reconciliation with God

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Sunday, 20 July 2014 : 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Bible Sunday (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Wisdom 12 : 13, 16-19

For there is no other god besides You, One who cares for everyone, who could ask You to justify Your judgments. Your strength is the source of Your justice and because You are the Lord of all, You can be merciful to everyone.

To those who doubt Your sovereign power You show Your strength and You confound the insolence of those who ignore it. But You, the Lord of strength, judge with prudence and govern us with great patience, because You are able to do anything at the time You want.

In this way You have taught Your people that a righteous person must love His human fellows; You have also given Your people cause for hope by prompting them to repent of their sin.

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Friday, 11 July 2014 : 14th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Benedict, Abbot (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Hosea 14 : 2-10

Return to your God YHVH, o Israel! Your sins have caused your downfall. Return to YHVH with humble words. Say to Him, “Oh You who show compassion to the fatherless, forgive our debt, be appeased. Instead of bulls and sacrifices, accept the praise from our lips.”

“Assyria will not save us : No longer shall we look for horses nor ever again shall we say, ‘Our Gods’ to the work of our hands.” I will heal their wavering and love them with all my heart, for My anger has turned from them.

I shall be like dew to Israel, like the lily will he blossom. Like a cedar he will send down his roots; the young shoots will grow and spread. His splendour will be like an olive tree, His fragrance, like a Lebanon cedar. They will dwell in My shade again, they will flourish like the grain, they will blossom like a vine, and their fame will be like Lebanon wine.

What would Ephraim do with idols, when it is I who hear and make him prosper? I am like an ever-green cypress tree; all your fruitfulness comes from Me. Who is wise enough to grasp all this? Who is discerning and will understand? Straight are the ways of YHVH : the just walk in them, but the sinners stumble.

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Thursday, 12 June 2014 : 10th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today it is revealed to us that in our obedience to God, we cannot be blindly obedient and obeying Him for the sake of obedience, or because we fear the wrath of God and His punishments. That is because any faith based on such reasons is likely to be weak and unstable, easily manipulated and shaken when we are in our most vulnerable moments.

Our faith must in fact be based on genuine love and devotion for God. And how do we devote ourselves to God, brothers and sisters in Christ? It is by finding out the true meaning of God’s love for us and His Laws, that we obey Him and follow Him not for the sake of obedience or merely for the fulfillment of our obligations to God, but because we truly understand that our obedience is because we realise our frailty and our need for the Lord to be our guide and help.

What the Lord told the disciples today is that, there is reason behind every single tenets and parts of the Law which God has given His people to follow, and that reason is all based on nothing else but love. Yes, the love of God for mankind, and the love which we ought to show and emulate among ourselves, to each other. And love is the heart of the Law, which we all need to remember always, and yet often forgets.

People like the Pharisees and the scribes like to dwell in very detailed scrutinies of the Law and certain rules, which inadvertantly diverted their attention from the true focus, that is love. Their preoccupation with otherwise minor details on the Law of God prevented them from showing acts of love and acts of mercy when they were expected to do so.

In fact, not only just that, but they even often misused their power and abused it for their own purposes, that is to secure their own positions, their own power and to preserve the dominion and authority which they felt was rightfully theirs as the leaders of the people. They would do things in direct contravention with the true meaning of the Law of God, if those things would help them to preserve themselves.

For example, the case of the woman caught in adulterous behaviour and brought to Jesus was a clear example of this abuse. The Pharisees and the elders of Israel brought her to Jesus not because they were concerned a single bit about her, whether for her redemption or condemnation, but they did so in order to discredit Jesus and trap Him in His own words, and thus constituted a vile attempt to mock the love of God and the Law itself.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are urged to build our relationships with God anew, that is to reaffirm our complete and total devotion to His love, and vow to carry on that love with us as we live our lives and as we interact with one another in this world, so that God’s love may ever be more ubiquitous and evident in our world which is increasingly lacking in love.

We are called to reflect on our own actions, on whether we have truly been faithful disciples of the Lord, that is truly taking into account how each and every one of our actions stand with reference to the Lord and His love. Have we attain a high standard of love in our actions? And have we truly been obedient to the will of God? Or are we only concerned about our own fates and well-being, often to the disadvantage of others around us?

Let us use this opportunity to reflect, and from then on, to take concrete actions, which will benefit all of us, and further spread the love of God for His people throughout the world, and make it a much better place. Remember, obey the Lord and all His ways, with all of our hearts and minds. God preserve us. Amen.

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Monday, 28 April 2014 : 2nd Week of Easter, Memorial of St. Peter Chanel, Priest and Martyr, and St. Louis M. Grignion de Montfort, Priest (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we learn two very profound and important things for our faith. First of which is that God is with us if we rely on Him and put our trust in Him, and this is achieved through strong, genuine and dedicated prayers that the Lord hears in their entireties. Then, we also heard about being born again in the Lord and His Spirit as a prerequisite of salvation.

First of all, regarding prayers. It is important for us to keep a good and healthy prayer life at all times to ensure that we keep our faith in God strong and firm despite all the oppositions and difficulties that may be present in our way. It is essential for us to keep our links and ties with God strong that we may anchor ourselves firmly in Him, that whatever temptations or tides and difficulties that come our way, we will be able to handle them and persevere.

Our prayers must be genuine and dynamic, that is we have to be in genuine and sincere conversation with God and not just chanting the prayers without thoughts for God in our hearts. A prayer is, as we all know, a two-way conversation between God and us, and this should not be undermined in any way, as many of us had done.

For many of us, prayers had ended up becoming a litany of demands and wishes, where we bombard God with our human desires and wants, and when we do not get what we want, we become angry and abusive towards God, and not few even lost hope in God and veered away from God’s way into the darkness of the world. These are all because we have not yet understood the true meaning of prayer and we have also not yet understood well our relationship with God.

God loves us, yes, and He cares for us, yes, and He wants to guide us at all times, but this does not mean that He is a generous provider for all the things that we need or even worse, if we expect miracles to happen just because we think that the Lord can do everything for us. God will intervene in our lives, yes, when He deems it necessary for Himself to come and make a difference in our lives, but this again does not mean that we should be lazy or idle.

Instead, we should take upon the examples shown by the Apostles, who courageously stood up for their faith against those who opposed the Lord and testified for the sake of the Good News of God. The Apostles in the first reading today prayed, because they sought the Lord’s guidance and help in fulfilling their mission to spread the Good News, especially among those who opposed the Lord. They sought courage and strength to carry out their appointed mission, that they will not easily give up against the opposition and forces piled up against them.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, when we pray, we have to open ourselves entirely to God, that we may truly listen to God speaking to us in our hearts. We have to stay connected to God at all times, for we are beings weak and prone to temptation. The devil awaits us at every corner waiting to tempt us away from the path to righteousness and into damnation, and his weapons are plentiful.

We cannot be complacent, and we have to be always ready to seek the Lord whenever we are in doubt or great fear, as the Apostles had done, by praying together as one asking the Lord for His help. That is what we have to do as well, brothers and sisters in Christ. And for us all, we have been sealed in the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, and therefore had been claimed for the Lord.

That is the meaning of being born again, according to Christ, as He explained to Nicodemus, by being ‘born again’ of the Spirit. The waters of baptism mark our rebirth in the Lord, as from that moment on, we are born in the Spirit of God. Many misunderstood this and in the separated and heretical Protestant communities, they interpreted this as all of us having to be born again, even after baptism, which is the mistake of their literal understanding of the words of Jesus.

Being born again is equivalent to our baptism, when we were truly spiritually reborn again, our second birth, when our past selves and sinful selves are cleansed and purified into a new being filled with the light and the love of God, no longer unworthy of the Lord but now worthy of His everlasting grace. However, this does not mean that we can just be easygoing and disregard all the laws of God after our rebirth, as we are still prone to sin, as long as we are in this body of flesh, in contact with the impurities that are in this world.

That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, we ought to do our best, to be strong in our faith, through prayers, genuine and living, and through our actions, that we resolve to follow the Lord and listen to His will. In doing so, we will walk in the favour and grace of God, and in the end, receive the everlasting reward and glory of heaven.

Today, brethren, we also celebrate the feast of two renowned saint, one that is St. Peter Chanel, a priest and martyr of the faith, and the well-known St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Monfort, the founder of the Monfortian religious order, which is involved in many aspects of Christian charity and education even today. Through the works of these two great saints many had benefited and were brought closer to God.

St. Peter Chanel was born in France about two centuries ago, and he was noted for his drive towards missionary work and desired since his youth to be a missionary of the faith to bring the light of God to many nations who have yet to receive the word of salvation. He went on to become a priest and a missionary, working in many places, preaching the Good News to many who then accepted baptism and were born again in the Spirit.

When he went on a mission to the Pacific islands in Tonga, Wallis and Futuna, St. Peter Chanel met his martyrdom there in the midst of his good works of faith. He worked hard for the faith and managed to gain converts for the Lord, yet because of the opposition of those who did not know the Lord, he met his end, and yet, St. Peter Chanel remained truly faithful to the end. Even those who persecuted and murdered him repented in the end and were accepted into the faith.

St. Louis-Marie de Monfort had a different life experience from St. Peter Chanel, but he had led an equally holy and devoted life, dedicated in its entirety to the Lord and to His mother Mary, of whom St. Louis-Marie de Monfort was particularly dedicated to. St. Louis-Marie de Monfort became a great preacher of the faith, dispersing the Good News to many, and his holiness became an example to many.

St. Louis-Marie de Monfort was notably known for his great devotion to Mary, the mother of God, that influenced many later faithful and the Popes for their extensive and various Marian devotions, and help spread the popularity of devotions and prayers to the mother of our Saviour for her intercessions on our behalf before her Son.

Through the hard works of these two saints whose lives we celebrate today, we gain much graces and blessings, that all of us get closer and closer to the mystery of our God, to His love and mercy. Through the examples of these two saints, we have a clearer image and understanding of what we should do, in order to achieve holiness necessary for us to be worthy of heaven and of God’s everlasting reward.

May Almighty God continue to guide us in our lives, that we may realise how much we depend on Him, and how much we need to align ourselves to His will. May all of us grow stronger in our faith and be more dedicated to God, day after day. God bless us all. Amen.