people of God

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Monday, 12 May 2014 : 4th Week of Easter, Memorial of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, Martyrs, and St. Pancras, Martyr (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are affirmed with the love of the Lord, who had given us that love through His gift of Jesus, His only beloved Son to us, as a fitting sacrificial victim and the intermediary between us sinners to He who is perfect in heaven. Through Christ all were made worthy of the Lord and were promised the glorious eternal life in heaven.

Yes, and this promise was extended to all mankind, to all the beloved creations of the Lord Most High, and not just to a certain group of people. If we read the Old Testament, it is very easy for us to have the misconception that the people of Israel, or the Jews, are the chosen people of God, whom the Lord chose over all the other nations.

God did choose the descendants of Jacob, and therefore, the descendants of Abraham, to be His first chosen, to be the ones to whom He first revealed Himself to, and the ones to whom He revealed His will and His love. But this does not mean that God excludes all the other nations from His love. He loved them equally just the same, just as we have our breath of life every single moments of our lives.

The shepherd, Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd of all the people of God, did not choose favourites among His people. Indeed, He came first to the Jews, just as His Father had first chosen them to be His people. But this does not mean that His salvation is intended only for them to the exclusion and damnation of all the other nations.

He loves us all, and wishes us all to be saved, and therefore, that is why He commended the disciples to go and spread the Good News to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. That is His intention, and He desires that we all be reunited with God in eternal bliss of splendour and happiness. And thus, He sanctifies all mankind through His death and resurrection.

We must never be haughty and judge ourselves, just like the Jews who thought themselves of being worthy of salvation, because they misunderstood the intentions and actions of the Lord as one of favouritism, particularly the chief priests and the Pharisees. They judged themselves worthy and condemned others who did not share their opinions, to the point of persecuting Jesus and His followers in their ministry.

God showed His mercy to mankind, and He forgave them all, on the account of His love and dedication for them. The Lord is loving to all, and He readily shows His love for us all. He comforts us when we suffer and when we are sad, and He lifts us up when we fall down into despair and hopelessness. He shows His care for us without any discrimination.

Today we celebrate the feast of many saints, namely St. Nereus and Achilles, as well as St. Pancras, all of whom were slaves and servants of the Empress or Augusta of the early era Roman Empire. They were the servants of the wife of the Emperor Domitian or Domitianus, who was infamous for his great persecutions against the faithful and the Church, who carried out the one of the great persecution against the Church.

They were martyred in the defense of their faith, and they refused to recant their devotion and commitment to the Lord. They stayed faithful to the end and received holy martyrdom, and now they are revered by us in the Church as saints of the holy Church, worthy of heaven and interceding for our sake daily before the Lord.

In their example, we see how even the people considered to be unworthy by many in Jesus’ time can become saints and holy martyrs, by their following of the teachings of the Lord and by walking faithfully in His ways. Thus, we too should not be afraid and instead, walk courageously in the footsteps of these holy men to be also faithful disciples of the Lord and be courageous in our works, that we may bring even more souls to salvation.

May the Lord open our minds and hearts today, that we will learn to be inclusive and not to exclude others or be judgmental, and instead be humble in seeking the Lord’s forgiveness and love. May He guide us always that we may approach ever closer to His throne of mercy and to His loving embrace. Amen.

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Monday, 12 May 2014 : 4th Week of Easter, Memorial of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, Martyrs, and St. Pancras, Martyr (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)

John 10 : 11-18

I am the Good Shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. Not so the hired hand, or any other person who is not the shepherd, and to whom the sheep do not belong. They abandon the sheep as soon as they see the wolf coming; then the wolf snatches and scatters the sheep. This is because the hired hand works for pay and cares nothing for the sheep.

I am the Good Shepherd. I know My own and My own know Me, as the Father knows Me and I know the Father. Because of this, I give My life for My sheep. I have other sheep which are not of this fold. These I have to lead as well, and they shall listen to My voice. Then there will be one flock, since there is one Shepherd.

The Father loves Me, because I lay down My life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down freely. It is Mine to lay down and to take up again : this mission I received from My Father.

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Monday, 12 May 2014 : 4th Week of Easter, Memorial of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, Martyrs, and St. Pancras, Martyr (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)

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

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for You, o God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I go and see the face of God?

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

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

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Monday, 12 May 2014 : 4th Week of Easter, Memorial of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, Martyrs, and St. Pancras, Martyr (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)

Acts 11 : 1-18

News came to the Apostles and the brothers and sisters in Judea that even foreigners had received the Word of God. So, when Peter went up to Jerusalem, these Jewish believers began to argue with him, “You went to the home of uncircumcised people and ate with them!”

So Peter began to give them the facts as they had happened, “I was at prayer in the city of Joppa when in a trance, I saw a vision. Something like a large sheet came down from the sky and drew near to me, landing on the ground by its four corners.”

“As I stared at it, I saw four-legged creatures of the earth, wild beasts and reptiles, and birds of the sky. Then I heard a voice saying to me : ‘Get up, Peter, kill and eat!’ I replied, ‘Certainly not, Lord! No common or unclean creature has ever entered my mouth.'”

“A second time the voice from the heavens spoke, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call unclean.’ This happened three times, and then it was all drawn up into the sky. At that moment three men, who had been sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were staying. The Spirit instructed me to go with them without hesitation; so these six brothers came along with me and we entered into the man’s house.”

“He told us how he had seen an angel standing in his house and telling him : ‘Send someone to Joppa and fetch Simon, also known as Peter. He will bring you a message by which you and all your household will be saved.'”

“I had begun to address them when suddenly the Holy Spirit came upon them, just as It had come upon us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said : ‘John baptised with water, but you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit.’ If, then, God had given them the same gift that He had given us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to resist God?”

When they heard this they set their minds at rest and praised God saying, “Then God has granted life-giving repentance to the pagan nations as well.”

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Sunday, 11 May 2014 : 4th Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday and World Day of Prayer for Vocations (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Fear not, brothers and sisters in Christ! And be confident in Christ, everyone! Indeed, if we put our trust in the Lord, we have no reason to fear, for God is with us and He is on our side. God is the Good Shepherd who knows all of His sheep and who loves every single one of His sheep equally. He is genuinely concerned about each one of us, and He seeks none other than our reconciliation and reunion with Him.

Yes, the Lord will care for us and take care for us, and He will provide us everything we need, just as He had provided us with plentiful graces all these while. He knows each and every one of us, and thus, He also knows of our needs. He is not like Satan, the one who is the robber and the thief, who came pretending to be someone whom we can follow, who pretended to be our shepherd while he is not.

For Satan has in his disposal all the powers of the world, all of the wealth and riches that he can have and marshall at a whim, and to those of us who falls into his temptations, Satan offered mankind much pleasures of the world and things that help us to keep away from the path God had designed for us. But he does not care for us, for he is the false shepherd. In fact, it pleases him to see us stumble and suffer as a consequence of our waywardness by following him.

God is our true shepherd, because He leads by example. He showed us His love not just by mere sweet words or empty promises, as Satan had done and will continue to do, in his attempt to seduce us to follow his false path. God led by example and showed us concrete care and love, through none other than Jesus Christ, His own Son, whom He sent to us to be with us, and to walk among us, as our Shepherd, to guide us from where we err and from where we are lost.

If we follow Jesus, we can be sure that we will not be lost. If we follow Him with all of our hearts, we can only prosper and be happy. God has prepared all that we need before us, and He set out to bring us back into His flock. Yes, we are His lost sheep, lost in the wilderness and the darkness of this world. If we remember the parable of the shepherd and the lost sheep, we know how much effort the shepherd put in, in order to regain the lost one.

Such was therefore, the same effort which the Lord God our Shepherd put in, to find us and return us back into His loving embrace. Yes, to the point of giving Himself to us, dedicating His works which He made through Jesus, and going all the way to Calvary, enduring all the rejection and oppression just so that we may be saved. Such was His love for us, that He was willing to go through all that trouble for us.

The way to Calvary is the pathway of suffering, when our Lord and Shepherd endured for our sake the punishments. Always remember that whenever we look upon the crucifix, the Shepherd who is so dedicated to us, His sheep, that He laid down His life for us. Remember again, brethren! Jesus did not just make any empty promises or words. He truly meant what He said when He mentioned that a good shepherd laid down his life for his sheep.

Jesus gave Himself for us that we may avoid our fate that is death. If this is likened to sheep in a flock, it is like the sheep being threatened by certain death when wolves prey on them. And this is when the shepherd comes in between the sheep and the wolves, shielding them from harm, and while the shepherd is injured to the point of death, he also routed and killed the wolves, so that no more harm will come to the sheep.

But what is different is that for our case, the shepherd who gave his life for us, and who died for our sins, did not remain dead, but rose from the dead in glory, and in doing so, He became the guide who led us out of the darkness and into the light of new life, just as the shepherd leads the sheep into the eternal spring of life-giving and crystal-clear water. In the green pastures the shepherd let the sheep roam free in joy and happiness. Such is the promise of new life that Christ grant unto us.

Today we rejoice in the Lord who is our Good Shepherd, and who has done so much for us, His sheep. But not only just that, in His place, He had appointed many shepherds to care for us in His stead, as His representatives and the extension of His hands’ works in this world. These shepherds are our priests, bishops, the Cardinals, and eventually the Pope, the vicar of Christ and the chief among Christ’s appointed shepherds.

Today we pray for vocations to this office of shepherds. We pray for more young men, to be motivated to heed the call of the Lord for those who had been called and chosen by God to be His helpers and assistants in guiding and leading His people in the path towards righteousness. We pray for more vocations to arise among our young men today, that they be inspired to follow in the footsteps of the Apostles.

Indeed, it is even more urgent these days, and how true is the saying, that the harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few. This world has much opportunities for us to do the great works of the Lord, but increasingly, there are fewer and fewer workers of the Lord available to take care of His ever growing flock of sheep and wider pastures.

Less and less men are attracted to this vocation, as they are lured and tempted by the sweet offers of the pleasures of this world, through which Satan intends to do harm to us, by attacking the shepherds of the flock. Without the shepherds, the sheep will be scattered and become easy prey to the works of the devil, the waiting, ever-hungry wolves seeking to devour us, the sheep.

May God therefore awaken in the hearts of many people, and including those among us whom He had chosen to be His shepherds, that we may accept His calling with great humility and dedication, for the sake and the good of our brethren, our fellow men. May God bless us all, and strengthen our faith in Him, empowering us to be His faithful followers. Amen.

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Friday, 9 May 2014 : 3rd Week of Easter (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 6 : 52-59

The Jews were arguing among themselves, “How can this Man give us flesh to eat?”

So Jesus replied, “Truly, I say to you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. The one who eats My flesh and drinks My blood lives eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. My flesh is really food, and My blood is truly drink. Those who eat My flesh and drink My blood, live in Me, and I in them.”

“Just as the Father, who is life, sent Me, and I have life from the Father, so whoever eats Me will have life from Me. This is the bread which came from heaven; not like that of your ancestors, who ate and later died. Those who eat this bread will live forever.”

Jesus spoke in this way in Capernaum when He taught them in the synagogue.

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Friday, 9 May 2014 : 3rd Week of Easter (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 116 : 1, 2

Alleluia! Praise the Lord, all you nations; all you peoples, praise Him.

How great is His love for us! His faithfulness lasts forever.

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Wednesday, 7 May 2014 : 3rd Week of Easter (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

This world is hostile against us, not the people, but the systems and the nature of the world itself, for evil is in this world, and evil hates us who are light in the darkness. That is what the devil tried to do when the faithful and the Church was still young, that is to snuff out the light that would banish the darkness away forever, and this was done through lies, persuasion and temptations.

Saul, the young man, zealous or in fact overly zealous as one would say, belonged to the group of the Pharisees, who strictly observed the laws of Moses and the other rules and regulations that had been brought up over the years by the people of God. This strict adherence, in addition to the persistent refusal by most of the chief priests and the elders of Israel to receive the truth of God as revealed by Christ the Messiah, caused someone like Saul to be born.

Yes, the archenemy of the faithful as one would have said it. The scourge of the faithful, the persecutor who brought great sufferings and miseries to those who believed in the truth and kept it alive and true. Saul hunted down hundreds, if not thousands of the people of God, just because they believed in the truth and Saul refused to believe in it, not least until the Lord Himself appeared to him and brought him to a new life of service to the truth.

Saul later would be known as Paul, the great servant of the Lord who would bring the Good News to all the peoples of the world, the Gentiles and pagans in particular, and through them, to us eventually. We all know what happened to Saul, his conversion and later works. And we know that he too, suffer from persecutions, rejections and oppositions to his good works, as he had once done to the people of God before his conversion.

Opposition and challenges is a staple of our lives if we choose to remain faithful to God and be the bearers of His Good News. The world, ruled by the evil one, hates the truth, for the truth of Christ is the key for our redemption and liberation, that we will no longer be in the dominion of death and sin, but instead be free forever in the light and love of God.

But do not fear, brothers and sisters in Christ, as the oppositions that pile up against us should not deter us from continuing our works and missions, but instead serve as a further reminder of how good and wonderful our Lord and God is. Why so? Because remember, in the Gospel today, the Lord Himself assured us all, that He will be by our side, and He will not abandon us to the powers of those who seek our destruction.

Yes, Jesus mentioned that all that the Father had given Him, none He will lose, and that includes all of us. Yes, we have been granted by the Father to Christ, through our baptism, when we, in faith, are sealed to be the possessions of the Lord, in His Most Holy Name. We who have been baptised have received the seal of faith, and the Lord dwells in us since the day of our baptism onwards.

But that does not mean then we can be complacent in our faith. While Christ assured us that those whom the Father had given Him, He would not lose, but if we changed our ways back to our old lives filled with sin, then that is tantamount to us rejecting this gift of the Father to His Son, and therefore, we made ourselves lost, and bereft of the holiness and worthiness of heavenly glory promised to us on the day of our baptism.

Hence, brethren, as we continue to proceed in this life and in this holy season of Easter, let us always constantly remind ourselves to keep our faith living and strong, and not to be worried about challenges and oppositions we may face along the way. Remember that God is always on our side, and ready to help us, if we too play our part and keep a good and faithful attitude in our lives.

May the Lord be with us, protect us, and keep us safe in His everlasting grace and infinite love. God bless us all. Amen.

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Monday, 5 May 2014 : 3rd Week of Easter (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Acts 6 : 8-15

Stephen, full of grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people. Some persons then came forward, who belonged to the so-called Synagogue of Freedmen from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia and Asia. They argued with Stephen but they could not match the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke.

As they were unable to face the truth, they bribed some men to say, “We heard him speak against Moses and against God.” So they stirred up the people, the elders and the teachers of the Law; they took him by surprise, seized him and brought him before the Council.

Then they produced false witnesses who said, “This man never stops speaking against our Holy Place and the Law. We even heard him say that Jesus the Nazarean will destroy our Holy Place and change the customs which Moses handed down to us.”

And all who sat in the Council fixed their eyes on him, and his face appeared to them like the face of an angel.

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Sunday, 4 May 2014 : 3rd Sunday of Easter (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Acts 2 : 14, 22-33

Then Peter stood up with the Eleven and, with a loud voice, addressed them, “Fellow Jews and all foreigners now staying in Jerusalem, listen to what I have to say. Fellow Israelites, listen to what I am going to tell you about Jesus of Nazareth. God accredited Him and through Him did powerful deeds and wonders and signs in your midst, as you well know.”

“You delivered Him to sinners to be crucified and killed, and in this way the purpose of God from all times was fulfilled. But God raised Him to life and released Him from the pain of death, because it was impossible for Him to be held in the power of death.”

“David spoke of Him when he said : ‘I saw the Lord before me at all times; He is by my side, that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced; my body too will live in hope. Because You will not forsake me in the abode of the dead, nor allow Your Holy One to experience corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life, and Your presence will fill me with joy.'”

“Friends, I do not need to prove that the patriarch David died and was buried; his tomb is with us to this day. But he knew that God had sworn to him that One of his descendants would sit upon his throne and, as he was a prophet, he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah. So he said that He would not be left in the region of the dead, nor would His Body experience corruption.”

“This Messiah is Jesus and we are all witnesses that God raised Him to life. He has been exalted at God’s right side and the Father has entrusted the Holy Spirit to Him; this Spirit He has just poured upon us as you now see and hear.”