Liturgical Colour : White
1 Corinthians 10 : 16-17
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a communion with the Blood of Christ? And the bread that we break, is it not a communion with the Body of Christ?
The bread is one, and so we, though many, form one body, sharing the one bread.
Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 147 : 12-13, 14-15, 19-20
Exalt YHVH, o Jerusalem; praise your God, o Zion! For He strengthens the bars of your gates and blesses your children within you.
He grants peace on your borders and feeds you with the finest grain. He sends His command to the earth and swiftly runs His word.
It is He, Who tells Jacob His words; His laws and decrees, to Israel. This, He has not done for other nations, so His laws remain unknown to them. Alleluia!
Liturgical Colour : White
Deuteronomy 8 : 2-3, 14b-16a
Remember how YHVH, your God, brought you through the desert for forty years. He humbled you, to test you and know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. He made you experience want, He made you experience hunger, but He gave you manna to eat which neither you nor your fathers had known, to show you that one does not live on bread alone, but also by everything that comes from the mouth of God.
Do not forget YHVH, your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of slavery. It is He Who has led you across this great and terrible desert, full of fiery serpents and scorpions, an arid land where there is no water. But for you He made water gush forth from the hardest rock. And He fed you in the desert with manna which your fathers did not know.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate the feast day of St. Barnabas, who was counted among one of the Apostles, as he was a renowned early Church father and missionary, following and accompanying St. Paul in several of his missionary journeys, spreading the Good News and the Gospel to the many people in towns and cities across Eastern Mediterranean region. St. Barnabas accompanied St. Paul through the arduous journey, encountering good welcome from quite a few among the communities they visited, but they also encountered significant opposition and rejection from many other communities and places they visited.
As recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, and as what might have been even missed and uncounted in the Acts, St. Barnabas and St. Paul had encountered many great challenges, even moments when they were in danger of death. They were stoned in some occasions, and left for death. Only by the grace and love of God that they somehow escaped death, and they then still continued to labour and work hard for the Lord. They did not fear suffering and death, knowing what they had signed up for when they dedicated themselves to the missions of Christ.
They did what the Lord had told His disciples in our Gospel passage today, in sending them to towns and places to proclaim the Good News and the truth of God. They brought only the absolute necessities and did not bring spares with them, that they were able to focus on their mission, and depending on the good will of the people they visited, and when they encountered opposition and challenges, rejection and refusal, they left those places for other places that might be more willing to listen to them.
Through all of these and many other hard works that St. Barnabas had done together with St. Paul, and in other occasions when he travelled by himself and preaching to other communities and towns, many people became believers and were baptised as Christians. The Holy Spirit guided him and the other Apostles and disciples as they laboured hard for the greater glory of God. The Lord was with them and they were strengthened and empowered even in the moments of their greatest distress and sorrow.
And brothers and sisters in Christ, as we celebrate the great feast of St. Barnabas the Apostle today, we therefore recall his hard work and efforts, his dedication to the service of God, in spreading the Good News and in reaching out to the people, many of whom became believers through his efforts. He put himself through danger, even through danger of death just so that more souls could be saved through repentance, conversion and faith in the Lord.
Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us must realise that the works done by the Apostles were just the beginning of the works of the Church, and throughout time, countless people, some of whom now honoured as saints, martyrs and blesseds, had taken up the same works and gave themselves to the same ministry as the Apostles like St. Barnabas had done. They had endured much persecution and challenges, just as St. Barnabas had experienced, but they also led many people to God and to their salvation in Him.
We are all now called to follow in their footsteps, to continue the good labour and hard work that they had done for the Lord’s greater glory. We are all called to be witnesses of the Lord’s truth in our own respective communities, in our societies, and even within our own families and among our circle of friends. And it is often that we do not realise, that to be living out this mission of the Lord, which He entrusted to us, it is often not necessary for us to preach and speak. Instead, it is by our actions, all steeped in genuine faith, that we will speak the loudest for the Lord’s sake.
The Apostles themselves inspired us all by their tireless dedication to the Lord, the love they showed to one another, the mercy and compassion they had to all peoples, even to those who have rejected and persecuted them, as well as the patience they had shown throughout their works and ministries. And that is why all of us also need to show this sincerity in our faith, that everyone may know the Lord, His truth and love through our own examples and good faith.
Let us all follow in the footsteps of St. Barnabas, dedicating ourselves to the Lord to spread the message of God’s truth in our own communities, by living a genuine and faithful Christian life. Let us all be exemplary with our lives and commit ourselves as genuine and true Christians from this moment onwards. May the Lord be with us always, and may He strengthen us in our resolve to serve Him, now and forevermore. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Red
Matthew 10 : 7-13
At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “Go, and proclaim this message : The kingdom of Heaven is near. Heal the sick, bring the dead back to life, cleanse the lepers, and drive out demons. Freely have you received, freely give. Do not carry any gold or silver or money in your purses. Do not take a travelling bag, or an extra shirt, or sandals, or a walking stick : workers deserve to be compensated.”
“When you come to a town or a village, look for a worthy person, and stay there until you leave. When you enter the house, wish it peace. If the people are worthy people, your peace will rest on them; if they are not worthy people, your blessing will come back to you.”
Liturgical Colour : Red
Psalm 97 : 1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4, 5-6
Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done wonders; His right hand, His holy arm, has won victory for Him.
The Lord has shown His salvation, revealing His justice to the nations. He has not forgotten His love nor His faithfulness to Israel.
The farthest ends of the earth all have seen God’s saving power. All you lands, make a joyful noise to the Lord, break into song and sing praise.
With melody of the lyre and with music of the harp. With trumpet blast and sound of the horn, rejoice before the King, the Lord!
Liturgical Colour : Red
Acts 11 : 21b-26 and Acts 13 : 1-3
A great number believed and turned to the Lord. News of this reached the ears of the Church in Jerusalem, so they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw the manifest signs of God’s favour, he rejoiced and urged them all to remain firmly faithful to the Lord; for he, himself, was a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith. Thus large crowds came to know the Lord.
Then Barnabas went off to Tarsus, to look for Saul; and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year, they had meetings with the Church and instructed many people. It was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.
There were at Antioch – in the Church which was there – prophets and teachers : Barnabas, Symeon known as Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod, and Saul. On one occasion, while they were celebrating the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said to them, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul to do the work for which I have called them.”
So, after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day as we have listened to the words of the Scriptures, we are reminded that all of us must be committed to God and we must obey His fundamental Law and truth, as revealed and taught to us by the Church, from the revelation of truth that the Lord Himself had revealed to us, and through the wisdom of the Holy Spirit passed down to us and through the Apostles.
In our first reading today, we listened to the story of the prophet Elijah as he went up against the four hundred and fifty priests of Baal at the Mount Carmel, one of the prominent mountains of Israel, as he went up before the king and the people of Israel in a great moment of reckoning, as he confronted king Ahab on his continued defiance against God and his continued worship of the pagan gods and idols such as Baal, openly promoted by the proliferation of so many priests of Baal.
What the prophet Elijah essentially did was that he reminded the king of the need for his obedience to the Law of God, to the laws revealed and handed down through Moses, to the Ten Commandments, first of which, was the obligation for all the faithful to worship and serve only one God, the One and True God of all. The king and the people had not obeyed this and instead chose to follow the false ways of the foreign pagan gods and idols, committing great sin before God.
This was why the prophet chose to stage a great contest before everyone so that all might witness and know Who the True God truly is, whether it was the God of Israel and the One Who brought the Israelites and their ancestors out of their slavery in Egypt and provided them with the Promised Land, or whether it was Baal, the pagan god of the Canaanites who was worshipped by the great majority of the Israelites and their king then.
The prophet Elijah showed before all the Israelites, that it was indeed God Who is the one and only True God, Who ought to be worshipped and loved, when he showed that God was the One Who listened to the prayers of His people, sending down great flame from heaven to burn the entire sacrificial offerings of Elijah, while the sacrificial offerings of the priests of Baal remain untouched, and despite all that they did, even in their desperation, the latter failed to show the presence and the truth of the falsehood of Baal was exposed before all to see.
This was in fact what the Lord in our Gospel passage today has been trying to say and reveal to His followers and all those who listened to Him, how He came into the world in order to reveal to the whole world and His people, what His true Law truly means, and in order to purify the Law to its original meaning, intent and purpose. As He Himself said that, nothing that is in the Law would be overruled or overwritten by Him, not even the smallest iota or part, and He came to fulfil the entire Law and not to destroy it, unlike what some of His enemies accused Him wrongly of.
What really happened then was such that the Law of God had been misinterpreted, misunderstood and misused over the many centuries since it has been revealed to the people of God. The elders and the many preceding guardians of the Law had interpreted the Law as they wished and wanted, and according to their own biases and prejudices. And they ended up becoming too focused and engrossed in the management and the nitty-gritty details of the Law, its execution and enforcement rather than on the true meaning and purpose of the Law itself.
The Lord Jesus, much like the prophet Elijah, reminded the people of God that the Law stipulated that each and every one of us, the faithful ones and beloved people of God must put God first and foremost n our lives, entrusting ourselves completely to His care and loving Him with all of our strength and might. He wanted this to happen, rather than for us mankind to be distracted by the many temptations present in life, the temptation of power and glory, for fame and human praise, as how the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law had been afflicted, or for the false promises of the devil, as how the Israelites of old had been swayed to the worship of Baal.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all realise that as Christians, that is as the members of God’s living Church here in this world, each and every one of us are bound to the same fundamental Law that God Himself had revealed to His people Israel, and which His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, had revealed further by His own teachings and by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit that He had sent down to us, to His Church and His faithful ones. Therefore, all of us ought to be true Christians from now on, in our every words, actions and deeds.
May the Lord give us His strength and strengthen our resolve to live faithfully according to His ways from now on. May the Lord bless each and every one of us, and may He empower us all to be true witnesses of His Resurrection and to our own Christian faith. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green
Matthew 5 : 17-19
At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “Do not think that I have come to annul the Law and the Prophets. I have not come to annul them but to fulfil them. I tell you this : as long as heaven and earth last, not the smallest letter or dot in the Law will change until all is fulfilled.”
Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 15 : 1-2a, 4, 5 and 8, 11
Keep me safe, o God, for in You I take refuge. I say to YHVH, “You are my Lord.”
Those who run after foreign gods only have their sorrows multiplied.
Let me not shed blood for them, nor their names be heard on my lips.
O YHVH, my inheritance and my cup, my chosen portion – hold secure my lot. I keep YHVH always before me; for with Him at my right hand, I will never be shaken.
You will show me the path of life, in Your presence, the fullness of joy, at Your right hand, happiness forever.
petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang 