Ordinary Time

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Thursday, 15 September 2022 : 24th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 30 : 2-3a, 3bc-4, 5-6, 15-16, 20

In You, o YHVH, I take refuge, may I never be disgraced; deliver me in Your justice. Give heed to my plea, and make haste to rescue me.

Be a Rock of refuge for me, a Fortress for my safety. For You are my Rock and my Stronghold, lead me for Your Name’s sake.

Free me from the snare that they have set for me. Indeed You are my Protector. Into Your hands I commend my spirit; You have redeemed me, o YHVH, faithful God.

But I put my trust in You, o YHVH, I said : “You are my God.” My days are in Your hand. Deliver me from the hand of my enemies, from those after my skin.

How great is the goodness which You have stored for those who fear You, which You show, for all to see, to those who take refuge in You!

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Thursday, 15 September 2022 : 24th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Hebrews 5 : 7-9

Christ, in the days of His mortal life, offered His sacrifice with tears and cries. He prayed to Him, Who could save Him from death, and He was heard, because of His humble submission. Although He was Son, He learnt, through suffering, what obedience was, and, once made perfect, He became the Source of eternal salvation, for those who obey Him.

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Wednesday, 14 September 2022 : Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we mark the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, celebrating the three moments in history related to the Holy Cross of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This day we mark the moment when the True Cross, the actual Cross on which the Lord was hung and nailed on, was discovered by St. Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. It also marked the occasion of the Dedication of the Basilicas and churches built by the same Emperor Constantine on the Mount Calvary in Jerusalem. Lastly, it also marked the moment when the True Cross reentered Jerusalem in great triumph after having been captured by the Persian Sassanians three centuries after it had been discovered.

Essentially, in terms of historical significance, today’s Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross marked the moments when the true Faith and the Cross of Christ was triumphant over the forces of the world, such as the moment when the Christian faith and Church finally triumphed against those arrayed against them, as they were officially tolerated and the persecutions against them rescinded by the same Emperor Constantine the Great through the Edict of Milan. It was a moment of triumph that roughly coincided with the rediscovery of the True Cross of Our Lord and Saviour at the site of Mount Calvary. It was also another moment of triumph when the forces of Christendom triumphed over the pagan Sassanians, and reclaimed the True Cross from the enemy.

However, this Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is much more than just all of that. The most important triumph that this Feast celebrates today is the great triumph that Our Lord and Saviour has won for all of us, as He raised His Cross and was Himself raised on it, for the salvation of all the whole world, of all mankind, of all of God’s beloved children. Through His Cross, Our Lord Jesus Christ has shown us the perfect manifestation of God’s love as well as the perfect obedience of Man, through which God reached out to us and Man reached out to Him, with Christ forming the important Bridge through His Cross, reconnecting us and God.

In our first reading today we heard the story of what happened when the Israelites rebelled against God in the desert, and we heard about the bronze serpent of Moses which was crafted to help the Israelites. At that time, the rebellious Israelites disobeyed God such that the Lord sent fiery serpents to strike at them as punishment for their sins, disobedience and wickedness. Many died from those fiery serpents and their bites, and the people begged the Lord for forgiveness and mercy. It was then that the Lord told Moses to craft that bronze serpent as a sign of God’s salvation and mercy, and all those who saw that bronze serpent after being bitten did not perish.

That occasion is mirrored in our Gospel passage today when we heard of the exchange between the Lord Jesus and Nicodemus, the Pharisee who was sympathetic to Him and His teachings. The Lord spoke of the parallel between what happened back then and what He Himself would have to undergo, as He would be raised up as the Son of Man, before all the people much as how the bronze serpent was raised up by Moses before the whole people of Israel. And just as how the bronze serpent showed the salvation, mercy, compassion and forgiveness from God for His people, sparing them from the fiery serpents, thus, the Lord has also showed the infinite love of God through His crucifixion and His Cross.

The Lord has shown us His enduring and patient love, made manifest through His Son, and this was made possible because He loved us so much that He willingly emptied Himself and took up the appearance and essence of our humanity, by being born of His mother Mary, becoming the Son of God incarnate in the flesh, and becoming the Son of Man. Through His incarnation in the flesh, God made His love visible and tangible for us, and by His voluntary sacrifice on the Cross, the show of God’s ultimate love, all of us have witnessed and received the manifestation of that undying love. By suffering and dying on the Cross, He made us all sharers in His salvation, and die to our sins, and by His glorious Resurrection, He shared with us the new life, free from sin that we shall enjoy for eternity.

Not only that, but as I mentioned earlier, Christ by His humble submission to His Father’s will has shown us all mankind how we can be truly faithful to the Lord, and breaking free from the chains of sin and wickedness that had enslaved us, and how we can gain freedom from death through Christ and His assurance of salvation and new life for us. While the first Adam faltered and failed when tested by the devil, and succumbed to the temptations of his desires, ending up with sin that corrupted us all, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as the New Adam showed us that we should not and cannot bow down to those temptations or to the devil, and we should instead seek the Lord and commit ourselves to Him wholeheartedly.

That is why the devil, Satan, and all of his fallen allies, the evil spirits and demons despised and feared the Holy Cross, because that tool of humiliation that was once used for the worst of criminals, as means for great suffering and humiliation, has become the means by which God saved His beloved people, and through His Holy Cross, the Lord has cast a devastating blow upon the devil and all of his forces, and broke their dominion over us forever, showing us the sure path to freedom from sin and death, and into eternal life. This is why today we mark that glorious triumph of the Holy Cross over the forces of sin, evil and death.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we reflect on the significance and importance of today’s Feast, its meaning and purpose, and how it has shown us the salvation of God and the triumph of His Cross, let us all also reflect and ponder upon our own lives. Let us all look upon the Lord on His Cross, the Crucifix, and discern how each and every one of us can be better disciples of His. We cannot continue to live our lives with apathy towards our faith, ignorance or lukewarmness, in how we practice our Christian faith and beliefs. We should not be hypocrites, and should not forget the love and compassion that God has always generously shown us.

Let us all look upon He Who has been crucified for us upon the Holy and Glorious Cross. Let us all glorify and praise Him more and more each day, by our own worthy and grace-filled lives, dedicating ourselves in each and every moments to love and serve the Lord ever more with our every living moments, with all of our might and strength. May the Lord, through His triumphant Cross, continue to guide us forward to the path towards eternal life. May God bless us always, now and forevermore. Amen.

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Wednesday, 14 September 2022 : Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

John 3 : 13-17

At that time, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “No one has ever gone up to heaven except the One Who came from heaven, the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.”

“Yes, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him may not be lost, but may have eternal life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world; instead, through Him the world is to be saved.”

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Wednesday, 14 September 2022 : Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Psalm 77 : 1-2, 34-35, 36-37, 38

Give heed, o My people, to My teaching; listen to the words of My mouth! I will speak in parables; I will talk of old mysteries.

When He slew them, they repented and sought Him earnestly. They remembered that God was their Rock, the Most High, their Redeemer.

But they flattered Him with their mouths; they lied to Him with their tongues, while their hearts were unfaithful; they were untrue to His Covenant.

Even then, in His compassion, He forgave their offences and did not destroy them. Many a time He restrained His anger, and did not fully stir up His wrath.

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Wednesday, 14 September 2022 : Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Numbers 21 : 4b-9

The people were discouraged by the journey and began to complain against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is neither bread nor water here and we are disgusted with this tasteless manna.”

YHVH then sent fiery serpents against them. They bit the people and many of the Israelites died. Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, speaking against YHVH and against you. Plead with YHVH to take the serpents away.”

Moses pleaded for the people and YHVH said to him, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a standard; whoever has been bitten and then looks at it shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a standard. Whenever a man was bitten, he looked towards the bronze serpent and he lived.

Alternative reading

Philippians 2 : 6-11

Though He was in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking on the nature of a servant, made in human likeness, and in His appearance found as a Man.

He humbled Himself by being obedient to death, death on the cross. That is why God exalted Him and gave Him the Name which outshines all names, so that at the Name of Jesus all knees should bend in heaven, on earth and among the dead, and all tongues proclaim that Christ Jesus is the Lord to the glory of God the Father.

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Tuesday, 13 September 2022 : 24th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we listened to the words of the Lord in the Scriptures reminding us that all of us have been gathered as one people and one flock by the Lord to be His followers and disciples, and to receive the bountiful gifts of His graces and blessings. The Lord has gathered us all from the nations and from the world, regardless of our background or origins, all equally beloved by God and all equally precious to Him. And through Him, we shall receive the assurance of eternal life, true happiness and joy, and we will find the path to eternal bliss with Him, at the end of time.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Church and the faithful in Corinth regarding how the Church is united as one body, the one Body of Christ, composed of all believers, not distinguished by anything or by any considerations of their background, be it whether the faithful were Jews or Greek, at the time when the Jewish people were often harbouring prejudice and dislike for the non-Jewish peoples, also known as the Gentiles, most of whom were Greeks and those who were steeped in the Greco-Roman culture and ways, as opposed to those who fervently and zealously kept the Jewish laws and customs.

St. Paul also highlighted the unity of the Church and the faithful although its members came from among the free and the rich, as well as from among the slaves, the poor and the marginalised in the community. All of the people, regardless of their origins, backgrounds and others, who have been called by God and received baptism through Him, have been made sharers of the same Body of Christ and became that one united Body of believers. And amidst the divisions and the struggles that the different factions of the faithful in Corinth experienced back then, this was a truly powerful, important and timely reminder from the Apostle.

This is a reminder that as one faithful people and community of Christians, all of us in the Church should not be prejudiced, biased or divided against each other. We should not let our differences, whether in opinion or whether in our background and status to be stumbling blocks and obstacles in preventing us from achieving true unity in God. We have to remind ourselves that in the Church we are serving the Lord and not our own selfish desires, ambitions and other things. We are God’s servants and followers, and we should focus our attention on Him, our efforts on glorifying Him rather than seeking attention towards ourselves.

Through the Lord we have received the assurance of salvation and eternal life, an existence beyond death, which all of us in one way or another, and which eventually will experience, as all of us are mortal and will not live in this world forever. As highlighted in our Gospel passage today from the story of the widow of Naim, death is something that will claim us all, and we heard of the sorrow that accompanied this, especially the widow who had to see her own son pass away before herself. Yet, the Lord showed that He is truly the Lord and Master of all life, as He raised the widow’s son from the dead, just as He had done so with the daughter of the synagogue official, Jairus, and with Lazarus, one of His close friends.

All of these showed us that while death exists as a punishment for our sins, that came with the taint of sin which entered to our humanity through our disobedience against God, but the Lord in His most wonderful and loving way has extended His most gracious love and mercy towards us, through His Son showing us that death does not hold dominion over us. Not only through the miraculous resurrection from the dead, but even more importantly, through His own suffering and death on the Cross, and then His own glorious Resurrection, Christ conquered sin and death, and presented to us the sure path out of the darkness and into the light and life eternal.

Today all of us are reminded therefore to focus our attention on the Lord, and on the love and truth which He has revealed to us through His Son, Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. All of us have been so fortunate to receive this assurance of love, and hence, we should do our best to live our lives worthily as Christians, that is as God’s disciples and followers, in the footsteps of our holy predecessors, the saints and martyrs, who should be our inspiration and role models. St. John Chrysostom, whose feast we are celebrating today, is one of them. He is the Archbishop of Constantinople, the then capital of the Roman Empire and also recognised later on as one of the great Doctors of the Church.

St. John Chrysostom was attracted to the Christian faith and studied theology as well as experiencing ascetic lifestyle as a hermit before he became a deacon, and later on becoming a great priest in Antioch, renowned for his eloquent and courageous sermons, which stirred the hearts of many people. He placed particular emphasis in the care for the poor and was particularly against the abuse of power and privileges by the rich and the powerful against the poor and those who were marginalised by the community. He preached directly to the people, with simple terms and words which helped him to connect well to those whom he was preaching to, helping him to convert countless thousands to the faith.

Eventually this holy man and servant of God was appointed as the Archbishop of Constantinople, and his works and reforms immediately gained opposition from the members of the rich and privileged, the nobles and the powerful clergy who opposed his more simple and disciplined approach in the Church affairs. It was particularly known that he was the enemy of the powerful Roman Empress Aelia Eudoxia, whose extravagant lifestyle was opposed by St. John Chrysostom, and the former also thought that St. John’s sermons were directed against herself. As such, by the efforts of those opposed against him, St. John Chrysostom had to endure exile from his See, and he was banished not just once but twice, as frictions continued to exist between the Empress and her supporters and St. John Chrysostom and his supporters on the other side.

The holy man of God nonetheless never gave up, and continued to serve the Lord faithfully, dedicating himself to whatever tasks and ministries he could perform, even while in exile, until his death. The dedication and hard works of St. John Chrysostom should therefore inspire all of us to trust in the Lord and allow Him to lead and guide us in our journey of faith and life. We have to remind ourselves that we have to serve God in this life and proclaim His truth and love by our lives. Let us all remind one another that God and His love for us have made us truly blessed and fortunate, for by His love, He has gathered us all from all the peoples and all the nations, to be His one flock, one Body of Christ, the Church.

May the Lord continue to bless us and strengthen us in all things. May He empower and strengthen us to be able to face challenges and trials in life. May He give us the courage and the energy to resist against the temptations of this world, and help us to remember that we are all His people, and that we should always be united in love with each other, and not be divided one against another. May God be with us always, now and forevermore. Amen.

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Tuesday, 13 September 2022 : 24th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Luke 7 : 11-17

At that time, a little later after Jesus healed the servant of a captain in Capernaum, He went to a town called Naim. He was accompanied by His disciples and a great number of people. As He reached the gate of the town, a dead man was being carried out. He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; there followed a large crowd of townspeople.

On seeing her, the Lord had pity on her and said, “Do not cry.” Then He came up and touched the stretcher, and the men who carried it stopped. Jesus then said, “Young man, I say to you, wake up!” And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.

A holy fear came over them all, and they praised God saying, “A great Prophet has appeared among us; God, has visited His people.” The news spread throughout Judea and the surrounding places.

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Tuesday, 13 September 2022 : 24th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 99 : 2, 3, 4, 5

Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs.

Know that the Lord is God; He created us and we are His people, the sheep of His fold.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving, His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and bless His Name.

For the Lord is good; His love lasts forever and His faithfulness through all generations.

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Tuesday, 13 September 2022 : 24th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 Corinthians 12 : 12-14, 27-31a

As the body is one, having many members, and all the members, while being many, form one body, so it is with Christ. All of us, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, have been baptised in one Spirit, to form one Body, and all of us have been given, to drink from the one Spirit. The Body has not just one member, but many.

Now, you are the Body of Christ, and each of you, individually, is a member of it. So God has appointed us in the Church. First Apostles, second prophets, third teachers. Then come miracles, then the gift of healing, material help, administration in the Church and the gift of tongues. Are all Apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Can all perform miracles, or cure the sick, or speak in tongues, or explain what was said in tongues? Be that as it may, set your hearts on the most precious gifts.