Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Psalm 24 : 4-5ab, 8-9, 10 and 14
Teach me Your ways, o Lord; make known to me Your paths. Guide me in Your truth and instruct me, for You are my God, my Saviour.
Good and upright, the Lord teaches sinners His way. He teaches the humble of heart and guides them in what is right.
The ways of the Lord are love and faithfulness for those who keep His covenant and precepts. The Lord gives advice to those who revere Him and makes His covenant known to them.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Malachi 3 : 1-4, 23-24
Now I am sending My messenger ahead of Me to clear the way; then suddenly the Lord for Whom you long will enter the sanctuary. The Envoy of the covenant which you so greatly desire already comes, says YHVH of hosts. Who can bear the day of His coming and remain standing when He appears? For He will be like fire in the foundry and like the lye used for bleaching.
He will be as a refiner or a fuller. He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver. So YHVH will have priests who will present the offering as it should be. Then YHVH will accept with pleasure the offering of Judah and Jerusalem, as in former days.
I am going to send you the prophet Elijah before the day of YHVH comes, for it will be a great and terrible day. He will reconcile parents with their children, and the children with their parents, so that I may not have to curse this land when I come.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, as we approach even closer to Christmas, we listened to the words of the Sacred Scriptures and we heard two parallel stories from the Old and the New Testament, firstly of the story of Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, who thanked the Lord profusely for having listened to her prayers, as she was once unable to have a child and was ridiculed by the other wife of her husband, but the Lord answered her prayer and gave her Samuel, her firstborn son.
And Hannah went on to have many more children with her husband after that, but her very first son, as she had promised to the Lord, was dedicated to a life of total service to God, who would eventually become the prophet Samuel, a great Judge over the people of God, and the one who would anoint the first kings of Israel, Saul and David, and gave them the necessary guidance to lead the people of God with faith and dignity.
In the Gospel, what we heard today is commonly known as the prayer of the Magnificat, the prayer and song of Mary glorifying and thanking God for all of His majesty, His love for His people, and for all the things that He had done to bless and reward all those who have been faithful to Him, and all that He had done to bring down all those who have rejected Him and those who persecuted His faithful ones.
Mary visited Elizabeth her cousin, and both of them were pregnant with their own respective child. And for the case of Elizabeth, her condition was indeed very similar to Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, for she too was unable to conceive a child in her womb for many, many years. And even more so, she was already very old by the time the Lord fulfilled her wishes, and through her a great prophet, messenger and servant of God, John the Baptist would be born.
But all these are incomparable with what the Lord would do through Mary, for in Mary, God has made His grand plan for our salvation complete and perfect, and by her perfect and complete obedience to His will, the Saviour of the world Himself would be born through her, and the King of all kings, the Master of the whole universe would be incarnate into flesh, and born as a Man through her womb.
What greater honour God could give to a mortal man like us, other than the honour that He had granted Mary, His chosen one to be the vessel and the mother of the New Covenant that He would create with all of us mankind? This is why, today’s readings in preparation for Christmas, asked us all to focus on the joy that is in Christmas, the hope that we see through Christmas, and the love that is the heart and the essence of Christmas, that God’s Love has been shown and manifested to us through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The two women, Hannah and Mary sang a song of thanksgiving, of praise and of glorification to God, for He had done wonders for them, and brought them from the abyss of darkness and from sorrow into the great joy and happiness of the eternal Light that God had provided. This joy, incomparable and beyond any understanding, is the joy that all of us should also have, the true joy of Christmas, that is Christ, the love of God for men, made Man.
Thus, just a few days before Christmas, let us all reflect on how we celebrate it. Do we celebrate it just as any other secular festivals, gift-exchanging sessions and merrymaking? Do we celebrate Christmas just because we are happy that it is a holiday time and a time for new goods and new things to have? If this is what we think of Christmas, then we really need to rethink our priorities and our understanding of it.
Let us all strive so that our Christmas celebrations will not be merely celebration of worldly joy and pleasures, that it will not just be selfish celebration of love, but also be a celebration with one another, of the love of God that He had shown to us through Jesus Christ His Son, and through all that He had shown us and shared with us, His love, let us all also share this joy, this hope and this love to those who have little or none of them.
May Almighty God bless us all in all of our endeavours, and may He strengthen our faith, and remind us always that Christmas is the time for us to rejoice, because He has come into the world, He has triumphed and brought His people into the salvation which He had promised all of us. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Luke 1 : 46-56
And Mary said, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit exults in God my Saviour! He has looked upon His servant in her lowliness, and people forever will call me blessed.”
“The Mighty One has done great things for me, Holy is His Name! From age to age His mercy extends to those who live in His presence. He has acted with power and done wonders, and scattered the proud with their plans.”
“He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up those who are downtrodden. He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty. He held put His hand to Israel, His servant, for He remembered His mercy, even as He promised to our fathers, to Abraham and his descendants forever.”
Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months, and then returned home.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
1 Samuel 2 : 1, 4-5, 6-7, 8abcd
My heart exults in YHVH, I feel strong in my God. I rejoice and laugh at my enemies for You came with power to save me.
The bow of the mighty is broken but the weak are girded with strength. The well-fed must labour for bread but the hungry need work no more. The childless wife has borne seven children, but the proud mother is left alone.
YHVH is the Lord of life and death; He brings down to the grave and raises up. YHVH makes poor and makes rich, He brings low and He exalts.
He lifts up the lowly from the dust, and raises the poor from the ash heap; they will be called to the company of princes, and inherit a seat of honour.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
1 Samuel 1 : 24-28
When the child was weaned, Hannah took Samuel with her along with a three year old bull, a measure of flour and a flask of wine, and she brought him to YHVH’s House at Shiloh. The child was still young.
After they had slain the bull, they brought the child to Eli. Hannah exclaimed : “Oh, my lord, look! I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to YHVH. I asked for this child and YHVH granted me the favour I begged of him. Now, I think, YHVH is asking for this child. As long as he lives, he belongs to YHVH.”
And they worshipped YHVH there.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate the feast day of one of my patron saint, St. Peter Canisius, the Doctor of the Church, defender of the Faith and one of the very important figure in the history of the Church’s work on saving the souls of mankind. He was a very important figure in the Church at that time, and his works still influenced the Church even until this very day.
In order to understand the importance of St. Peter Canisius and his works, and how he can also inspire us to be like him and to follow his footsteps, then we ought to look at the Scripture readings we have just heard today and reflect on their meaning and understand them. For they spoke of the joy that is coming in Christmas, the True Joy of the world, for a world that was once enslaved by sin and darkness, had found its way to the Light.
In today’s readings, we have to understand the suspense, the expectation and the desire that the people of God had had for the many years of their constant and frequent exiles and sufferings, for God to come and rescue them from their distress, and there is indeed no greater desire than for all of us mankind to be freed from the bonds and the chains that enslaved us to sin, because of our disobedience against the Lord our God.
And the celebration of Christmas is the celebration of this great joy that we have because we have been liberated from all those chains and bonds, and we know that a new hope had arisen through the Saviour we have, Jesus Christ our Lord, born on the Christmas Day. This is the true essence of Christmas, and the very reason why we should look up to it and expect it so much, but yet, many of us have been misguided and lost the intention of Christmas amidst the world’s attempts to reconfigure it to serve their own purposes.
If we look at the way how the world in many places celebrated Christmas, and if we ask anybody about what Christmas truly mean to them, the answer that we are likely to receive is that Christmas is a season of fun, of happiness, of celebration and partying, where one would meet up with friends, families and relatives, exchanging gifts and trying to impress one another as best as possible, with the newest clothes, with the nicest foods and drinks.
Well, in all these, indeed we can find joy and happiness, and to many of us, it is an opportunity to let go the hectic schedules and busy lifestyles that had occupied us throughout the whole year. But, if we do not understand how important Christmas is to us, and if we do not appreciate what it truly means, then we are in danger of just repeating again and again our celebrations of Christmas year by year without meaning and without true joy.
Christmas has become so commercialised and filled with materialism to the point that all the things associated with Christmas become things such as shopping, lights and glitzy glamour, gifts, Santa Claus and his elves, and many other secular forms of Christmas celebrations. We tried to spend as much as we can from our pockets to make our Christmas celebrations the best ever, but have we forgotten what Christmas truly is?
Without Christ, there can be no Christmas, and indeed, as Christmas is truly our Lord’s birthday, the day when He entered into our world as a humble Human Being through the womb of His mother Mary, Christmas is indeed about Christ. Without Jesus Christ in our celebrations of Christmas, whatever joy we have is incomplete, and whatever happiness we have is really empty.
And thus how do we then celebrate Christmas? We should first understand the importance of Christmas to us, and why it happened in the first place. If not for the infinite and ever-encompassing love that our God has for us all, the love that transcended every boundaries and every considerations, and if not the dedication and commitment that He had for us, willing to send His own Son to die for our own sake, for our salvation, there can be no Christmas, and conversely, there would be no hope for us.
St. Paul in one of his letters and epistles spoke about how God had loved us so much, and so much so that even though we were still sinners, delinquents and rebels, He still endeavoured to love us and to give us the salvation and the hope that we truly and urgently needed. Great is the love of the one who loves tenderly and sincerely those who love them, but even greater and boundless is the love of those who love even those who hated them and those who refuse to love them.
And that was exactly what He has done for us. And imitating that same love, St. Peter Canisius, the saint whose feast we celebrate today, worked hard in order to bring God’s love and salvation to his brethren in the world filled with falsehoods and darkness and evil. He lived at a difficult time, during the time of the heresy of Protestantism which lured away many of the faithful from the path to salvation.
At that time, it was very difficult to be counted among those who stayed faithful to the true faith in the Lord. The temptations and the pull to join the heresy of men were just very great, and many fell into sin and damnation, rejecting the teachings of the Church that God Himself had passed down through the Apostles, and which the Church had faithfully kept down the ages. Instead, they preferred to follow their own ways.
Amidst all this, St. Peter Canisius, a Jesuit priest, also known as the Society of Jesus, was among one of the most prominent figures who led the counterattack against the forces of heresy, delving even into great troubles and risks, going forth to bring the truth and to explain it with great clarity to the masses of people who had been misled by the devil and by their succumbing to their own human frailties and desires.
As a result, many countless thousands returned to the true faith and repented their rebellion against God and His Church. And St. Peter Canisius was renowned from then on as a great evangeliser and disciple who brought many people back away from the threat of eternal damnation and into salvation once again. Many believed in the truth once again, repented and changed their ways after they had heard the preachings of St. Peter Canisius.
And his works did not just stop at that, as he also wrote extensively in his work, the Catechism according to St. Peter Canisius, a set of three books filled with the truth and the core tenets of our faith. Even until today, many people were still saved through that amazing work, and countless souls were brought to God’s salvation.
Having heard and witnessed the examples of St. Peter Canisius, let us all reflect on the fact that our celebration of Christmas must not just be limited to ourselves. Our joy and the joy of our celebration cannot be a selfish one that is centred only on ourselves, but rather, let us put and keep our Lord Jesus Christ at the centre and the heart of our celebrations, and let us always remember Him and His love, on how He has loved us all and desired for us all to be saved from our sins.
And we as those whom Christ had called, and who had received the fullness of God’s grace, love and truth, should go forth and share the joy we have, that is Christ, our True Joy, to the rest of the world. And how do we do this? Following the examples of St. Peter Canisius who faithfully and devotedly practiced his faith in his actions and words, we too must do the same.
Yes, we have that obligation to bring God’s Good News to those who still linger in the darkness of this world. We cannot profess to celebrate Christmas with joy while our brethren still failed to understand the fullness of God’s love in Christmas. Let us through our actions be an inspiration to all those who see us, hear us and interact with us, just as we have ourselves been inspired by St. Peter Canisius and the other holy saints of God.
Let this be our Christmas gift to our brethren, and let that gift be that of love, in imitation and following the example of the love which our Lord had first given us all, which He made perfect through Jesus Christ. May Almighty God bless us in all of our loving endeavours, and may He continue to guide us all the days of our life. St. Peter Canisius, faithful servant of God, pray for us sinners to the Lord. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Luke 1 : 39-45
At that time, Mary then set out for a town in the hill country of Judah. She entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leapt in her womb.
Elizabeth was filled with Holy Spirit, and giving a loud cry, said, “You are most blessed among women, and Blessed is the Fruit of your womb! How is it that the mother of my Lord comes to me? The moment your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby within me suddenly leapt for joy. Blessed are you who believed that the Lord’s word would come true!”
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Psalm 32 : 2-3, 11-12, 20-21
Give thanks to the Lord on the harp and lyre, making melody and chanting praises. Amid loud shouts of joy, sing to Him a new song and play the ten-stringed harp.
But His plan stands forever, and His heart’s design through all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord – the people He has chosen for His inheritance.
In hope we wait for the Lord, for He is our help and our shield. Our hearts rejoice in Him, for we trust in His holy Name.
Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Song of Songs 2 : 8-14
The voice of my lover! Behold He comes, springing across the mountains, jumping over the hills, like a gazelle or a young stag. Now He stands behind our wall, looking through the windows, peering through the lattice.
My lover speaks to me, “Arise, My love, My beautiful one! Come, the winter is gone, the rains are over. Flowers have appeared on earth; the season of singing has come; the cooing of doves is heard. The fig tree forms its early fruit, the vines in blossom are fragrant.”
“Arise, My beautiful one, come with Me, My love, come. O My dove in the rocky cleft, in the secret places of the cliff, let Me see your face, let Me hear your voice. Your face – how lovely! Your voice – how sweet!”
Alternative reading
Zephaniah 3 : 14-18a
Cry out with joy, o daughter of Zion; rejoice, o people of Israel! Sing joyfully with all your heart, daughter of Jerusalem! YHVH has lifted your sentence and has driven your enemies away. YHVH, the King of Israel is with you; do not fear any misfortune.
On that day they will say to Jerusalem : Do not be afraid nor let your hands tremble, for YHVH your God is within you, YHVH, saving Warrior. He will jump for joy on seeing you, for He has revived His love. For you He will cry out with joy, as you do in the days of the Feast. I will drive away the evil I warned you about.
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