preaching for Advent

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Wednesday, 2 December 2015 : 1st Week of Advent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about the great love of God, the love which He had shown to us all ever since the day when He created all things and all of us from nothingness. This love He had manifested to us in many forms, caring for us and for our forefathers, as He will also love all those who are yet to come, but the greatest expression of His love came through Jesus, His Son.

For in Jesus is our salvation and redemption. We know how He came into this world, and by taking into account our own sins, and putting all of those burdens upon Himself, He took up all the sins of the entire world, and having bore all these, He made all peoples to be righteous as long as they accept Him and welcome Him as their Lord and Saviour.

For our destiny was once to perish and to be destroyed, since because of our disobedience, the sins that have tainted our bodies, minds and souls, we have been made unworthy of our Lord Who despises all forms of sins and wickedness. However, we have to note how strong God’s love is for us, as His love surpasses even His hatred and disgust for our sins and wickedness.

It was this love that was manifested in Jesus, and through Him, God showed His love, care and concern, especially for those who are lost on their way to Him, those who have little or nothing, those who are hungry and thirsty, and all those who are sick and dying, and indeed all of us, since we are all sickened by sin, the disease that is slowly eating away at our beings from the inside.

And God Who loves all of us will not leave us alone to rot and die alone in the darkness. Neither will He let the devil and his fellow fallen angels to take us away in chains to suffer with them for eternity in hell fire. Sin leads to death, and death leads to hell, but God had made it known that death and evil will not have the final say. Death has been defeated and conquered by He Who conquered death, Who rose by His own might and power to be the first to be risen from the dead.

And He also showed His love by feeding us, as we witnessed in the Gospel today, in how He showed compassion for those who were hungry, the people who followed Him, and fed them with the loaves of bread, multiplying few loaves of bread until He could feed the entire crowd of thousands of men, women and children. All who were fed were made full and satisfied.

But this was not all that God had provided, for the food that satisfied the stomach is only temporary and will not last. Instead, God provides for us the very eternal and true food, the sustenance that rejuvenates us and our souls, bringing us hope and light when we lie in darkness and when evil days and the wicked spirits lie around us, waiting for our destruction.

And that food is the Body and Blood, Most Precious and Holy, which our Lord had given to us all in the Eucharist, and by partaking in those gifts, we have welcomed the Lord Who is now dwelling within us and Who is with us, as the ultimate sign of His love. He is always with us, protecting us and guiding us, just as a Shepherd guides and leads His flock into the right paths and away from harm.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, after witnessing and understanding so much about God’s great love for us, let us all therefore commit ourselves anew to Him, and remember that as we make our preparations to celebrate Christmas, it is important that we put Christ at the centre of our celebrations, of our joys and happiness, so that we may give Him thanks, He Who had brought us a new hope by His entry into the world, and He Who showed compassion to us when we are downtrodden and destitute. May God bless us always, now and forever. Amen.

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Tuesday, 1 December 2015 : 1st Week of Advent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, as is common during the season of Advent, the preparation season before the celebration of Christmas, we heard about the promise of God of the coming of a Deliverer, of the descendants of Jesse and David, Who would come to save the world and bring peace and true harmony upon it, the Messiah and Saviour of the world.

God has revealed all of His intentions, His love for us and His desire for us to be reconciled and reunited with Him through His own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, Who have shown the future that awaits us if we listen to Him, know and understand His will, and follow His ways in our lives and in all the things we do in this life. God does not wish for us to be destroyed because of our own sins and wickedness, but He hopes that all of us will eventually find our own way to Him.

People from throughout the ages, ever since the days of Adam, the days of Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses and David, and from the days of the kings and the prophets all have waited very long for the coming of the Lord’s deliverance and the fulfilment of all His promises which He had made to all of us. To all of them God had promised that men will be brought out of their misery and their slavery to sin, and the glory of God will be with men, and He will dwell with them, as God who is with His people, Emmanuel.

And for so long the people could only hope and wish to see, know and witness the coming of the time of deliverance, and they could not see it, even though they longed for it. That was what Jesus meant when He said to His disciples that they were truly blessed to have been able to witness the events as they unfolded at that time, for they themselves were witnesses to the works of God’s salvation.

And at the same time, there were also so many other people who were also blessed to be witnesses of God’s direct works of bringing His salvation to them, including even the Pharisees, the elders, the teachers of the Law and the scribes. Judging by looking at the number of times these people actually followed Jesus and His disciples, and how many times they have tried to test the Lord and doubted Him, they would have been the ones to witness our Lord’s works the most!

And yet, as we know it, and as we have witnessed throughout the Gospels, many if these people refused to believe in Him, and even though their eyes had seen, their ears had heard, and their own hands and feet had felt and witnessed the great works of the Lord made through Jesus, His Son, our Lord and Saviour, they deemed those works as the works of the devil.

Remember what the Lord had said to Thomas, His disciple? Thomas was not around when the Lord appeared to His disciples for the first time after His resurrection, and he refused to believe that the Lord had risen from the dead. Yet, when Jesus finally appeared to him on the next occasion, he believed and proclaimed his faith before Jesus. And Jesus praised all those who have not seen and yet believed.

Jesus did not rebuke Thomas for his faith, as it is still better for someone to believe after seeing the truth, rather than those who have seen, and yet refused to believe. Indeed, for all of us, we should ask ourselves, as we have not seen directly what the Lord had done for His people, do we then truly believe in Him? Is our faith truly genuine or is it just a passing statement?

Let this be something for all of us to ponder on, as we prepare ourselves to celebrate Christmas, the joy and the celebration of the day of our Lord’s birth into this world. Let us all ask ourselves, have we truly believed in Him? And have we then taken this consideration into account as we celebrate and have all the joys in Christmas? Is Christ even somewhere in our celebrations? Or is the celebration just about ourselves and about us being happy?

Christmas is not just about the gifts, the merrymaking and all the happiness we have by all the holidays, the shopping and all the time we have to enjoy in revelry with one another. It is truly about the Lord, about giving thanks to the One Who had made it all possible for us. Without Christmas, when our Lord willingly came down into this world in order to save us, there would have been no hope for us, save for eternal damnation.

Let us all therefore refocus our attention to the Lord, and as we prepare to celebrate Christmas this Advent, let us all make our celebrations more proper and meaningful by placing our Lord Jesus Christ at the centre of all our celebrations and joys. May we all find true joy in Him, our Lord and our Saviour. God bless us all. Amen.

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Monday, 30 November 2015 : Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle, Feast Day of the Church of Constantinople (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Apostle Andrew, St. Andrew the First-Called, known as such because he was among the first of the Apostles to be called by the Lord, as we heard the story in the Gospel passage of today, where Jesus called him and his brother Peter from their job as fishermen on the shores of the Lake of Galilee.

St. Andrew was the brother of St. Peter, who would later be the one to establish many churches and structure of the Universal Church in many places, and in the end became the first Bishop of Rome, and also as the first Pope as he was given the authority by the Lord to be the chief shepherd and the leader of all His faithful ones. St. Andrew himself went on to establish his own dioceses and churches, and the most famous and lasting one is the Church of the city of Constantinople, then known as Byzantium.

St. Andrew would become the patron of that city and as its first bishop, and as that city grew in importance, and especially after the Roman Emperor Constantine, the very first Christian Emperor and the one to rescind the persecution against the faithful, conquered the whole Empire and chose the site if Byzantium to be his new capital city, the city he named after himself as Constantinople, to be the site of New and Second Rome.

And thus from then on, the episcopal see of St. Andrew, the See of Constantinople rose in prominence and importance until it became second in importance only after the See of Rome. And the Patriarchate that grew from Constantinople, patronised by St. Andrew, would become eventually a great Church that helped to spread the Faith to many peoples in what is now Eastern Europe, and as the centre of the Eastern half of Christianity.

It is therefore with a sense of great regret that we now exist as a divided and shattered Church, where the Universal authority of St. Peter of Rome was not recognised and acknowledged by the successors of St. Andrew, his brother, as since about a thousand years ago, due to the worldly ambitions of the then Patriarch of Constantinople, the See of Constantinople tore itself apart from the Universal Church, a division that we now seek to heal and restore.

Therefore, today, on the feast of the faithful and devoted St. Andrew, brother of the first Vicar of Christ, who shared with him the blood of martyrdom and in the defense of his Faith in God, having both been tortured, incarcerated and crucified as the chief disciples and Apostles of our Lord, we pray that firstly the Church established by St. Andrew will be reunited to the whole Universal Church under the primacy, supremacy and leadership authority of the Pope, whose authority extends over the entire Church and over all the faithful without exception, as the Vicar of our Lord Himself.

And then, let us also pray for ourselves, as the examples of the Holy Apostles and disciples of Christ should have made us to realise that there are still so many of the works which they have initiated that are still left undone and incomplete. And if we look carefully and listen to what St. Paul had exhorted the faithful in Rome in our first reading taken from his Epistle to the Romans, then we should know what is to be expected from us.

Yes, St. Paul reminded that salvation cannot come to the people of God unless they believe in the Lord God Who saved them from sin and death, but they cannot believe before someone bring to them the truth and the wholeness of the Good News, and while the Good News is already there, but without someone to convey the message and the truth, no one would know and thus no one will be saved.

This is the fact that all of us should understand and know, and we have to realise that God has not just called the Apostles to be His bearers of the Good News of His salvation, but in fact, He has called even all of us, all of us here living in this world today, many years after the time of the Apostles, to continue their good works and missions, following in their footsteps and in the examples of their successors.

Let us all therefore on this day, ask for the intercession of the Holy Apostles, particularly that of St. Andrew, that through us and through our works, we may bring light into the world, and also unite all the faithful ones of the Lord, especially those who have separated themselves from the unity of the Church under His Vicar. Let us all pray for the unity of all Christians and for the conversion of the whole world. Amen.

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Sunday, 29 November 2015 : First Sunday of Advent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters, on this Sunday, we begin a new liturgical year, that is a cycle in our year beginning with the season of Advent and ending with the solemnity of Christ the King which was last Sunday. This season of Advent as we all should know, is the season of preparation, the preparation for the celebrations of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we celebrate as Christmas.

Advent comes from the word Adventus, which is the term that describes arrival, onset, coming, and the approach of the world’s long awaited Saviour, the Messiah Whom God had promised will be the deliverance of all peoples, of all mankind from all the wickedness, the troubles they had in this world. The season of Advent is the time of preparation, for us to be ready to welcome the Lord when He comes again in time to come.

We may think that our liturgical celebrations and the calendars have no link in terms of how the seasons and the celebrations are arranged, but if we look deeper into it, in fact we should all realise that there is a certain central theme and meaning to the celebrations, and including this season of Advent, that is placed between the Solemnity of Christ the King, and the readings that are associated with it, and the solemnity of the Nativity, that is Christmas.

The Scripture readings immediately preceding the season of Advent, that is last week’s readings all came from the Book of Daniel and the Gospel passages that spoke about the time to come, the coming of the great tribulations and sufferings, the persecutions and the troubles facing the faithful, and how the Lord will come again to deliver His people from the dark times and from their enemies.

This is linked closely with the meaning of Christmas itself, that is a feast celebrating not all the glamour of commercial giving and greed, not a feast celebrating Santa Claus and all the Christmas goodies and the gifts, but instead, it is a feast that is about Christ, from which the name Christmas came from. The birth of our Lord Jesus Christ is the Hope that the world and all creations had long awaited, and in Him, the world that was once bereft of all hope and filled by despair can finally have hope once again.

This was His first coming into the world, the entry of which had been prophesied and foretold by the prophets and by the Lord Himself, Who promised that the Deliverer shall reunite all those who have been scattered and cast away from the Lord’s grace because of their disobedience, and then, by His works, mankind would be healed once again and be brought together to the Lord their Father.

And the Lord Himself has promised that He will come again one more time, for one final time, and this time He will gather all of His faithful and righteous ones to Himself, while all those who have not sided with Him will be rejected and cast out. This is what He wanted us all to know, and this is what we must be vigilant and be careful about, lest we find ourselves on the wrong side of the camp when the Lord comes again.

The celebration of Christmas therefore should not be mistaken for something that is just happening in the past, or even worse, that we even forgot its true intentions and meaning. As a result, many of us have not understood the meaning of Christmas and its importance even as we rejoice and join in the revelry and join in the celebrations. This is a danger that is commonplace now, and the devil’s tool in preventing us from realising the truth.

Yes, it is the marginalisation of God in our own lives, and how our lives have been filled with so much distractions so much so that especially during the time of Christmas, we are too focused on the giving and the revelry, the partying and all the rejoicing, the trumpets and the bells, and then we forget about the very One Whom we ought to celebrate about!

Yes, indeed, it is the birthday anniversary of our Lord Jesus Christ, our God Who had willingly come down upon this world, taking up our own flesh so that through Him the salvation of the world would come, death and sin would be conquered and defeated, and hope comes to all of us. But for all that He had done, He had been rewarded with rejection, ridicule and placed below all the festivities and joys we have in our version of Christmas.

Shall we rethink of our actions and how we approach our Christmas celebrations? There is nothing wrong with celebrations, festivities and joy, as long as we do not forget about the One Whom we ought to celebrate about. It is not a celebration about ourselves, or about pleasures of the flesh, but it is a celebration of the joy we all have because our Lord has come, and in His triumph, He has liberated all of us.

And it is not just about what had passed, but instead, also about what will come in the future. The Lord had indeed come firstly in great humility, and even though He is a King, the King of all the universe, but He came through such means so as to be lower even than the lowest human beings, born in a stable fit only for the animals. Yet, when He comes again, He will come in great glory, and to finally claim a people He had made His own.

Therefore, this season of Advent, we are not just preparing for Christmas, but we are in fact also preparing for the coming of our Lord, Who had promised that He will come again at the end of time. And we do not know when this will happen. Certainly we must not let ourselves to be so preoccupied and so distracted by the many things in this world so as to forget our real intention in this life, that is not to serve ourselves and our own needs first, but rather to give glory to God and to serve Him.

Let us find the true meaning of Christmas and reflect on how we ought to celebrate it well, with true joy, with true and genuine intention and understanding its importance and true meaning, so that our joy may become greater, and our salvation be closer to us, as we know that in all that we say and do, we will always remain true to our faith, and God will find us righteous when He comes again.

Let us not let ourselves be deceived by the devil and let us all learn to resist the temptations of the flesh. Let us not give ourselves to excessive partying, revelry, or even debauchery and orgies of pleasure, but let us give glory to God and refocus all of our celebrations upon Him. May God be with us all. Amen.