Passion Sunday sermon

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Sunday, 3 April 2022 : Fifth Sunday of Lent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we gather together to celebrate this Fifth Sunday of Lent, we are all called yet again to embrace God’s ever wonderful and patient love and mercy, His enduring desire to be reconciled with us and to love us wholeheartedly. He has called us to abandon our sinful ways and our wicked deeds, and to come to Him with contrite hearts and the desire to love Him once again. We are all reminded of this call to repentance and holiness this Sunday, as we continue to progress ever closer to Holy Week and Easter.

In our first reading today, taken from the Book of the prophet Isaiah, we heard of the words of the Lord to His people reassuring them of His providence and love. He reminded them of everything that He had done in the past in rescuing them from their predicament. He spoke of the moment when He brought their ancestors out from Egypt, opening the sea before them and destroying their enemies, the armies and chariots of the Pharaoh before their own eyes. The Lord reminded them of everything that He had done for their sake, and not only that, He reassured them that He would do even more things in the future to come.

He will send to them the promised deliverance and salvation, by sending them His own beloved Son as the Saviour to all of them, a promise to be fulfilled by the coming of Christ, the Son of God into this world. He would gather all of mankind, all His beloved ones to Himself, and they shall enjoy forever the bounty and grace of eternal life and true happiness of being together with Him in the glory of Heaven. The Lord has always intended for us all to enjoy the true happiness and joy of this wonderful world that He had created, and He did create us out of love that He has for each one of us.

We were never intended to endure the bitterness of suffering in this world. However, our inability to resist the temptations to sin essentially ruined all of that. We fell into the temptations of our own desires and fell to the devil’s lies and temptations as he tempted our first ancestors to follow him and his advice instead of believing in God as they should have. By sin we have been separated and sundered from the presence of God, cast out of Eden as our just punishment and the consequence for our sins. Yet, that was not the end for us. God could have destroyed and crushed us for our sins and wickedness. But, His love for us surpassed even His disgust for our sins.

Nonetheless, the reality is that no sin can remain unaccounted for, and we have to answer for every one of these taints and corruptions on our very own souls and beings. As long as sin taints us, we will have to answer for every single one of them, and those who pass on from this world with sins still unforgiven and unaccounted for will be judged by those sins we have committed, as well as by those sins of omission we made when we ignored the opportunities when we could have done good things with our lives, be it for the benefit of our fellow brothers and sisters or for the greater community.

That is why in our Gospel passage today we are reminded through the well-known interaction between the Lord Jesus and the woman who had committed adultery and were caught in the midst of doing so, and also how the Lord interacted with the crowd assembled there, some of whom with the malicious intent of using the opportunity to try to put the Lord into a trap and to get Him into a corner and to find reasons to persecute and condemn Him. Why so? That is because the whole event was likely the effort of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law in trying to discredit or even persecute the Lord, Who was well-known for His frequent interactions and works among those considered as sinners, such as the tax collectors, the prostitutes and people who were possessed, ill and had disabilities.

At that time, associating with those people were often abhorred and discouraged, and this went even to the extent that coming close into contact with them causing someone to be considered unclean and unworthy. The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law in particular were very convinced of their own piety, their righteous and worthy way of life, through their strict interpretation, enforcement and living of the ways of the Law of God. However, they failed to realise one very important thing that, in the end, it is not they who determine whether they are worthy of God or not. Instead, God is the One Who will determine all of that.

Through the example of the Lord’s interaction with the convicted adulterous woman, the Lord made it very clear that what He wants is not the destruction of sinners like us. Instead, as I mentioned earlier, that His love for us is indeed so great that it surpasses even the wickedness of our sins. Of course it does not mean that He condones or accepts our sins and evil actions. Rather, He wants us to distance ourselves from those actions and sins, to turn away wholeheartedly from those evil deeds and ways, and embrace wholly His love and mercy, walking ever always in His righteous path.

That was why the Lord told the woman that He did not condemn her, just as no one gathered there did not dare to do so either. When the Lord told the assembled people who pressed Him to take action against the woman, and He said that the one who was without sin ought to cast the first stone at her, it reminds us all that each and every one of us are sinners, no matter how small or insignificant, how great or serious our sins may be. Sin is sin, and as long as we have sin in us, we are unworthy of God and cannot come close to Him. And yet, it was God Who first made the move to close up the distance between us.

He told the woman that He did not condemn her either, but wanting her to turn away from those sins she committed, sinning no more and embracing fully His forgiveness and mercy. It proves that God hates not the sinner but the sin. He does not despise us as a person, but rather our attachment to sin, our stubbornness in remaining attached and obsessed over those worldly desires and all the other temptations that we often fail to resist and even indulge ourselves in. The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law were so fixated on their own sense of pride and self-righteousness that they failed to realise that they themselves too, were sinners.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, should we allow our pride and ego, our desires and the many other distractions in life to prevent us from finding our way to God and His salvation? We must not let ourselves be dissuaded and distracted by all those things that may end up getting us further and further away from the Lord’s path. And that is why we must remind ourselves yet again to seek the Lord with renewed faith, genuine desire to be reconciled with Him and with a contrite heart full of regret for our many sins and wickedness, with the commitment to make amends and to get closer to Him, Our Lord and Saviour once again.

As St. Paul said in our second reading today, in his Epistle to the Philippians, all of us have to seek Christ, Our Lord and Saviour, find Him and do whatever we can to walk with Him together, and we have to seek Him as in Him is worth everything and more than whatever we can find and gather in this world. He has willingly reached out to us, with plenty of mercy and compassion, willing to forgive us our sins if we desire to have them forgiven, and as long as we sincerely show contrition and regret over those faults and mistakes that we had done. What better reward and prize we can get as compared to these?

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we gather together this Sunday in the Lord’s presence, let us all remind ourselves of our sinfulness and how we all are in need of God’s healing and mercy. We are all in need of this forgiveness for God alone can forgive us our sins. Otherwise, we will have to answer for every sins we have with us that are still unaccounted for and unforgiven as I mentioned. And if we do not change our ways, remaining in our state and path of sin, we will be judged by those same sins we committed. God generously wants to forgive us our sins, but it is often we who reject Him and His love.

And are we going to be like the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, who gloated over those whom they deemed to be less worthy and more wicked than they were? This is a reminder that this is not the attitude that we should adopt at any point of time, as this kind of attitude truly prevents us from humbling ourselves and realising that we are always in need of God’s grace and forgiveness. While the tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners are all fast going forward in the path towards God’s forgiveness and eternal life as they realised their sins and made the efforts to be forgiven by God, those who kept their pride and ego will perish because of that pride.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us remind ourselves and one another to be humble before God, and to make good use of the time and opportunities that have been given to us, such that we may benefit from the gift of Our Lord’s ever generous mercy and compassion. He has proven to us again and again of how faithful He has been to the Covenant that He had made and sealed with us and our ancestors, while we have proven yet again and again, how unfaithful we have been to Him, and how terrible we have been in living our lives so far, in not following God’s path and in walking down our own paths towards doom.

Can we do our best and strive to reject those temptations to sin, brothers and sisters in Christ? Can we reject the devil and all the wicked things that he has been persuading us to do, and all the lies and falsehoods that he has presented before us? Let us follow the Lord’s advice and call, for us to sin no more and turn wholeheartedly towards Him, knowing that in God alone there is true happiness and satisfaction. Let us remember that while God loves us and does not despise us, He still despises our sins and wickedness. Let us do our best in the remaining time of this Lenten season, to purify ourselves and to make a good habit of living virtuously in God’s path, so that from now on we may be ever better Christians, ever more committed disciples of Our Lord.

May the Lord be with all of us as we journey together with Him, as we walk down the path of reconciliation and forgiveness. May He grant us the courage and strength to follow Him with commitment and strong desire to love Him in each and every moments of our lives, and may we also be good examples, role models and inspirations for one another in how we live our lives so that many more people may also share in God’s salvation and eternal life with us. Amen.

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Sunday, 21 March 2021 : Fifth Sunday of Lent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday, the fifth one in the season of Lent we mark the beginning of the Passiontide, the period marking the time remembering the Passion or the suffering and death of Our Lord which will culminate in the celebrations of the Holy Week and the Easter Triduum. As such this Sunday is also known as the Passion Sunday, serving as an important reminder to all of us that we are approaching the end of Lent and are entering the most solemn period in our entire liturgical year.

In our first reading today, we heard of the Lord speaking to His people through His prophet Jeremiah, promising them of a New Covenant that He would establish with them, and how He would reconcile them all to Himself, and that He would forgive them their sins and take them back to His embrace. The New Covenant that He would establish with them would not be like the old Covenant that He had once made, but much more perfect and complete.

At that time, the people of Israel had long disobeyed the Lord and fallen into vile and wicked ways, worshipping the pagan idols and gods, refusing to listen to the prophets and messengers that had been sent to them and remaining defiant in sin. They rebelled against God and were stubborn in challenging God’s authority, and thus, they should have been crushed and destroyed. God could have condemned mankind, but He did not do so because of the love that He has for each and every one of us.

He has always been patient in reaching out to us and in loving us, showing us all His care and compassionate love. And although He might seem to be stern and fierce at times, that was because He loved us sincerely and with the genuine desire to see us grow and become better. He is our loving Father, Who wants us all, His children to learn His ways and to be righteous and good, just as He is good. That is why He sent messengers after messengers, prophets after prophets to reach out to us.

He then sent us the fulfilment of that promise, the promises He had made to all of His beloved ones, through His prophets and messengers, including the one made through Jeremiah. That fulfilment came through Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Saviour of all. That God did not even hesitate to give to us His own beloved and only begotten Son is a testament of His enduring love and the dedication He has to the Covenant that He had made with us.

The Lord Jesus in our Gospel passage today proclaimed to His disciples and to all the people gathered, of the truth of God that has been revealed through Him, and how He would glorify His Father’s Name through His actions, where He mentioned how He would suffer and eventually die for the sake of our salvation, taking up upon Himself the sins of the whole world and placed them on His own shoulders, enduring all those for our sake, because of the love He has for us.

And just as shown in our Gospel passage today, how there were some Greeks, the non-Jews or the Gentiles who came and wanted to speak with the Lord and know more about Him, today as we heard that passage, we can see the symbolic nature of such an encounter, as God’s voice was heard just like how it was during the time of the baptism of Jesus, proclaiming that ‘I have glorified My Name, and I shall glorify it again’, as a reference to what the Lord Jesus would do to proclaim the glory of God and reveal the fullness of His truth to all.

These were meant therefore for both the Jews and the non-Jews or Gentiles alike, God has called all of them to follow Him and to walk in His path. God wants every single one of us, children of mankind, to come to know Him, to embrace Him and be reconciled with Him. Once we may have been separated from Him by sin, but God wants to show us all that no sin is great enough to come between us and Him, and His grace alone is enough to bridge that gap between us and Him.

In our second reading, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews spoke more of all that the Lord Jesus, Our Saviour had done in order to bring us out of our predicament and enslavement by sin, that by obeying the will of His heavenly Father, He willingly took up His Cross, and by becoming both the High Priest for all of us and also the Lamb of sacrifice, the Paschal Lamb, He became for us the source of salvation and eternal life, the reconciliation with God, our loving Father and Creator.

It was by that action, the perfect and most loving sacrifice offered by Christ, our one and true Eternal High Priest, has offered on the Cross, the Altar of His sacrifice at Calvary that He has both become the High Priest offering on our behalf the sacrificial offering worthy of the forgiveness for our sins and our redemption. And not only that but He is also the Lamb to be sacrificed, the only One perfect and worthy enough, Son of God, incarnate in the Flesh, shedding His Body and Blood on the Altar of the Cross, in atonement for our sins.

This, brothers and sisters in Christ, is the Passion of Our Lord, the word Passion having the meaning of enduring, suffering and persevering with patience, from the Latin words, ‘passus sum’, referring to all the hardships, trials, and grievous wounds and pains that Our Lord had to endure as He ascended the way of the Cross, the path of suffering from Jerusalem where He was condemned to death by crucifixion, up to the hill of Calvary outside the city, stripped and humiliated, nailed to the Cross, and finally suffered death at the end of all His sufferings.

That is also why we celebrate during this upcoming Holy Week, committing ourselves to the memory of the Lord Who has loved us so much that He has sent us deliverance, hope and salvation through Christ, His beloved Son, Who had to endure all the struggles and pains so that through His suffering and death, we may be freed from the tyranny of sin and death, and by sharing in the same death, we may enter into the glorious Resurrection just as the Lord Himself had risen in glory.

Through His suffering on the Cross, Christ shed His own Most Precious Body and Blood, with the Cross as His Altar, offering Himself freely and establish for us a New Covenant between us and God, with Him as the Mediator of this New Covenant. Christ being both the Son of God and Son of Man, having two distinct natures, human and Divine, united inseparably in His one Person, is perfect for this role of Mediator, bringing the gap that existed between us and God, reconciling us from the rebellion of our sins and wickedness.

According to St. Paul, Christ is the New Adam, which as compared to the old Adam, our first forefather, is perfect and the exemplary Man, that while Adam and Eve once disobeyed the Lord and ate of the fruits of the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil, but Christ obeyed His Father’s will so perfectly, that He endured all the sufferings and drank the cup of persecution, bitterness, rejection and humiliation for our sake. Through His obedience, we have been healed and are reconciled with God, establishing a New Covenant, one that is lasting and never-ending, a New and Eternal Covenant.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we enter into the time of Passiontide beginning today on this Fifth Sunday of Lent, the Passion Sunday, let us all therefore deepen our relationship with God and rediscover that faith that we ought to have in Him if we have not already done so yet. The Lord has shown us so much love and patience, enduring the worst of persecutions and challenges, trials and sorrows so that by His suffering we may gain our freedom from the bondage of sin and the tyranny of death.

How are we then responding to God’s love, that is ever present and ever enduring in our midst? Are we going to continue to ignore Him, to reject Him and to harden our hearts and close our minds against Him? Or are we going to allow Him to touch our lives and to make us whole once again, healing us from the afflictions of our sins? As we enter into this time of deeper preparation for the upcoming Holy Week and Easter, let us therefore make best use of the time and the opportunities we have received, so that we may come to seek the Lord with a contrite heart, filled with repentance and regret for our sins.

May the Lord, our loving Father and Creator, continue to love us all as He has always done, and remain patient with us as we continue to navigate our way through this world. Let us all strive to turn away from sinful ways, and reject all forms of worldly temptations and evils, remembering just what He has gone through in order to save us and in establishing the New Covenant with us. Let us seek to be ever closer to the Lord in all things, and grow ever stronger in our faith and commitment to Him. Let our remaining observances of Lent be fruitful and help us to be more attuned to God and His will. May God bless us all and our good efforts and endeavours. Amen.

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Sunday, 7 April 2019 : Fifth Sunday of Lent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this fifth Sunday of the season of Lent, we are just one week away from the beginning of the Holy Week on Palm Sunday, the beginning of the most important week and time in our entire liturgical year. And traditionally this Sunday, the Fifth Sunday of Lent is also known as the Passion Sunday, marking the beginning of the two weeks Passiontide period spanning the period from today to the Resurrection of Christ at Easter.

At this occasion therefore, the Lord wants each and every one of us to delve deeper into the mystery of His Passion, suffering and death on the cross, as we approach the time when we will commemorate the most important events in our history, the time when God Himself willingly gave His all and fulfilled the promises that He had made with our ancestors, the promise of salvation and liberation from sin, and the promise of freedom from the tyranny of Satan and sin, and to make with us a new and everlasting Covenant.

That is why today’s Scripture readings focus on the love and mercy of God being shown and made evident before us, from the promises that God made to His people through the prophet Isaiah in our first reading today, where He reminded them of the many wonderful things that He had performed and done before them, since the time of their ancestors, and how He has loved and blessed them ever since. God wanted to show His people that His love and mercy is ever trustworthy and ever good.

And then, the Lord showed it firsthand through what we have heard in our Gospel passage today, when the Lord Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who wanted to corner and trap Him in an impossible situation, by bringing into His presence a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery, and asking Him what should be done upon that woman. Their plotting and opposition were truly sinister and wicked, and we will go through the reason why.

First of all, the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law were hoping that Jesus would side with the woman who had been caught in adultery, based on how He has often spent His time in the company of sinners, people like tax collectors and prostitutes, with people who were sick with various diseases, those who were considered unclean in body and in spirit, all those who have been spurned and rejected by the society and looked down upon as sinners.

And if the Lord sided with the woman, by forgiving her outright and ignoring whatever the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law had accused her for, then they could quickly seize on the opportunity and discredit the Lord Jesus, labelling Him as a friend of sinners and as a blasphemer, for allowing sin to continue to exist. This would have immediately brought a great problem for the Lord, Who would then lose His credibility, following and even trust by the people. And He could even be condemned by the authorities for such an action.

But then, if the Lord so chose that He would punish the woman in accordance with the Jewish customs and laws, then the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law would also seize upon the opportunity to enhance their own position and prestige, by pointing out that in the end, the Lord Jesus was no different from them, and probably was a usurper and a fake who is trying to seize the teaching authority from the Sanhedrin or the Jewish elite, and He would have also ended in trouble for this choice of action.

Clearly the Lord Jesus was trapped and cornered by the action of the Pharisees, the teachers of the Law and all those who have opposed Him. But the Lord then made a move that His enemies did not anticipate at all. He asked that the one who was without sin cast the first stone at the woman, for the punishment for adultery according to the Jewish laws and customs was stoning to death. And the people gradually left the place, beginning from the oldest to the youngest.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, what we have just heard and witnessed from the story in our Gospel passage today is the sad reality of our human life and our actions towards one another. We like to point out the shortcomings and faults in others, and we want to see others fail and we find joy in causing hurt and suffering in others, just because we hate or dislike the other person, or think that we are better than them.

That was how the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law were capable of doing such a heinous and wicked act, in trying to frame and discredit the Lord Jesus, by trapping Him in what was to be an impossible situation. But the Lord knew all that were going on in their minds, all their plots and thoughts, and surely, He must have been very sad to see many of His people behaving in such a way, condemning sinners and being selfish in their attitudes towards others.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we see today, the great mercy of God as we saw how Jesus was merciful towards the woman who was caught in the act of adultery. When all the people who wanted to condemn her had left, and no one threw the stone at her, the Lord told her to go and change her life, no longer sin but obeying God’s will from then on. And just as none of the people condemned her in the end, He Himself said that neither did He condemn her.

This is a reminder to each and every one of us, that first of all, each and every one of us are sinners, and all of us are in need of God’s healing and help, for otherwise, sin will become our undoing. And no one can heal us from our sins, except for God. For it is He alone Who is able to forgive us from our sins and restore us to the state of grace in Him. Sin is indeed a very dangerous disease that is slowly destroying us and corrupting us from inside out, often without us realising it.

And that is why, today through the passages, we are reminded to come to seek God’s forgiveness and mercy. And then, as we are all sinners, none of us have any rights to condemn and be judgmental on others, just as what the Pharisees, the teachers of the Law had done, in wanting to condemn the woman to death, and having that sinister intention to discredit the Lord Jesus by using that opportunity.

That was why, the Lord Jesus said, ‘Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone’. This reminds us that before we accuse others and try to make others look bad or suffer, or punishing them for their faults, we must always try to contemplate deep in our hearts, and think whether we have sinned or done the same fault ourselves. When we point a finger to judge and demean others, do we realise that the other four fingers are pointing to ourselves?

We know of one parable of Jesus, where it was said that ‘Remove first the splinter from your own eye, before trying to remove the plank from your brother’s eye’. A lot of us have this hurt and angst within us, in our relationships towards each other, to our friends, to our family members, to the members of our community, and frequently, within our Church ministries and organisations, in our parishes and in our faith communities and groups.

And that is caused by the pride that we have within us, in refusing to admit that we ourselves are not perfect and we ourselves are in need of the same healing that the other person is needing. We often think that others need to change to suit what we want or what we expect of them, but how many of us actually stop to think that we ourselves are in need of a similar change in our own lives? When we allow ego and pride to take charge of our thoughts and actions, we will end up doing exactly what the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law had been doing.

Let us instead follow the example of Christ, Who forgave and healed the adulterous woman from her sins. He told her to go and sin no more, and that is what we should be doing as well. God is so merciful and loving towards us, even towards His enemies, that when He was on the cross, He forgave even all those who have condemned Him. He, the Perfect One, willingly took up our imperfections and sins, and be punished for them, all because of His love and tender mercy towards us.

Are we able to follow Christ’s loving examples in our own actions in life? Are we able to reach out to all those whom we have hurt and who have hurt us, and forgive each other? This is one important challenge that I think we should take up in this remaining time of Lent, as we prepare ourselves to enter into the mystery of the Passion, suffering and death of Our Lord. It is essentially all about God’s love and generous mercy towards us.

Let us all look towards the cross of Christ, on the Lord crucified. Let us all look at how wounded He is, and realise that each and every one of those innumerable wounds are our own sins, that God has willingly taken up on Himself, that each and every one of us may be healed. Let us all be ashamed at our sinfulness, but with the hope that Christ will heal us from our sins, and instead of being prideful and judgmental to each other, let us all help each other to overcome the temptations of sin, and be loving and forgiving at all times, as Christ Our Lord Himself has done.

May the Lord our God continue to love us, and may He continue to shower us with His love and mercy. May God guide us always in our journey of faith towards Him, each and every days of our life. And may all of us be prepared to enter meaningfully into the commemoration of Our Lord’s Passion, suffering, death and resurrection. Amen.

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Sunday, 18 March 2018 : Fifth Sunday of Lent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Sunday, which is the fifth and the last one in the season of Lent before the beginning of the Holy Week, we listened to the words of the Scripture telling us about the coming of a new Covenant forged between God and His people, which would come to be realised during the events of the Passion of Our Lord that we commemorate in this upcoming Holy Week.

For the past few weeks, we have been discussing about the Covenants that God had made with His people, which then ended up being broken by the same people with whom He had made those Covenants with. Now, what is a Covenant in the first place? A Covenant is not just like any promises or pacts, even though it may sound very similar to a promise or a pact between peoples. A Covenant is a very formal agreement and contract between two parties, where each party is expected to obey to certain rules of the Covenant.

And it is God Who made His Covenants with us, with God as one party of the Covenant, and us mankind as the other party of the Covenant. But while God has always been faithful to His part in the Covenants He made, it has always been us who failed to honour our part of the Covenant. The descendants of Adam, Noah, Abraham, David and all those with whom God made His Covenants had sinned, by disobeying His laws, worshipping pagan idols and committing wicked acts such as murder, adultery and simony and many more.

A prominent part of the Covenant in the past during the time of the Old Testament was the sacrifice of animals such as lambs or bulls or pigeons, which blood was then divided into half, half poured onto the altar while the other half is sprinkled onto the people as a sign of the renewal of the Covenant. They were always conducted in the most formal and solemn circumstances to highlight just how serious God is at establishing a loving relationship with us.

Whenever we disobey God and do what is wicked and against His ways, we sin before Him, and by that sin, we have been disgraced and sundered from God’s love. And therefore we break the Covenant that God had made with us by our sins. When that happened in the past, the people who sinned must come to a priest, who would then sacrifice the animals brought onto the Temple, and sprinkle the blood on the sinner as a sign of God’s forgiveness.

Essentially, this is a very symbolic gesture of God’s forgiveness of our sins, which is then linked to the renewal of the Covenant He had established with us. But as we can see, mankind is a very stubborn race of people, who often failed to resist the temptation to sin, and we continue to do what we prefer to do rather than to obey the ways and the laws of the Lord.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have to realise the extent of the love which God has shown to us all, to each and every one of us, from the least among us to the greatest and the mightiest among us. All of us are equally loved by God, and none of us can say that God does not love us or hate us. He loves each and every one of us for who we are, His beloved children and creation, but it was our sins that He despised. It was our sins which come in between us from our loving relationship with God.

It was never in God’s intention to punish us or to make our lives miserable. If souls fell and ended up in hell, in the state of eternal despair and hopelessness, that was not God’s doing, but the mistakes committed by the fallen beings themselves. God has always offered His love, forgiveness and compassion freely without the need for us to pay for them. But it is us mankind who have willingly refused to accept God’s offer of mercy, love and compassion.

For the love of worldly things, our greed and ambition, our ego and desires, we have chosen to walk in our own path, instead of obeying and following God. We ended up disobeying God and living in sin, and that is why many of us mankind, throughout the ages are truly in a sad state, defiled and corrupted by our sins and wickedness. Had the Lord not done anything to help us, hell would have been full with all of us and our ancestors.

No, that is not what God wanted to happen, and that is why, He resolved to end the continuing cycle of sin and damnation once and for all, by forging with us a renewed Covenant, the greatest among all the Covenants, one that will never end and will never be broken, because it is sealed not with any animal sacrifices or any forms of animal blood, but by the most precious Blood of all, the Blood of Our Lord, God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Yes, brothers and sisters in Christ, it was by His ultimate and most loving sacrifice on the cross, that Jesus Christ Our Lord sealed the New Covenant which He made with us all, as the Mediator of that New Covenant, between God and mankind, His beloved ones. Christ’s loving sacrifice and His voluntary shedding of His Blood from the cross, on the perfect altar that is Calvary, marks the beginning of a new era, of reconciliation between God and His people, all of us.

Before Christ, we mankind and Our Lord have been separated because of sin, such that in between us and Him there is an uncrossable chasm and sundering, that prevented us from being able to be with Our God. Our sins should have merited us eternal damnation and suffering in hell, separated forever from God. However, as mentioned, God did not want that to happen to us, because of His love, and thus, He gave us Christ as our Saviour, that all of us who believe in Him will be saved.

Through Christ, Who is both God and Man, all of us find a new hope, by the bridge that Christ Himself had built through His cross, to bring man back to the loving embrace of their Creator. This new and everlasting Covenant will never be broken, for God Himself guaranteed it by His own Most Precious Blood, sealed for all eternity. Now, it is the matter of whether we are willing to be a part of that Covenant or not.

God has always given us the freedom to choose whether we want to obey Him or not. However, the consequences of our choice is ours alone to bear. If we decide to follow the examples of the Israelites of the past, who disobeyed God and preferred to live in sin, enjoying all the good fruits and the desires of this world, then we have to know that we have chosen all these over all that God has offered us.

But if we choose to be faithful to Him and partake in the Covenant He had made with us through Christ, then we can call ourselves as Christians, in body, heart, mind and spirit. Yet, we cannot be half-hearted in our faith and commitment, or else, it is likely that we will be tempted and fall. Being a true Christian requires effort and commitment from us, as the Lord Himself said, that in order for us to follow Him, we must take up our crosses and follow Him.

Therefore brothers and sisters in Christ, reflecting and remembering upon all the good things that God had done for us, His insistent love and compassion for us, and all that He had given us, even to the point of giving us His own beloved Son, to be our Saviour and to die for us on the cross for our salvation, just so that He can bond us all to a new and everlasting Covenant that superseded all previous ones, then we should indeed think of how we can be part of this wonderful Covenant.

As we approach the Holy Week beginning next Sunday with the Palm Sunday, let us recall the Passion of Our Lord Jesus, Who took up that cross and suffered for us, so that by gathering all of our sins to Himself, He might redeem all of us, His beloved people. Let us all shun all of our past sins and wickedness, all the things we have done in disobedience against God, and walk from now on in His ways.

Let us now be an active partner of the Lord in the Covenant He made with us, by devoting ourselves, our time, our effort, our actions and our words for the greater glory of God. And how do we do this? First of all, we need to put God as the priority in our lives, by obeying His laws and commandments, and by doing our actions with our love for God in mind. That means, we should not treat our brothers and sisters with contempt or hatred, or selfishly trying to preserve our own needs and attain our desires over the sufferings of others.

Let us be more charitable in all of our dealings, in our every actions and deeds. Let us all have pity and compassion on those who are not as fortunate as us in our midst, and do whatever we can to help, or to alleviate their sufferings, or to share our joy with them. This is how we show others the same love that God has shown us, a selfless and compassionate love.

Let us also draw closer to God, by deepening our relationship with Him through prayer, that in everything we do, we do it prayerfully, knowing that God is with us, and that we exist to be with God, to love Him and to serve Him with love. Let us all show our commitment to Him by devoting our lives more wholeheartedly to Him. May all of us find our way to reach God’s saving grace, and receive the gift of eternal life and glory, as part of the Covenant He has established with us.

May all of us be more committed to live up to the Covenant God made with us, by proactively seeking to be righteous and just in His presence, by our compassion to the poor and to the needy around us, by listening to the pleas of the hungry and by showing comfort and love for the lonely and for those who were without love. May God be with all of our actions and endeavours, and may He bring us ever closer to Him, and bless us all of our days. Amen.