Our Lady of Lourdes

by

Tuesday, 11 February 2025 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as we heard from the Scripture passages today, all of us are reminded that God is our Lord and Master, and we have to keep in mind that we should not allow all sorts of worldly matters, desires and distractions to lead us away from the true path towards God and His grace. We must always put our faith and trust in God, and resist the many temptations present around us that may try to lead us astray down the wrong path, and we must also resist the pull of our pride, ego, ambition and desire in this life, and instead, strive to be humble and to be willing to listen to the Lord calling upon us and allow Him to patiently lead us down the path of righteousness and grace. We must always remember that God desires our salvation, and He has done everything He could to rescue us all and to bring us ever closer to Him.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Book of Genesis in which the account of the Creation of the world and the whole Universe continued to be told to us as initiated in yesterday’s first reading. Today, we heard the second half of this story of Creation, culminating in how God created us all mankind as the pinnacle of His Creation, creating us in His own image and likeness. It was a reminder for all of us how everything that exists around us, and including our own existence in this world, are all due to the works of the Lord, and without Him, we are nothing and we would not even have existed at all. And God created all of us in His likeness and image as ultimately, He sees us all as His own children, His adopted sons and daughters, and He intended for all of us to be the ones to enjoy everything that He has created, and to forever be in His grace and loving Presence.

However, as we all know it well, we have not been faithful and obedient to God. Instead, we chose to rebel against Him and follow the advice of the devil instead, listening to his lies and allowing his falsehoods to lead us into the wrong path, taking up the forbidden fruits of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and hence, in our desire to become like God, we ended up falling into this world of suffering and death. But God, in His most wonderful and patient love for each one of us did not give up on us. Instead, He continued to reach out to us and provided us with the help necessary for us to find our way back to Him, and He opened His arms, welcoming us back with His mercy and kindness, desiring to be reconciled and reunited with us.

And that was why He sent unto us all His own Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Divine Word of God Incarnate. It was through His Word that God has created this world and Universe, and the same Word of God, the Divine Logos has become incarnate in the flesh, becoming one of the Creation through the assumption of the flesh and our human existence, but without shedding His infinite and timeless existence from the beginning, co-Eternal and consubstantial with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Through this act of supreme love, God has made Himself tangible and approachable to all of us, to show us all His sincere desire in loving us all and in wanting to guide us and help us to return to the path of virtue and grace, so that more and more may come to be saved and be spared the fate of eternal damnation.

In our Gospel passage today, we heard the confrontation between the Lord Jesus, the same Son of God, with those Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who had been criticising Him and His disciples regarding their ways of observing the Law of God. According to those Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, who safeguarded and kept the Law and commandments of God passed down from the time of Moses, the Law and the precepts of the Law must be kept and observed very strictly, and not only that, but they had even added on many details and rituals that ended up deviating from the true purpose and intention of the Law and those precepts themselves. For example, the one that the Lord mentioned regarding the washing of the vessels and the hands before eating, which those Pharisees and teachers of the Law zealously guarded, requiring everyone to wash their hands following certain strict steps and practices, like washing all the way to the elbow, or otherwise they would be considered unclean.

The Lord was criticising and rebuking them over this obsession on the details and rules of the Law, which ended up distracting those Pharisees and the teachers of the Law from the true purpose and intention of those rules in the first place. They were meant to help the people of God lead a good, hygienic way of life, in the midst of the community of the people in the context of the Exodus, when many of them were living in close quarters, and diseases would easily spread without such good practices. However, those rules were never meant to become burden and obstacles for the people of God, or becoming tools of discrimination and differentiation, which those Pharisees and teachers of the Law often practiced. This is due to the pride and the importance that they attached to the ‘correct’ way of practicing the Law, and considering themselves better and more superior than others who did not follow the Law the same way they did.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is in fact an important reminder for us all not to be easily swayed by the temptations of worldly desires, which many of those Pharisees had succumbed to, and many of them refused to listen to the Lord and to reason because they allowed themselves to be deluded by their own pride and ego which caused them to close their minds and hearts to Him. They depended instead on their intellect, their knowledge and their sense of superiority, in thinking that they were better than others simply because they were more holy, more dedicated and more pious than those they deemed to be less than worthy because they did not observe the Law of God as stringently and piously as they had done. It was all these prideful attitudes which in fact led them astray and prevented them from coming closer to God, and we should avoid adopting the same attitude in our own lives.

Today, the Church also celebrates the occasion of the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, the famous apparition of the Blessed Mother of God, Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes at the site in southern France to St. Bernadette Soubirous, shortly after the declaration of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the then Pope Pius IX. Mary, the Mother of God appeared to the simple peasant girl, St. Bernadette in the grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes over a few occasions, in which she told to her many things about herself and the message that she wanted her to proclaim to the world, proving her authenticity and identity whenever she was asked of it. St. Bernadette initially faced a lot of hurdles and skepticism from her own parents and from the local bishop and clergy, but she insisted to continue meeting the apparation of Our Lady regardless.

After several rounds of investigations into the apparition and the growing popularity of the apparition and the devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes, after about two years, the Church finally gave its assent to the authenticity and support the apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes as legitimate and authentic, and from that point onwards, pilgrimages to the shrine of Lourdes became very popular among the faithful throughout the world. A great shrine, the Basilica of Our Lady of Lourdes now stands at the site where Our Lady once appeared to St. Bernadette almost two centuries ago, with the Grotto at Massabielle, at the heart of the shrine frequented by millions of pilgrims seeking for healing and help for their sickness, and the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes is well-known for its many miraculous healings, where many sick pilgrims had been healed from their ailments after visits to the shrine.

This devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes is yet another reminder for us of the greatness of God’s love for us, that He even also sent His mother to us, to help us all and to guide us all to Him. After all, it is the Lord Himself Who has entrusted His mother to us to be our own loving Mother from His Cross as He was hanging there at the moment of His Passion. Through His mother, the Lord wants us all to realise our shortcomings and flaws, our faults and weaknesses, and by coming towards Him through His mother, the Lord hopes that all of us may be healed by our faith and trust in Him, and also be inspired by the good examples and the faith which Mary herself has shown in her life. Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes is a great role model and example for us all to follow, and we should do our best to follow her examples in our own life and actions.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, therefore today let us all remind ourselves of God’s great and most generous love for us, all the things that He has done for our sake. Let us not take His love for granted and let us continue to thank Him for all that He has lovingly provided for us, and for the help He has shown us through His Blessed Mother, Our Lady of Lourdes, who is also our Mother. May the Lord also have mercy on the sick and those who are suffering from various diseases and ailments, and let us all continue to pray for them all, so that God may continue to journey with them all and show them all His mercy and compassion. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for all of us sinners, your sons and daughters, so that we may come to realise the depth of our sinfulness and evils, and that we may come to repent and turn away from those wickedness, and find our way to your beloved Son, Our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

by

Tuesday, 11 February 2025 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Mark 7 : 1-13

One day the Pharisees gathered around Jesus, and with them were some teachers of the Law who had just come from Jerusalem. They noticed that some of His disciples were eating their meal with unclean hands, that is, without washing them.

Now the Pharisees, and in fact all the Jews never eat without washing their hands, for they follow the tradition received from their ancestors. Nor do they eat anything, when they come from the market, without first washing themselves. And there are many other traditions they observe; for example, the ritual washing of cups, pots and plates.

So the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law asked Him, “Why do Your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders, but eat with unclean hands?” Jesus answered, “You shallow people! How well Isaiah prophesied of you when he wrote : This people honours Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. The worship they offer Me is worthless, for what they teach are only human rules. You even put aside the commandment of God to hold fast to human tradition.”

And Jesus commented, “You have a fine way of disregarding the commandments of God in order to enforce your own traditions! For example, Moses said : Do your duty to your father and your mother, and : Whoever curses his father or his mother is to be put to death. But according to you, someone could say to his father or mother, ‘I already declared Corban (which means “offered to God”) what you could have expected from me.'”

“In this case you no longer require him to do anything for his father or mother, and so you nullify the word of God through the tradition you have handed on. And you do many other things like that.”

Alternative reading (Mass of Our Lady of Lourdes)

John 2 : 1-11

At that time, three days after Jesus called Nathanael, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus was also invited to the wedding with His disciples. When all the wine provided for the celebration had been served, and they had run out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”

Jesus replied, “Woman, what concern is that to you and Me? My hour has not yet come.” However His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.” Nearby were six stone water jars, set there for ritual washing as practiced by the Jews; each jar could hold twenty or thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them to the brim. Then Jesus said, “Now draw some out and take it to the steward.” So they did. The steward tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing from where it had come; for only the servants who had drawn the water knew. So, he called the bridegroom to tell him, “Everyone serves the best wine first, and when people have drunk enough, he serves that which is ordinary. Instead you have kept the best wine until the end.”

This miraculous sign was the first, and Jesus performed it at Cana in Galilee. In this way He let His glory appear, and His disciples believed in Him.

by

Tuesday, 11 February 2025 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Psalm 8 : 4-5, 6-7, 8-9

When I observe the heavens, the work of Your hands, the moon and the stars You set in their place – what is man that You be mindful of him, the Son of Man that You should care for Him?

Yet You made Him a little lower than the Angels; You crowned Him with glory and honour and gave Him the works of Your hands; You have put all things under His feet.

Sheep and oxen without number and even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea and all that swim the paths of the ocean.

Alternative reading (Mass of Our Lady of Lourdes)

Judith 13 : 18bcde, 19

My daughter, may the Most High God bless you more than all women on earth. And blessed be the Lord God, the Creator of heaven and earth, Who has led you to behead the leader of our enemies.

Never will people forget the confidence you have shown; they will always remember the power of God.

by

Tuesday, 11 February 2025 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Genesis 1 : 20 – Genesis 2 : 4a

God said, “Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth under the ceiling of the sky.” God created the great monsters of the sea and all living animals, those that teem in the waters, according to their kind, and every winged bird, according to its kind. God saw that it was good. God blessed them saying, “Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the waters of the sea, and let the birds increase on the earth.” There was evening and there was morning : the fifth day.

God said, “Let the earth produce living animals according to their kind : cattle, creatures that move along the ground, wild animals according to their kind. So it was. God created the wild animals according to their kind, and everything that creeps along the ground according to its kind. God saw that it was good.

God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, to Our likeness. Let them rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over the wild animals, and over all creeping things that crawl along the ground.” So God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky, over every living creature that moves on the ground.” God said, “I have given you every seed bearing plants which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree that bears fruit with seed. It will be for your food. To every wild animal, to every bird of the sky, to everything that creeps along the ground, to everything that has the breath of life, I give every green plant for food.” So it was.

God saw all that He had made, and it was very good. There was evening and there was morning : the sixth day. That was the way the sky and earth were created and all their vast array. By the seventh day the work God had done was completed, and He rested on the seventh day from all the work He had done.

And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on that day He rested from all the work He had done in His creation. These are the successive steps in the creation of the heavens and the earth.

Alternative reading (Mass of Our Lady of Lourdes)

Isaiah 66 : 10-14c

Rejoice for Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her. Be glad with her, rejoice with her, all you who were in grief over her, that you may suck of the milk from her comforting breasts, that you may drink deeply from the abundance of her glory.

For this is what YHVH says : I will send her peace, overflowing like a river;  and the nations’ wealth, rushing like a torrent towards her. And you will be nursed and carried in her arms and fondled upon her lap. As a son comforted by his mother, so will I comfort you. At the sight of this, your heart will rejoice; like grass, your bones will flourish.

by

Saturday, 11 February 2023 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today the Church celebrates the occasion of the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, marking that well-known Apparition of the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary at the site of Lourdes in rural southern part of France. This Apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes happened over a century and a half ago, in the mid 19th century, as Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes appeared before a young peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous, now better known as St. Bernadette, revealing her true nature and intentions to her. Despite the many challenges and doubts that St. Bernadette faced back then, eventually the Church acknowledged the vision and Apparition to be authentic, and celebrated universally as the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, with the site of Lourdes itself becoming one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in the world.

Our Lady often appeared throughout history during times of great trials and hardships for the faithful people of God and for the world in general. She appeared in Hispania in the years of the persecutions against Christians during the earliest days of the Church to St. James the Apostle, now known as the Apparition of Our Lady of the Pillar, when Mary, who was probably even still living in the world back then, appeared to the Apostle to reassure him and to strengthen his resolve in proclaiming the truth of God to the people that he was ministering to. Mary also appeared in Guadalupe in Mexico, during the years immediately following the post-Columbian European expansion into the American continent, the New World when wars, conflicts, pandemics and other factors led to the sufferings and deaths of untold millions. Back then it was also right in the midst of the Protestant reformation when the Church became divided and splintered due to heretical teachings of those so-called reformers.

In all those occasions and others, the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God appeared to various people including that at Lourdes because she wanted to show us all the love of God and remind us of everything that her Son had done for our sake, in His sacrifice on His Cross out of ever pure and enduring love for each and every one of us. Despite our many transgressions and stubborn attitude in rejecting His kindness and love, God has always loved us regardless, and desired that each and every one of us may find our way back to Him, to be reconciled to Him, and at the same time He has also entrusted all of us to the loving care of His mother Mary, just as He had done so from His Cross. This way, each and every one of us are beloved and dear to her, and receive from her the most tender love that she has shown her Son, Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

In Lourdes, Our Lady appeared to the young, fourteen year old Bernadette Soubirous in the grotto of Massabielle where the Shrine to our Lady of Lourdes now stands. St. Bernadette initially did not know who it was that called her and appeared to her, but as she continued to meet Our Lady of Lourdes on more and more occasions, listening to her speaking and revealing more about herself, St. Bernadette kept on coming back to meet the Apparition of Our Lady. On this date, the eleventh day of February, was the date of the first apparition, and in total eighteen apparitions of Our Lady happened, and as people began to hear about the apparition of the Lady dressed in white with blue sash as encountered by the young St. Bernadette, they started to come to the site of the Apparition.

In one of the apparitions, Our Lady told St. Bernadette to dig the ground at that area and drink from the spring that would come forth from the ground. St. Bernadette did so faithfully and although it made her to appear dishevelled with mud, and dismayed some of her supporters, but the spring that came forth at the grotto site of the Apparition quickly gained a great reputation for healing, as the waters that came forth from the spring brought about quite a number of miraculous healings that scientists and doctors later on could not explain by whatever means, and the Church later certified as being authentic and miraculous in nature. That was the beginning of the famous healing miracles at Lourdes, and the beginning of the popular pilgrimage to the site of Our Lady’s Apparition, which drew millions of pilgrims and more every year.

When met by skepticism and doubt by the Church authorities, on the date of the Feast of the Annunciation of the Lord, Our Lady told St. Bernadette Soubirous that she is the Immaculate Conception, which stunned the authorities, the local bishop and priest who therefore became convinced of the authenticity of the Apparition, as the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was just proclaimed by the Blessed Pope Pius IX four years prior to the Apparition, and at the age and time back then, with much more difficult communication and transport, there could have been no way for an illiterate young peasant girl like St. Bernadette to know this truth about the Blessed Virgin, the Immaculate Conception, unless the Apparition was indeed truly of the Mother of God herself.

From then on, for the next a century and half and more until today, Lourdes had become a place visited by innumerable pilgrims and Christian faithful, with various reasons, and many among them sought healing from their physical troubles and maladies. Many were cured miraculously by their faith in God, and with the help and intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes, His mother, who is also our loving mother. That is why today, on this World Day of the Sick, on the Feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes, each and every one of us are reminded of God’s love for each one of us, which He has reassured us in many times, and which He lavished on us through the help of none other than His own mother Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes, we are all seeking for healing for our various maladies and sickness, our various illnesses and troubles in life.

And even, just as we seek for God’s healing for us, among those of us who are perfectly fit physically and mentally, there is still the sickness of our souls, the corruption of sin that has always been ever present all around us. All of us mankind are sinners be it great or small sins that we have committed, or whether few or plenty in terms of the amount of sins we committed. Not only that, but it is the Lord alone Who is able to heal us from our sins, as while doctors and other means may heal us from our worldly sickness and troubles, no one can forgive sin save that of God Himself. Hence, each one of us on this day are reminded that we who are in need of God’s healing and mercy, all of us should come to seek Him wholeheartedly, and to humbly entrust ourselves to Him with the help from His most loving Mother Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes.

Let us ask then, for our blessed and loving Mother to pray and intercede for us, who are sinners and afflicted with many sickness and troubles, foremost of which is our corruption by sin. May Our Lady of Lourdes continue to pray and intercede for us sinners, and for those afflicted by various maladies, illnesses and sickness, all throughout the world. May the Lord have mercy on us and heal us from our troubles, and help us to come back to Him, and to be reunited with Him, in perfect bliss and happiness one day, free from the troubles of our flesh and our souls, pure and perfect once again. Amen.

by

Saturday, 11 February 2023 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Mark 8 : 1-10

At that time, soon afterwards Jesus was in the midst of another large crowd, that obviously had nothing to eat. So He called His disciples and said to them, “I feel sorry for these people, because they have been with Me for three days and now have nothing to eat. If I send them to their homes hungry, they will faint on the way; some of them have come a long way.”

His disciples replied, “Where, in a deserted place like this, could we get enough bread to feed these people?” He asked them, “How many loaves have you?” And they answered, “Seven.” Then He ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground. Taking the seven loaves and giving thanks, He broke them, and handed them to His disciples to distribute. And they distributed them among the people. They also had some small fish, so Jesus said a blessing, and asked that these be shared as well.

The people ate and were satisfied. The broken pieces were collected, seven wicker baskets full of leftovers. Now those who had eaten were about four thousand in number. Jesus sent them away, and immediately got into the boat with His disciples, and went to the region of Dalmanutha.

Alternative reading (Mass of Our Lady of Lourdes)

John 2 : 1-11

At that time, three days after Jesus called Nathanael, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus was also invited to the wedding with His disciples. When all the wine provided for the celebration had been served, and they had run out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”

Jesus replied, “Woman, what concern is that to you and Me? My hour has not yet come.” However His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.” Nearby were six stone water jars, set there for ritual washing as practiced by the Jews; each jar could hold twenty or thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them to the brim. Then Jesus said, “Now draw some out and take it to the steward.” So they did. The steward tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing from where it had come; for only the servants who had drawn the water knew. So, he called the bridegroom to tell him, “Everyone serves the best wine first, and when people have drunk enough, he serves that which is ordinary. Instead you have kept the best wine until the end.”

This miraculous sign was the first, and Jesus performed it at Cana in Galilee. In this way He let His glory appear, and His disciples believed in Him.

by

Saturday, 11 February 2023 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Psalm 89 : 2, 3-4, 5-6, 12-13

Before the mountains were formed, before You made the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity – You are God.

You turn humans back to dust, saying, “Return, o mortals!” A thousand years in Your sight are like a day that has passed, or like a watch in the night.

You sow them in their time, at dawn they peep out. In the morning they blossom, but the flower fades and withers in the evening.

So make us know the shortness of our life, that we may gain wisdom of heart. How long will you be angry, o Lord? Have mercy on Your servant.

Alternative reading (Mass of Our Lady of Lourdes)

Judith 13 : 18bcde, 19

My daughter, may the Most High God bless you more than all women on earth. And blessed be the Lord God, the Creator of heaven and earth, Who has led you to behead the leader of our enemies.

Never will people forget the confidence you have shown; they will always remember the power of God.

by

Saturday, 11 February 2023 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Genesis 3 : 9-24

YHVH God called the man saying to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard Your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree I ordered you not to eat?”

The man answered, “The woman You put with me gave me fruit from the tree and I ate it.” God said to the woman, “What have you done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me and I ate.”

YHVH God said to the serpent, “Since you have done that, be cursed among all the cattle and wild beasts! You will crawl on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life. I will make you enemies, you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.”

To the woman, God said, “I will increase your suffering in childbearing, and you will give birth to your children in pain. You will be dependent on your husband and he will lord it over you.” To the man, He said, “Because you have listened to your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I forbade you to eat, cursed be the soil because of you! In suffering you will provide food for yourself from it, all the days of your life.”

“It will produce thorn and thistle for you and you will eat the plants of the field. With sweat on your face you will eat your bread, until you return to clay, since it was from clay that you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

The man called his wife by the name of Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. YHVH God made garments of skin for the man and his wife, and with these He clothed them. Then YHVH God said, “Man has now become like one of Us making himself judge of good and evil. Let him not stretch out his hand to take and eat from the tree of life as well, and live forever.”

So God cast him from the garden of Eden to till the soil from which he had been made. And after having driven the man out, God posted Cherubim and a flaming sword that kept turning at the east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of Life.

Alternative reading (Mass of Our Lady of Lourdes)

Isaiah 66 : 10-14c

Rejoice for Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her. Be glad with her, rejoice with her, all you who were in grief over her, that you may suck of the milk from her comforting breasts, that you may drink deeply from the abundance of her glory.

For this is what YHVH says : I will send her peace, overflowing like a river; and the nations’ wealth, rushing like a torrent towards her. And you will be nursed and carried in her arms and fondled upon her lap. As a son comforted by his mother, so will I comfort you. At the sight of this, your heart will rejoice; like grass, your bones will flourish.

by

Friday, 11 February 2022 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today the Church celebrates the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, the miraculous apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God in Lourdes, a small secluded area in the southern part of France. Mary in her apparition as Our Lady of Lourdes appeared to the young girl named Bernadette in a grotto where today the great Basilica of Our Lady of Lourdes now stands, and that young girl eventually became known as St. Bernadette Soubirous.

At that time, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to the young girl Bernadette as a lady dressed in white with beads of rosary on her, girdled in blue and with flowers by her. That supernatural vision startled the young St. Bernadette at first, and scared her, but Our Lady reassured her and asked her to pray the rosary together. She made her appearance a few more times even as St. Bernadette’s parents and others were skeptical of what had happened. Some of them even thought that she had hallucinated, seen an evil spirit or simply was lying to cover up some misdeeds.

But St. Bernadette kept on visiting the grotto where she met the apparition of Our Lady despite the opposition from her parents and others, and Our Lady revealed to St. Bernadette a hidden spring of water which would soon became truly famous as the source of many miraculous healings, of which some of them were certified as truly miraculous in nature. Initially this was received with much skepticism both from the Church and from the secular authorities, which resulted in attempts to prevent further spread of the devotion.

It was then that Our Lady appeared to St. Bernadette, revealing to her who she truly was, the Blessed Mother of God, the Immaculate Conception. This revelation brought a shock to a local priest who immediately believed in what St. Bernadette told him about the Marian apparition. That is because the illiterate St. Bernadette living in the secluded village that is where Lourdes was located could not have known about the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception which at that time was just recently declared by the Pope in Rome, and at that time, it would have taken a long time for the message to be propagated throughout the Christendom.

It was therefore the beginning of the growth in the popularity and the attraction of the Shrine at Lourdes, which grew to became an international phenomenon drawing millions annually as many people who are sick sought to seek healing and recovery through the miraculous occasions and reassurances from the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady of Lourdes. The Church also designated today, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes as the World Day of the Sick as a reminder that there are many people who are suffering from physical and even mental maladies and sickness all around the world.

Today, as we celebrate this Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes let us all therefore remind ourselves to put our trust in the Lord, He Who has sent to us His blessed Mother, Our Lady of Lourdes to be our intercessor and to help guide us to His loving embrace. The miraculous healings were not due to superstitions and the quality of the waters of the grotto of Lourdes, but rather, it was the faith that the sick had in the Lord which brought them to healing and the miraculous things that happened there, just as at the time of the Lord, He healed the sick and how if we remember a woman with haemorrhage problem was healed by her faith in Him.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are also reminded that we are all people who are sick and are in need of God’s help. I know many of us may wonder what we are sick from since we are in such good health. We may indeed be perfectly healthy in the body but we are all suffering from the sickness due to our sins. Yes, all of us are sinners and sin is the sickness that is actually eating us from within, corrupting us and affecting us adversely by its corrupting nature. Through sin we have been made sick in our spirit and soul, and the only healing we can get is through God and His loving mercy.

Therefore today all of us are reminded of how sinful we are and regardless how big or small, or how significant those sins may be, all of us are in need of healing from God, as unlike any other physical ailments and maladies, God alone can heal us from our sins. It is through Him alone that we can be freed from the clutches and tyranny of sin and evil. The Lord offered us His healing and forgiveness freely, and He gave us all His mother to care for us and to help guide us in our journey towards Him, so that by the intercession and guidance of Our Lady of Lourdes we may come to be fully healed body and soul.

Let us therefore ask Our Blessed Mother, Our Lady of Lourdes to intercede for us sinners, who are sickened by sin, and who are suffering the consequences of our infidelity and weakness. Let us ask her to pray for us and guide us in our path to seek the healing from the hands of her Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour. May God also look kindly upon us and show us His mercy, love and compassion, now and always. Amen.

by

Friday, 11 February 2022 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes)

Mark 7 : 31-37

At that time, again Jesus set out : from the country of Tyre He passed through Sidon and, skirting the sea of Galilee, He came to the territory of Decapolis. There, a deaf man, who also had difficulty in speaking, was brought to Him. They asked Jesus to lay His hand upon him.

Jesus took him apart from the crowd, and put His fingers into the man’s ears, and touched his tongue with spittle. Then, looking up to heaven, He said with a deep sigh, “Ephphata!” that is, “Be opened!”

And immediately, his ears were opened, his tongue was loosened, and he began to speak clearly. Jesus ordered them not to tell anyone about it; but the more He insisted, the more they proclaimed it. The people were completely astonished and said, “He has done all things well; He makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.”

Alternative reading (Mass of Our Lady of Lourdes)

John 2 : 1-11

At that time, three days after Jesus called Nathanael, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus was also invited to the wedding with His disciples. When all the wine provided for the celebration had been served, and they had run out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”

Jesus replied, “Woman, what concern is that to you and Me? My hour has not yet come.” However His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.” Nearby were six stone water jars, set there for ritual washing as practiced by the Jews; each jar could hold twenty or thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them to the brim. Then Jesus said, “Now draw some out and take it to the steward.” So they did. The steward tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing from where it had come; for only the servants who had drawn the water knew. So, he called the bridegroom to tell him, “Everyone serves the best wine first, and when people have drunk enough, he serves that which is ordinary. Instead you have kept the best wine until the end.”

This miraculous sign was the first, and Jesus performed it at Cana in Galilee. In this way He let His glory appear, and His disciples believed in Him.