new hope

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Wednesday, 2 April 2014 : 4th Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Francis of Paola, Hermit (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we hear about how everything that Jesus did, He did them in accordance with the will of God the Father, and thus, He did them out of the love He has for all of us without exception. That was the very purpose of why Jesus, the Son of God Most High was sent into this world, that He who was divine and with the Father, was willing to come down and to be born as one of us, as Man.

He came in accordance with the will of God, that He wanted all of us who had been separated from Him due to our disobedience and that of our ancestors’ disobedience, so that we may be brought back to Him, and be forgiven in new life sanctified in God. That was why the Lord who loves us so much, sent us His only beloved Son, to be our Saviour.

How fortunate we are indeed, that our Lord Himself had lowered Himself to come upon us and show us what new hope and salvation are truly about. Jesus is the hope for all mankind, the light which pierces through the darkness, both within us and which surround all our beings in this world. In Jesus is our compass, the north reference point, to which all of us should look towards and go to.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus came to us as our shepherd, to guide us on our way towards the Lord, that we may not be lost, but gain eternal glory and rewards at the end of time. We are the lost sheep of the Lord, who had been spread across the land, and covered in the darkness of this world. The Lord is our light, and He enlightens our path, and with His staff and rod, He guides us to the eternal rest He had prepared for us.

But as all shepherds do, He calls upon us, and He knows each of us, by name. He truly knows all that we do in secret, as He is the Lord of all, omniscient and all-knowing. There is nothing that he did not know of. He calls us, but we as the lost sheep, have all the choice and free will to either heed His call or to ignore and reject Him.

God offered us His guidance and help through Jesus His Son. Like a loving shepherd He guides each and every one of His sheep that they may find their way, our way, to reach towards salvation. Yet we may choose to follow Him or follow the false shepherd, that is the devil. The devil also calls upon us, pretending to be the true shepherd, tricking us to follow him instead of the Lord, the true and good shepherd.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is why we have to discern things carefully, in what we do, and in what we follow, that we will not fall into committing what is evil in the eyes of the Lord and fall into condemnation and destruction that awaits  Satan and his followers, the fallen sheep, at the end of time. We have to discern on our lives and our actions, that we will walk in the light and not darkness.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Francis of Paola, a hermit who lived in Italy during the era of the Renaissance. St. Francis of Paola was a very devout and upright individual even since his early youth, and he modelled himself much after his patron, St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan religious order. St. Francis of Paola modelled his life after his namesake and patron, and founded a religious order with similar kind of dedication to the Lord.

Yes, brethren, St. Francis of Paola gave all of his life in dedication to the Lord his shepherd. He did not veer left or right in his ways, and remained true to the Lord until the end of his life. St. Francis of Paola is the example of how a sheep who desires to find his shepherd, and his Lord, that he gave it his all, in total and complete dedication to the will of God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we can learn many things from the holiness and greatness of St. Francis of Paola. He was great not because he was powerful or mighty in the eyes of men, but because he did not budge even against the forces of this world, and neither did he fear any worldly oppressions or repercussions, that he even challenged kings of the world and rebuked them for their wickedness and transgressions despite themselves professing as Christians.

We too should follow in his footsteps, that we may dedicate ourselves more and more to the Lord, and at the same time also learn to follow His ways and make our lives a reflection of the Lord’s will and teachings, that just like St. Francis of Paola, we may be holy and justified, and the Lord will keep us always in His favour and grace.

St. Francis of Paola, pray for us sinners, that we may overcome our fear of the Lord and come seek Him like sheep looking for their shepherd, that together with you, we may praise the Lord and serve Him for eternity. God bless us all. Amen.

 

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Monday, 24 March 2014 : 3rd Week of Lent (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 41 : 2, 3 and Psalm 42 : 3, 4

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for You, o God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I go and see the face of God?

Send forth Your light and Your truth; let them be my guide, let them take me to Your holy mountain, to the place where You reside.

Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my gladness and delight. I will praise You with the lyre and harp, o God, my God.

 

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Sunday, 23 March 2014 : 3rd Sunday of Lent (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Romans 5 : 1-2, 5-8

By faith we have received true righteousness, and we are at peace with God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Through Him we obtain this favour in which we remain and we even boast to expect the Glory of God.

And hope does not disappoint us because the Holy Spirit has been given to us, pouring into our hearts the love of God. Consider, moreover, the time that Christ died for us : when we were still helpless and unable to do anything. Few would accept to die for an upright person; although, for a very good person, perhaps someone would dare to die.

But see how God manifested His love for us : while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

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Saturday, 22 March 2014 : 2nd Week of Lent (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Today we heard the well-known parable of the prodigal son, which I am certain that at some point of your life, you have heard it at least once. In this parable, God is compared to a loving and forgiving father, whose younger son had gone wayward and lost, and when that son returned to him, the father rejoiced and welcomed him back with full of love.

And indeed our God is like that, and He is indeed our Father, who loves us and cares for us, whose thoughts are centred ever on us every day and every moment in time. He looks always onto us, and wants us to be once again reunited with Him. And we are the prodigal sons, and also like the elder son of the father.

For we all have sinned before God, and committing what is evil in His eyes, and very often in our lives, we have disobeyed His law and His will, and instead following our own desires and our own forged path, which we built on our desires as well as on the foundations laid down by Satan. We were corrupted by the world and brought away from the way of truth.

It is easy for us to relate with the younger son, for we know that in this world, there are plenty and indeed almost limitless availability for human pleasures and goodness to satisfy our desires and our greed for such things. And that was exactly what happened to the younger son, who squandered the hard-earned wealth of his father, which was his inheritance, on loose living.

I am sure that in one way or another, this also happened to us. We gave in to the increasingly aggressive world, which indeed increases its attacks on us and our faithful living, by multiplying the number of pleasures and goodness that it tries to bring to us, seducing us to a lifestyle that is signified by excessive consumption and blatant disobedience of God’s will.

In this world, it is increasingly difficult for us to live without being bombarded daily by the increasing amount of advertisements and promotions on the good things of this world, the amenities and joys of life, all the components of a materialistic and hedonistic lifestyle. How many of us are not aware of the offers on the latest gadgets and jewelries? How many of us are not aware of the lucrative deals being offered?

But the key message that we ought to know today is that, regardless of all these, we all have hope, because God who is our Father is always waiting for us, like the father of the prodigal son, ever eager to see his long lost son to return to his side. The prodigal and sinful son realised that he had sinned against God and his father, by committing all that he had done. And this is indeed a very important moment that we all have to note.

It is this realisation, and coupled by the desire to return to his father, which propelled the prodigal son on his difficult journey home, to return to the love of his father. But had the son not realised his sinfulness, even in his difficult times, he would just be dead in that foreign land, and his death would not have been mourned by any. He would have died among the animals, without honour and be shamed forever in darkness.

The same therefore will happen to us, if we do not realise the depth and gravity of our sins, and if we continue to walk in the path of the wicked, following our hearts’s desire rather than following the Lord our God. We will suffer for eternity in shame, regret and hopelessness in hell, where there will be no light, no pleasure, and no happiness but only sorrow, regret and darkness.

So it is important for us to realise our sins, know them, and seek God for absolution and forgiveness, humbly asking Him to forgive us and promise to change our ways and sin no more, just as the prodigal son sought the forgiveness of his father, and then be received back into the fullness of love that his father has prepared for him, which God too had prepared for us.

And lastly, we who have been saved by our baptism and faith in Jesus Christ, are also like the elder son. We have been deemed as righteous and we remain in the house of the father, God our Father because of our faith in His Son. But that does not mean that we have the right to condemn all those who are still wayward. Remember that we are all sinners who still need to be saved by the grace of God through our actions.

Instead, let us help one another, especially those who are still in the darkness. Let us bring them to the light of God, by showing it through our own deeds and actions, that they may believe in us, children of the light, that they too will follow our path, to become children of God.

May our Lord who loves us, and who forgives and welcomes His prodigal sons back to His side, continue to love us, watch over us, and guide us that we may always walk righteously and faithfully on His path. Amen.

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Tuesday, 18 March 2014 : 2nd Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet or White (Bishops)

Brothers and sisters, humility and love are the two most important aspects of our faith, which we should always keep in mind, especially as we live in this world. We must always be humble, before God and men, and be loving to our brethren, to our neighbours, and ultimately towards God.

We are all sinners, equal before the eyes of God, that is why we should not exalt ourselves or trumpet our achievements before us. We should come to a full realisation of the full extent and gravity of our sins and faults, that we may move towards doing something to change that and make ourselves once again worthy of the Lord our God.

It is not easy to be humble, brethren, because especially the greater we are, the more things that we possess in our lives, and the more affluent and influential we are in our society, there are more and more things that can prevent us from showing humility, not only before men, but also before God.

It is natural for us to boast about what is great about us, and to flaunt whatever we possess, be it wealth, influence, or power. And if we do so, it becomes a vicious cycle. By showing off our power and greatness, we are likely to be praised for it, and therefore, we will be even more eager to show more of our power, and to gain more of it.

And it is this pursuit of more power, wealth, greatness and other things that often likely to keep us away from the path of the Lord, that we no longer walk in His path, but following our own path, that will end in destruction for us. That was why Jesus emphasised to us using the examples of the Pharisees and the chief priests, for us not to be tainted and taken over by the corrupting power of desire and human greed.

For the Pharisees liked to boast their piety, in their observation of the law and the strict guidelines they themselves had established. They liked to show off their piety and teaching authority to others, whom they deemed to be inferior to themselves. They have made themselves to be a caste and a group on its own, whom they themselves deemed to be righteous and holy.

The Pharisees acted as if they were the righteous and the just, even to the point of condemning others whom they deemed as sinners and unworthy people. But they themselves had sin inside them, and even a greater sin because they not only failed to recognise their own sins, but they also condemn others for their sins, thinking in their pride, that they are better than them.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Pharisees showed us the example of how we should not be in our faith. We cannot be judgmental and critical of others, not least if we cannot be critical of ourselves. We should instead follow the example of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, whose feast we are celebrating today. St. Cyril was the bishop of Jerusalem, who was renowned for his great charitable works for the poor, who sold even imperial gifts to the Church to help them.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem was truly devoted to the Lord, and he showed that not just in his charity acts and love for the people of God, but also in his numerous writings in which He described the Lord and His love, and in the nature of Jesus and His salvation, which helped many to understand better about the faith.

You all now see the contrast between them, so let us all seek to renew and strengthen our faith. Let us be beacons of light for one another, guiding our ways as we reach out to the Lord. May God also help us on our way, that we may be with Him at the end of all, and not fall along the way to the temptation of power and worldly corruptions. Amen.

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Friday, 14 March 2014 : 1st Week of Lent (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 129 : 1-2, 3-4ab, 4c-6, 7-8

Out of the depths I cry to You, o Lord, o Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears pay attention to the voice of my supplication.

If You should mark our evil, o Lord, who could stand? But with You is forgiveness, and for that You are revered.

I waited for the Lord, my soul waits, and I put my hope in His word. My soul expects the Lord more than watchmen the dawn.

O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with Him is unfailing love and with Him full deliverance. He will deliver Israel from all its sins.

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Thursday, 13 March 2014 : 1st Week of Lent (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

We often forget, brothers and sisters, in our busy life and hectic schedules, that first and foremost, we should have no need to worry about this and that at all. We tend to forget this basic fact, and ending up to worry without end, and to fill our days with endless concerns and wants.

Brethren, our Lord provided us with all the things we need, and He provides us along the way, to help us with our respective lives. We may not realise this because He did so secretly, quietly helping us to make through things. It is often ourselves who screwed things up, because of our worries and concerns, which made us to take wrong decisions in life which may cost us dearly in the future.

And we know and should know that our Lord loves us very much, and He is willing to bless us and help us, but what He needs from us is that for us to ask Him and beseech Him for that help. It would be as simple as asking Him and knocking at His door, to seek for the Lord’s help, simple indeed or so it may seem to be.

But, we often forgot about this and did not realise this fact, and we often ended up depending solely on our own human power and based our decisions on our flawed judgment, which led to problems and uncertainties in our own lives. All these because we failed to recognise that in life, we cannot succeed if we do not depend on God, His love and loving help.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, God knows our needs and He will give us what is good, only if we go to Him and ask Him for it. He will not makes us to fall into a disaster or destroy us purposely simply because He cares and loves us very much. It is entirely against His character and will to cause trouble and problems for us. It is we ourselves who make problems for ourselves.

The Lord provides for all of His servants, to those who keep to His laws and commandments, for those who did not look away from His ways and keep themselves always in His grace. He gives all of them the best of His blessings and inheritance, as He had proven to the Queen Esther of Persia, His servant, when she asked Him for His help.

In today’s first reading, the prayer of Queen Esther, to put things into context, the Queen Esther of Persia, the wife of the then Emperor of Persia, Xerxes the Great, the greatest of the Emperors of Persia, was a Jew with a Jewish background, and a great enemy rose in the court of the Emperor, in the person of Hamman the Agagite, who despised Mordechai, the Queen’s uncle.

Hamman devised a plan and gained the heart of the king, and this plan, which was devised against all the people of Mordechai, that is the Jews, were to be slaughtered and killed without mercy and have their possessions taken away from them. This was where Queen Esther came into the scene, as she, as the Queen, tried to use her position and relations with the Emperor, to prevent that catastrophe from facing her own people.

That was what she was praying for, she prayed for strength, guidance and help, that she may be guided in her dangerous attempt to prevent the plans and devices of those who hated God’s people. And God heard her and the prayers of His people, by first destroying Hamman the great enemy, and by delivering the enemies of His people into the hands of justice.

Now you see how powerful God’s help is, and all we need to do is to sincerely and genuinely ask for His help, seeking for Him to show mercy towards us. If we do so, He will certainly come to help us, and provide us with all that we will need. May God help to open our minds and our hearts, that we may, in great humility, always seek for Him and ask for His mercy. Amen.

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Tuesday, 11 March 2014 : 1st Week of Lent (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 33 : 4-5, 6-7, 16-17, 18-19

Oh, let us magnify the Lord, together let us glorify His Name! I sought the Lord, and He answered me; from all my fears He delivered me.

They who look to Him are radiant with joy, their faces never clouded with shame. When the poor cry out, the Lord hears and saves them from distress.

The eyes of the Lord are fixed on the righteous; His ears are inclined to their cries. But His face is set against the wicked to destroy their memory from the earth.

The Lord hears the cry of the righteous and rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves the distraught.

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Monday, 3 March 2014 : 8th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

1 Peter 1 : 3-9

Let us praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for His great mercy. In raising Jesus Christ from the dead He has given us new life and a living hope. The inheritance that does not corrupt nor goes bad nor passes away was reserved to you in heavens, since God’s power shall keep you faithful until salvation is revealed in the last days.

There is cause for joy, then, even though you may, for a time, have to suffer many trials. Thus will your faith be tested, like gold in a furnace. Gold, however, passes away but faith, worth so much more, will bring you in the end praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ appears.

You have not yet seen Him and yet you love Him; even without seeing Him, you believe in Him and experience a heavenly joy beyond all words, for you are reaching the goal of your faith : the salvation of your souls.

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Saturday, 1 March 2014 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of Our Lady)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we all know, that children are the greatest of the gifts of God to us. Children are the fruits of love, and they were born pure and innocent. Why are they then so great in their faith? That is because the faith of a child is the purest kind of faith, one that is unadulterated and untainted by the concerns and corruptions of this world.

The Lord Jesus showed His disciples, that if they reject these children, who came to Him in faith, that means they too also reject Him, because they failed to understand that their faith needs to be like these children’s faith. Faith is often clouded and hidden behind a thick cloud of darkness, that is the corruption of sin, and all the concerns of the world.

When we were all still a child, we do not have much worries and concerns. We do not have much things to think about, and like what many of us who have children will know, we understand that children wants just care, love and concern by their loved ones. They were innocent, pure, and if they believe in something, they truly believe in it.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, have our faith been like the faith of children? Or have our faith been muddled with the corruptions of the world? We have many good things in this world, all the pleasures and the joy that this world can offer. The wealth and prosperity which this world can give to us, if we follow the ways of the world.

But if we do so, then are we faithful to the ways of the Lord? The way of this world promotes excessiveness, it promotes self-indulgence and hedonistic lifestyle. It does not necessarily mean bad thing, but if we immerse ourselves too deeply with the concerns of this world, more likely than not, our faith will gradually wear down, and we will then prefer to walk on our own way.

We like to complain and be angry, especially at God, when we face difficulties in life. And we especially are angry with Him when we think that He had not heard us or abandoned us. We often question Him and His love for us, without realising that our every breath is the proof of God’s love and dedication for us.

When we pray and when we ask God for help, much of the time, we do not make those prayers in full sincerity. We pray because we need something, and we need that something be taken care of. Yet, we often fail to realise that prayer is mainly the means of communication between us and our Lord who loves us, so much that He wants to talk to us regularly and continuously. Yet, our stubbornness and lack of true faith prevent the Lord from speaking to us, and for us from listening to Him.

Brethren, this is how the Lord wanted to show us that we have many things we can learn from a child. In particular, we should be like a child in his or her faith. A child’s faith is pure, and untainted by human desires. While we are already tainted by the world and its desires, and by the power and influence of sin, what we can do, is to aspire towards having the faith of a child.

We should all aim to be faithful in the same way a child is faithful. We should unconditionally love and trust the Lord our God, without any hidden agenda or desires that keep us from having a pure faith in the Lord. If we are able to do that, then our lives will be more meaningful, because we will be firmly rooted in the Lord, and no matter what happened to us, we will always be strongly devoted to the Lord and His ways, and we will not be taken away from salvation due to us.

May the Lord therefore continue to foster in us, a strong love for Him, a constant and living faith, that we may persevere and indeed, grow further in our faith to Him. Let us also on our side, do our best to dedicate ourselves in love to the Lord and to His children, our own brothers and sisters. God be with us all. Amen.