glory, and through Whom we shall receive true happiness and joy, true satisfaction and fulfilment, for the Lord is our Hope and our Light, the Light of our salvation and our redemption. As we enter into this season of Advent, we are all called to reflect on this truth and redirect our attention to the Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour and King.

Today in our first reading we heard from the passage in the Book of the prophet Isaiah in which the Lord spoke to Isaiah regarding the coming of God and His salvation to His people, Israel and all the nations, in the vision that He has given to Isaiah, then a prophet working in the kingdom of Judah. At that time, the land of Judah was in turmoil and far from its past glory days during the glorious reigns of King David and King Solomon. The northern kingdom of Israel had been crushed by the Assyrians and their king, and its cities destroyed, its population mostly brought away into exile in far-off land.

Then the kingdom of Judah was also attacked by the same Assyrians, just as they had endured centuries of humiliation and hardships under attack from their neighbours and other great powers of the region. The kingdom and people of Judah themselves would later on be crushed by the Babylonians over a century after the time of the prophet Isaiah, due to their continued disobedience of God and refusal to repent from their sinful ways. But as we heard from the words of the Scriptures today, that despite all these, God actually still loved His people.

He loves all of us and although we are sinners, He does not despise us, but rather our many sins. The fact that He still sent His prophets, messengers and many others to His people, including that of Isaiah and speaking the words that we have heard today, the promises of the coming of God’s glory and kingdom, the coming of His salvation and days of rule over all the nations are proof enough that God cares for all of us, without exception. Had He despised all of us, He could have erased us all from existence and condemned us all immediately into hell without giving any of us a chance for repentance and forgiveness.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, that is an important truth that we must realise as we enter into this holy season and time of Advent, a time for purification and reorientation of our lives, a time for discernment and self-introspection that we may find our path in life going forward, ever closer to God. We must have faith in Him and hold on fast to that hope and faith that we have in Him, and believe that in God alone is our salvation, and that He alone is our Hope and our desire, through our repentance and the forgiveness of our many sins.

In our Gospel passage today that we have heard earlier on, we should be inspired by the faith of the army centurion or the officer whom the Lord met in His way. The army centurion had heard about the Lord and His miracles and power, and being an army officer, he likely must have been a Roman, whom as an officer was an even more prestigious member of the community. As a high-ranking persona, he had no need to humble himself, and yet that was exactly what he did before the Lord and everyone.

He asked the Lord to heal his beloved servant, who was very sick to the point of death, and he believed wholeheartedly that the Lord has the power to heal his servant. His faith was such that he did not need to see or witness the Lord performing the healing, and humbling himself before the Lord by saying that he was unworthy to welcome the Lord in his house, likely due to the common belief among the Jews at the time that one should not enter the house of a Gentile or risk becoming impure, the army officer asked the Lord to say and to command that everything is to be as He said.

This was a genuine faith that the army centurion had in the Lord, believing without even seeing the action, as compared to many of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who had seen many of the miracles and yet, still refused to believe and stubbornly opposing the Lord and His works. The Lord then praised his faith and commanded that everything be as He said, and true enough, later on the army centurion’s servant was healed, and it was likely that after this, the army centurion’s faith in the Lord became even firmer.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, are we able to have the same faith as showed by the army centurion? Are we willing and able to commit ourselves to the Lord wholeheartedly in the same way, to believe in Him and the Hope that He has brought unto us, and not be distracted by the many temptations found in this world? We are all challenged to have deeper faith in the Lord and to discern our path in life as we enter this blessed season of Advent, so that we may truly be ready to welcome the Lord, not just for Christmas, but for the time when He comes again one day, to claim us all as His own.

Let us all make our Advent season to be a blessed and most fruitful one, by committing ourselves anew to Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, the perfect manifestation of God’s Love in our midst. Let us seek the Lord wholeheartedly and sincerely repent from our sinful ways, abandoning our wicked and evil ways and desires, turning away from those and be reconciled with our most loving God and Father. May God bless us always and may He remain with us, now and forevermore. Amen.

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Monday, 29 November 2021 : 1st Week of Advent (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Matthew 8 : 5-11

At that time, when Jesus entered Capernaum, an army captain approached Him, to ask His help, “Sir, my servant lies sick at home. He is paralysed and suffers terribly.” Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

The captain answered, “I am not worthy to have You under my roof. Just give an order and my boy will be healed. For I myself, a junior officer, give orders to my soldiers. And if I say to one, ‘Go!’ he goes; and if I say to another, ‘Come!’ he comes; and if I say to my servant, ‘Do this!’ he does it.”

When Jesus heard this, He was astonished; and said to those who were following Him, “I tell you, I have not found such faith in Israel. I say to you, many will come from east and west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob at the feast in the kingdom of heaven.”

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Monday, 29 November 2021 : 1st Week of Advent (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 121 : 1-2, 3-4a, 4b-5, 6-7, 8-9

I rejoiced with those who said to me, “Let us go to the house of YHVH!” And now we have set foot within your gates, o Jerusalem!

Jerusalem, just like a city, where everything falls into place! There the tribes go up.

The tribes of YHVH, the assembly of Israel, to give thanks to YHVH’s Name. There stand the courts of justice, the offices of the house of David.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem : “May those who love you prosper! May peace be within your walls and security within your citadels!”

For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, “Peace be with you!” For the sake of the house of our YHVH, I will pray for your good.

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Monday, 29 November 2021 : 1st Week of Advent (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Isaiah 2 : 1-5

The vision of Isaiah, son of Amoz, concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In the last days, the mountain of YHVH’s house shall be set over the highest mountains and shall tower over the hills. All the nations shall stream to it, saying, “Come, let us go to the mountain of YHVH, to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may teach us His ways and we may walk in His paths. For the teaching comes from Zion, and from Jerusalem the word of YHVH.”

“He will rule over the nations and settle disputes for many people. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not raise sword against nation; they will train for war no more. O nation of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of YHVH!”

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Monday, 22 November 2021 : 34th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we listened to the words of the Scriptures all of us are presented with the story of Daniel, the servant of God and his three friends, who were those brought from the land of Israel to the land of Babylon in their youth at the end of the kingdom of Judah. We heard how Daniel and his friends were brought into the court of the king of Babylon and eventually became his trusted advisers. Then in our Gospel passage today we heard the story of a poor widow who gave a very small offering from her poverty to the Temple treasury, and her example was praised by the Lord before His own disciples.

In that first reading we heard regarding Daniel and his friends, those four people were brought as exiles from their homeland to a far-off distant, strange and foreign land that they did not know at all. They mostly had nothing with them, uprooted from the land of their ancestors, likely separated or even having lost their own families as well. They had little or nothing with them, save their faith in God, that we all heard in how they remained firm in their faith despite the king’s steward persuading them to eat from the unclean food prepared for them.

Like the poor widow mentioned in the Gospel passage today, Daniel and his friends had little with them, a material poverty and lacking everything. Yet, they were full of faith and dedication to the Lord. The poor widow still chose to give to the Lord from whatever little that she had remained with her. In the same way, Daniel and his friends gave to the Lord from whatever little they had, humbled and humiliated they had been as a nation and people, and yet, they represented Israel’s remorse and desire to seek the Lord anew.

And this is the kind of faith that the Lord approved, brothers and sisters in Christ. He wants faith that is not just superficial and lacking in depth, but instead faith that is genuine and true, filled with commitment. That is what each and every one of us as Christians are called to do. We cannot be just paying lip service to the Lord and making empty proclamations of faith. Without real and genuine love for the Lord, then we are having an empty and meaningless faith that is not what is expected of us.

Today, all of us are therefore reminded to love the Lord wholeheartedly and to renew our commitment to Him, so that in our every actions and deeds, our words and interactions from now on, we will always strive to glorify God and serve Him to the best of our abilities. We are all called to give our time and effort, whenever we can, even when we ourselves have little to spare. If we truly love the Lord with all of our hearts, certainly we can give and offer Him everything we have without doubt and fear.

Today, we should also be inspired by yet another great role model and example that we can follow, in our Christian living. That is because today we mark the feast of the great and renowned St. Cecilia, the Patron of Church music and a holy virgin and martyr. St. Cecilia devoted herself thoroughly to the Lord and suffered greatly for that, and we should be inspired by her never-ending dedication and commitment to the Lord. And we should also do the same in our own lives as well.

St. Cecilia was a Roman noblewoman who had made vow of virginity before God. But she was forced by her family to marry a pagan nobleman named Valerian. She dedicated herself to God at her marriage and told her husband Valerian that he could not consummate their marriage as an Angel of the Lord was watching over her. When he asked for proof of the Angel, St. Cecilia told him to go to the Appian Way to see the Angel after being baptised by the Pope, and in the end, he did see the Angel after following St. Cecilia’s instructions.

In the end, it was told that St. Cecilia and her husband, as well as her husband’s brother were all martyred by the Roman prefect. They all suffered martyrdom, and it was indeed amazing how St. Cecilia’s faith was so great and her commitment to the Lord so noble that these inspired her husband and others to seek the Lord as well and to remain faithful to Him even through sufferings and trials, and even unto death and martyrdom.

They have given everything to God, and how about us, brothers and sisters in Christ? Are we able to follow in their footsteps and love the Lord with total commitment and devotion from now on if we have not yet done so? Let us discern carefully how we are going to live our lives as true and dedicated Christians in each and every moments of our living presence here in this world. May all of us draw ever closer to God and find our way to Him, following Him in the manner that Daniel and his friends, as well as St. Cecilia and many others had followed Him. Amen.

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Monday, 22 November 2021 : 34th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Luke 21 : 1-4

At that time, Jesus looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury of the Temple. He also saw a poor widow, who dropped in two small coins. And He said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow put in more than all of them. For all of them gave an offering from their plenty; but she, out of her poverty, gave all she had to live on.”

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Monday, 22 November 2021 : 34th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Daniel 3 : 52a, 53, 54, 55, 56

Blessed are You, Lord, God of our fathers, be praised and exalted forever.

Blessed are You in the Temple of Your sacred glory; Your praises are sung forever.

Blessed are You, on the throne of Your kingdom; honoured and glorified forever.

Blessed are You, Who fathom the depths, Who are enthroned on the Cherubim; praised and exalted forever.

Blessed are You, in the firmament of heaven; praised and glorified forever.

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Monday, 22 November 2021 : 34th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Daniel 1 : 1-6, 8-20

In the third year of Jehoiakim’s reign as king of Judah, king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon besieged Jerusalem. The Lord delivered into his hands king Jehoiakim of Judah, and some of the vessels from the Temple of God as well. These he carried off, to the land of Shinar, and placed in the treasure house of his god.

King Nebuchadnezzar ordered his chief eunuch Ashpenaz to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility : young men without physical defect, handsome, intelligent and wise; well-informed, quick to learn and understand; and suitable for service in the king’s palace.

They were to be taught the language and literature of the Chaldeans. They were allotted a daily portion of food and wine from the king’s table; and were to be trained for three years, after which, they were to enter the king’s service. Among these were young men of Judah : Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.

As Daniel was resolved not to make himself unclean with the king’s food or wine, he begged the chief eunuch to spare him this defilement. By the grace of God, the chief eunuch had been sympathetic to Daniel. But he was afraid of the king, so he said, “If the king, who has allotted your food and drink, sees that you look more emaciated than the other young men of your age, he might think ill of me. It will put my life in danger to give in to your wish.”

Daniel then turned to the steward whom the chief eunuch had put in charge of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. “Please test your servants for ten days. Give us only vegetables to eat and water to drink, and see how we look in comparison with the young men who eat food from the king’s table. Then treat us in accordance with what you see.”

The steward agreed and tested them for ten days, at the end of which, they looked healthier and better fed than any of the young men who ate the king’s food. So the steward continued to give them vegetables instead of the choice food and wine. To these four youths God gave wisdom and proficiency in literature, and to Daniel the gift of interpreting visions and dreams.

At the end of the period set by the king for the youths’ training, the chief eunuch presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. The king talked with them and found none to equal Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. These four became members of the king’s court. In any matter of wisdom and discernment about which the king consulted, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.

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Monday, 15 November 2021 : 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Albert the Great, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we listened to the words of the Lord, we are all presented with the accounts of the persecution of the faithful Jews, the descendant of the Israelites at the time of the Greek Seleucid rule in Judea which caused the spark of the Maccabean Revolt, and then in the Gospel passage we heard of the moment when the Lord Jesus healed a blind man whose sight He restored, showing the blind man mercy and compassion, the love of God.

In our first reading today from the first Book of the Maccabees, we heard of the moment when the new King of the Seleucid Empire, one of the several successor kingdoms of Alexander the Great’s Empire, rose to power as Antiochus IV Epiphanes and wanting to impose the Greek customs and ways, traditions and practices on the Jewish people living in Judea, Galilee and in the other parts of his Empire. This is the main cause of the great Maccabean Revolt detailed in the Book of the Maccabees.

Historically, the Jews, who are the descendants of the Israelites living in Judah and others, had been left to practice their faith and traditions without hindrance by the Persians, who emancipated them from the exile in Babylon, and allowed them to return to their homeland to live in accordance with their laws and customs as long as they recognised the Persian King as their Sovereign. Such practice was continued mostly unchanged by Alexander the Great, the King of Macedon when he conquered the Persian Empire.

While the Hellenic influence gradually established itself among many of the Jews, the kings who succeeded Alexander’s divided kingdoms usually left the locals, including the Jews alone. However, King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, known to history for his pride, arrogance and megalomania, was determined to change his whole Empire to suit his own purpose and desires. He forced his subjects to adopt the Greek way of life, religious beliefs, practices and traditions, forcing them to abandon their own distinctive ways of life.

This imposition of the pagan ways and beliefs on the Jews then resulted in the rise of the Maccabeans as the leaders of the revolt against the Greeks. They led the people in their opposition to the sufferings that the faithful people of God had suffered for remaining faithful to the Lord and to His Law. Through them, God eventually delivered His people from their sufferings, and restored their faith and practices to them as they gained independence from the Greek kings.

In our Gospel passage today, the Lord healed the eyes of a blind man and made him to be able to see again. He showed His love and compassion for the suffering blind man, and answered his plea, as the blind man begged to be healed, knowing that the Lord could heal him. His example showed us all that God always cares for us and protects us whenever He can, and we must not doubt His love and kindness, which He had once shown on His people at the time of the Maccabean Revolt.

As we listened in the Gospel today, the Lord told the blind man that his faith had saved him. He believed that the Lord could heal him and thus he was healed. His faith, just as the faith of the faithful living during the time of the Maccabean Revolt should inspire us, in how they remain true and faithful to the Lord despite the challenges and trials they had to face. Are we able to have the same faith and dedication as they had shown the Lord and all of us? Are we also willing to make that commitment if we have not done so, brothers and sisters in Christ?

Today, being the feast of St. Albert the Great, we have yet another good example that we should follow in our lives in being faithful to God at all times. St. Albert the Great was a great Dominican friar and bishop who was one of the most famous and brilliant theologian of all time. He was remembered for his many marvellous books and treatises, all works on various areas of theology. St. Albert the Great dedicated his whole life to the service of God and to the advancement of theological studies and teaching.

As a member of the Dominican Order and the Bishop of Regensburg in what is today southern Germany, he also dedicated himself to his responsibilities and worked hard to glorify God and to serve those who have been entrusted to him as shepherd and as a member of his Dominican Order community. In this case, we can see from the holiness and faith that this great saint had, how each and every one of us can also contribute our time and effort, in believing God and in loving Him, just as St. Albert the Great and our predecessors had done.

Let us all discern these and see in what way we can dedicate ourselves to the Lord better, to be better Christians from now on. Let us also not be discouraged by persecution, oppression, trials and challenges we may face in life in being faithful to God, but remain firm in our adherence to our faith in Him, always. May God be with us all and may He bless us all in our every efforts and good works for His greater glory. Amen.