redemption of mankind

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Saturday, 15 August 2015 : Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Luke 1 : 39-56

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!”

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 out 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.

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Saturday, 15 August 2015 : Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 Corinthians 15 : 20-26

But no, Christ has been raised from the dead and He comes before all those who have fallen asleep. A human being brought death; a Human Being also brings resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. However, each one in his own time : first Christ, then Christ’s people, when He comes.

Then the end will come, when Christ delivers the kingdom to God the Father, after having destroyed every rule, authority and power. For He must reign and put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed will be death.

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Friday, 14 August 2015 : Vigil Mass of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 Corinthians 15 : 54b-57

When our mortal being puts on immortality, the word of Scripture will be fulfilled : ‘Death has been swallowed up by victory. Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?’ Sin is the sting of death to kill, and the Law is what gives force to sin.

But give thanks to God who gives us the victory through Christ Jesus, our Lord.

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Friday, 14 August 2015 : 19th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about how Joshua, the leader of Israel and successor to Moses, the faithful servant of God, gathered the whole people of Israel and reminded them of the wonders and good things that God had done for them, from the time of their ancestors right down to their time, reminding them of how much God had done for them.

God had given so much to His people, even though from time to time, again and again they have disobeyed and refused to listen to Him and obey to Him. He has blessed them from time to time, and renewed His covenant and promise to His people yet again and again, but many rejected His offer of love and mercy, and many people continued to live in their ways of sin.

God is forever faithful and He is always ready to give His mercy and love to all those who seek them. But at the same time, it does not mean that He will let us to go our own path, that is He will not tolerate our sinfulness and our wayward behaviour, as if closing one eye against those sins. He is loving towards all of His people, but at the same time, He despises all forms of wickedness and sins.

In the Gospel today, Jesus spoke to the people about the importance, the sanctity and the nature of marriage, which is between one man and one woman, as decreed by the Lord since the beginning of creation, when He first created us mankind. Man and woman had been created to complement each other and to accompany each other, so that, as God had said, that man will join with woman and become one body, and that union is blessed and sanctified by God.

What God had made one, no man should ever separate or try to divorce. And that was what Jesus had said. He rebuked the people for their sinfulness and their refusal to open their hearts to admit the Lord into their hearts. He related this to how Moses had to allow the people to veer off from the true way to which God had led them, just so that the people might have their desires fulfilled.

The people of God always tried to bend the rules and challenge the order as established by the Lord, because they were easily tempted by worldly desires and by the sins they have committed. God has been very patient to endure from the people all the troubles and rejection which His people had given Him. They did not honour the holiness and sanctity of the sacrament of holy matrimony.

This is just as they did not regard the holiness and sanctity of life, which many of us should realise that in these days, more and more people treat life as if something that can be used and manipulated, no longer as something that is important and crucial. They trampled on life and the sanctity of marriage, dishonoured the Lord and the Law which He had given us for our sake.

God had given so much for us, and yet in our many actions, we showed how we despised and hated Him, and how we have not listened to Him calling us to be good and holy, just as He is holy. We have been immersed in this ‘culture of death’, where life to us, and the institution of the family is to us no longer important, and we rather place ahead, our desires and our selfishness.

Today, we celebrate the life of a great saint and martyr of the Faith, whose examples and life should inspire us to do differently from how we have done and how we have lived our lives so far. He is St. Maximilian Kolbe, the saint of the Holocaust, a Polish priest and missionary, whose many works and evangelising missions were known far and wide.

Bur best known to us was the action which he took during the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust, where the Germans under control of the NAZI party, led by Adolf Hitler, where many countless millions suffered in terrible conditions in various concentration camps and prisons, where their dignity as a human being is often completely ignored.

St. Maximilian Kolbe was among many of those who have been arrested by the NAZIs in their desire to destroy the dignity of many human lives. But he continued to minister to the people of God suffering and without dignity, raising hope and courage in their hearts. He celebrated the Holy Mass with them and encouraged them with his examples and words.

And his greatest act was, in imitation of the love of God for us, he volunteered to substitute himself with a man condemned to death because he failed in his attempt to escape from the concentration camp. He was willing to die in the man’s place, and especially after he knew that the condemned man had family waiting on the other side of the fence.

He willingly accepted death and became a martyr for the Faith, following the examples of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who had willingly given up His own life, laying it down on the cross, that through His ultimate sacrifice, all of us may be saved. Thus the examples of St. Maximilian Kolbe and ultimately the examples of Christ Himself should have inspired us all to love the Lord our God ever more, and shun all forms of wickedness and evil.

May the Lord our Almighty God help us to keep holy our lives, and awaken in all of us the desire to love all life, and the desire to keep the holiness found in all life and in marriage, the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. May He bless us and keep us faithful to Him always, so that we may be like His faithful servant, St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose memory and life we honour today. Amen.

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Friday, 14 August 2015 : 19th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Psalm 135 : 1, 2, 3, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 24

Alleluia! Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, His kindness endures forever.

Give thanks to the God of gods, His kindness endures forever.

Give thanks to the Lord of lords, His kindness endures forever.

And He led His people through the desert, His kindness endures forever.

He struck down great kings, His kindness endures forever.

He gave their land as an inheritance, His kindness endures forever.

A heritage to Israel His servant, His kindness endures forever.

And He freed us from our oppressors, His kindness endures forever.

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Thursday, 13 August 2015 : 19th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Pontian, Pope, and St. Hippolytus, Priest, Martyrs (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard first in the first reading from the Book of Joshua, the continuation of the narration of the story of Israel’s passage from Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan after their Exodus. Moses who led them through the desert for forty years because of the disobedience and rebellion of many among the Israelites, had passed away, and now had been replaced as leader by Joshua.

The people of Israel had reached the vicinity of the River Jordan, which separated the Land of Promise and the other lands. And in a repeat of what He had shown to the people at the Red Sea, God made His people to cross the river Jordan on dry ground, opening the river before them and halting its flow so that they might pass unhindered and enter into the Promised Land of Canaan, which was to be their inheritance.

In the Gospel however, we heard about Jesus who spoke of a parable to His disciples and to the people, teaching them a story about a servant who had owed a large debt to his master, and he was supposed to be punished. But when the servant begged for mercy and forgiveness, the master’s heart was touched and moved, and he forgave the servant all of his debts.

But the servant did not follow the example of his master, and he confronted another servant who owed him a small amount of debt, a mere fraction of what the former owed his master and which he had been forgiven from. The master who knew what the wicked servant had done was very angry, and he did not let the wickedness to go unpunished. The punishment for the old debts were reinstated and the wicked servant went to his suffering without mercy.

How are these two readings related? They may seem to be distinct and unrelated, but in fact they are really very related in meaning, in reality as well as in symbolism. For we all have to understand that what we witnessed today in the Book of Joshua was the final part of the long journey of Israel through the desert, where they wandered for over forty years as mentioned.

They wandered so many years in the desert because of their disobedience, since they refused to listen to the Lord, and feared men more than God, and they did not put their full trust in the Lord, even though again and again, many times they had witnessed first hand the glory and power of God. They were too stubborn in their heart to appreciate the love and care with which God had taken care of them.

But God is at the same time also merciful and loving, just as He is filled with hatred and righteous anger towards all sorts of sin and wickedness. He shows mercy to all those who repented and those who committed themselves to change their way and follow Him. But those who were unrepentant and refused to listen to Him, He will cast away from His presence into the utter darkness and eternal suffering.

God is the master in the parable, and we are the servants whom the master has command over. The debts are our sins and wickedness, which have become our undoing. The debts bring with them punishment and justice, that is death, and we should have deserved death because we have sinned and disobeyed our Lord, the Master and Lord of all life.

But God heard our pleas and prayers, and He forgives us our sins, just as He had sent down to us His own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, that through Him, our sins may be destroyed and we may be freed from them. He has granted us pardon just as the master had pardoned the wicked servant from his debts. Now what matters is that, we have to heed the clear lesson from Jesus’s teaching and discourse on this matter.

We have to listen to the word of God, His teachings and His ways, and then practice it ourselves in our own actions and in how we live our lives in this world. The wicked servant did not imitate his master in his mercy and love, and instead, he oppressed others in his own ego and pride. As a result, he was punished severely for his wrongdoings. Thus, we too should not follow his ways, and rather, submit ourselves to the way of the Lord, loving one another and forgiving each other our sins.

Today we celebrate the feast of Pope St. Pontian and St. Hippolytus, who were at that time the rival Pope to St. Pontian, elected by rival camps in the Church, at a time when division could be ill-afforded, as the Roman Empire was stepping up its great and terrible persecution of both the Church and the faithful. The two camps bickered at who should have been the legitimate Successor of St. Peter, and much harm was done to the Church.

But by the grace of God, the two men were reconciled with each other, and the misunderstandings that happened and came between them were dispelled. As a result, the unity of the Church was restored completely. Pope St. Pontian and St. Hippolytus were arrested by the authorities and were sentenced to death in the mines of Sardinia.

They were both martyred there, and before he went off to his death, Pope St. Pontian voluntarily relinquished the leadership of the Church, to allow others to step in and rebuild the community he left behind when he went to his martyrdom. And the forgiveness and reconciliation which Pope St. Pontian and St. Hippolytus showed each other should be an inspiration for all of us, as the driving force behind our own conversion to the truth and reconciliation with our Lord and God.

Remember when the people of Israel passed through the River Jordan? It was there too that Jesus our Lord was baptised by St. John the Baptist. This is also a symbolic meaning, of how when we were baptised, we pass just as the Israelites through the waters of baptism, from a barren land, the desert, into the promised land of milk and honey, and so we are brought from our past state of sin into a renewed life filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit.

May Almighty God be with us always, and fill our hearts with the desire to seek Him and to find His mercy, that He may forgive our sins and trespasses, and make us worthy again of His love. God bless us all. Amen.

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Wednesday, 12 August 2015 : 19th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jane Frances de Chantal, Religious (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Religious)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about how Moses looked at a glimpse of the Promised Land from Mount Nebo, the place of his death. Moses finally saw the land to where he was leading the people of Israel for forty years, the fruits of his long labours. However, he was unable to enter the Land because he had not been fully faithful, and on one occasion, he disobeyed the Lord and His will because of his anger against the people.

At that time, the people of Israel grumbled against the Lord and against Moses. They complained because they were hungry and thirsty, and they demanded what they wanted. They refused to listen to the Lord, and Moses was hard pressed by their demands. God commanded Moses to show the people of Israel His power, by speaking to the rock to let water to gush forth out of it.

However, Moses was so angered by the people he had led with much patience and hard work, and he struck the rock with his staff instead of speaking to it. Water still gushed out of the water and the people were able to drink and be satisfied. But God was not happy at Moses because of his disobedience, and as a result, together with Aaron and Miriam, his siblings, who earlier on had also rebelled against the Lord and Moses, they would not enter the Promised Land.

Yet, God who loves those who show their faith and dedication to Him showed Moses His mercy, and He allowed him to have a glimpse of the Land of Promise before he died. And when he died, God took him up to heaven to be with him. It was said by Jewish tradition that when Moses died, Satan was trying to claim him for himself, but God sent His Archangel Michael to wrestle with Satan and prevented him from getting Moses.

In the Gospel today, we heard about how Jesus spoke to His disciples and to the people on how they ought to resolve a problem that arose among them. He spoke to them how to deal with those who have not followed the commandments of God, or otherwise, living in heresy. God did not condemn them directly, or punished them directly if we noticed it. God instead gives them chance.

Yes, it does not mean that God hates sinner through and through, and once we sin we are rejected by God totally and completely. This is a misconception which many of us often have about the Lord and about sin. However, we have to take note that what the Lord despise is not the sinners themselves, but the sin which they have committed.

Thus, what God wants from us is not to punish us or to oppress us, but instead to save us from harm and liberate us from our own desires and our own wickedness. That is why He sent us Jesus to be our Saviour, to deliver us from the certainty of destruction and annihilation that await us had we remained on our path of doom, that is if we continue to live in our state of sin.

What matters is that we have to seek God’s mercy and forgiveness, by humbly accepting and acknowledging our own sinfulness and weakness, that is our predisposition to sin and the wickedness that we have committed before God and men alike. We must aspire and seek to change our lives, our way of life, so that our actions are no longer based on worldly things and we no longer commit sin, but repent completely and turn ourselves perfectly to follow the Lord our God.

Today, we celebrate the feast of a saint whose life can be a great inspiration to all of us on how we live our lives. St. Jane Frances de Chantal was a noblewoman who had a normal life as were other nobility at that time, having four children in her family. However, she was widowed early because of an accident, and she eventually devoted the rest of her life to serve the Lord as a religious.

She established a religious order, Congregation of the Visitation, which was unusual among the other religious orders for women at the time, because they were very active in their works and outreach to the poor and the sick, whom they often ministered in many places, as more and more followed the examples of St. Jane Frances de Chantal and her sisters.

In her examples too, we can see the work of God in place in this world. God through her and her congregation, as well as through many other media, is trying to help all of us to liberate ourselves from the allures of this world, and from the entanglements of our sins. We too should also help in bringing one another closer to God and away from our past and present state of sin.

Let us all realise the love and mercy which God had shown us, and which we all should appreciate, because they were very great indeed. Let us all seek God’s mercy and love in all things. May Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, welcome us all into His kingdom and bring us into everlasting life. Amen.

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Wednesday, 12 August 2015 : 19th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jane Frances de Chantal, Religious (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Religious)

Matthew 18 : 15-20

At that time, Jesus said to the people, “If your brother has sinned against you, go and point out the fault, when the two of you are in private, and if he listens to you, you have won your brother. If he does not listen to you, take with you one or two others, so that the case may be decided by the evidence of two or three witnesses.”

“And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the assembled Church. But if he does not listen to the Church, then regard such a one as a pagan, or a publican. I say to you : whatever you bind on earth, heaven will keep bound; and whatever you unbind on earth, heaven will keep unbound.”

“In like manner, I say to you : If, on earth, two of you are united in asking for anything, it will be granted to you by My heavenly Father; for where two or three are gathered in My Name, I am there among them.”

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Tuesday, 11 August 2015 : 19th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Clare, Virgin (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard how God will guide His people against all odds and challenges, and He will go before them to protect them and provide them with all the things they need. He defeated their enemies and their persecutors before them, just as He had done with the Pharaoh and the Egyptians who once enslaved them, and with the Amalekites, the kings Sihon and Og who opposed them.

They have no need to fear or be worried, for the Lord was guiding them and leading them, and He blessed them beyond compare. And they received the blessings and the promise of God, settling down eventually in the Land which God had promised to them and to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God did not backtrack on His promises and He did not ever break the promise He made.

On the other hand, it is His people who have often broken their part of the bargain and promise, for they have not always been faithful to the Law and to the commandments, preferring to follow their own ways and obey their own hearts’ desires. As a result, many, many times they had gone astray and thus committed sin before God and men alike.

This is also happening to us all as well, because many of us have also not been faithful to the Lord, and preferring to follow our own hearts’ desires, our wants and our ego, rather than humbly following the Lord and His ways, and listening to His will. And in this, we should again also heed what Jesus had said to His disciples, that they ought to look at the little children and imitate them in their faith.

Why is this so, brethren? That is because unlike adults around them, children up to a certain age were still innocent and pure, and they will believe everything that they are told and taught with. They are like pure and blank slate awaiting the moment for them to be filled up and written with. And therefore, their faith is truly genuine, and when they are faithful to something, they are not affected by the concerns or things around them. This is their innocence, and this is their genuine faith.

Compare this to ourselves, in our own faith. Whenever we say that we are faithful to the Lord, how often is it that we are distracted by the many worldly things around us? How often is it that we delay in doing something that pleases God, just because the world does not approve of it, or that we are afraid that our friends and family, or our society would denounce us?

This is because in our hearts and minds, we have been filled with much worldly things and concerns. We are unable to detach ourselves from them, and all of our actions are determined by whether we give in to these desires and influences or whether we are capable of resisting them and not to give in. And today we celebrate the feast of a saint, whose examples may be an inspiration for us to do just that.

St. Clare, also known as St. Clare of Assisi was one of the first followers of St. Francis of Assisi, and she was the founder of a religious order and tradition following the examples and the tenets of St. Francis of Assisi, focusing on the Lord and abandoning worldliness by living in poverty, so that in all things, those who followed that way may be able to better able to resist the temptations of the world.

She was born into a noble and wealthy family, but she abandoned them all in exchange for a life totally and completely dedicated to God in prayer and good works. She worked for the sake of the poor and the abandoned ones. She helped to inspire many others to also do the good works for the sake of all those who need it. And thus, she was renowned for both her works and for her great piety.

And many people venerated her after her death, and looked up to her, just as they did for St. Francis of Assisi, because of their role and works. And we too should walk in their footsteps. Let us all therefore pray so that we all may put our complete trust in God and obey Him in all of our actions and deeds. God bless us all and keep us safe from all harm. Amen.

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Monday, 10 August 2015 : Feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about God who has given us all so many good things, so many wonderful things that He had planted in us, as seeds that will germinate in due time, if we cultivate them and they will prosper. He has sowed many things in us, and He has given us the seeds of faith, the seeds of hope and the seeds of love.

All these are within us, inside our hearts, and await our action and work to awaken them. As Jesus said in the Gospel today, that the seed, that is the grain of wheat, if it does not die, then it remains alone and meaningless. Only when the grain of wheat falls onto the ground, then life can spring out from it and a new plant can grow from the seed.

This means that, by using the life of Christ as a comparison, we must take action and live our lives with faith and real action based on that faith in order that we may have the seeds inside us to bear much good fruits. If we do not do anything or do things that are contrary to what our Lord had taught us, then the seeds of faith, hope and love in us will not germinate and grow.

Jesus was faithful to the mission which He was entrusted with by His Father, that is to bring about salvation to all mankind, by teaching them the truth about the Lord and how to live their lives in accordance with the Law of God. And He was faithful to the very end, as He needed to endure all the sufferings and the punishments intended for our sins and wickedness, so that all of us may have a new hope of life.

He took up all of our iniquities and all the sufferings which should have been ours upon Himself, and bearing that great and heavy cross, He walked on and ascended patiently towards Calvary, faithful to the mission for which He came into this world and ultimately because of the great and boundless love which He has for all of us, and the pity and mercy which He has shown us, because He pitied our state, lost in the darkness of this world and not knowing which way to go to.

And He showed us all an example, on how to live our lives so that we too may share in the promises which He had given us and our ancestors, by leading an example Himself, showing that unless we take up our crosses and join Him, then we would have no part in the life and salvation which He will give all of His faithful. And just as He had died on the cross and rose again on the third day from the dead, we too must do the same.

This means that we should die to ourselves, to the temptations and desires of the flesh which have caused us to sin, and to throw far away all forms of worldliness and all sorts of selfish attitudes which remain in us. We should die to our desires, to the allures of the flesh and worldly pleasures, so that by sharing the death of Christ, we mah also share in His glorious resurrection, and be found worthy to receive the gift of eternal life He had promised all of us.

On this day, we celebrate together the feast of St. Lawrence the Deacon, who was also a great martyr of the Church and defender of the Faith. St. Lawrence was a deacon of the Church of Rome, appointed as such by Pope St. Sixtus II, whose feast we had just celebrated a few days ago. St. Lawrence was a hardworking servant of God, who gave his all in service to God and to His people.

St. Lawrence continued to remain faithful and committed to the tasks placed before Him. He ministered to the people of God, especially to the faithful ones during the persecution of the faithful and the Church by the Emperor Valerian. He ministered to the people of God, caring for them and kept a great and well-ordered system of distribution of goods to the faithful people of God.

And when he was arrested together with many other members of the Church, he remained true to his faith in God, and remained resolute and strong in his devotion to God until the end. He embraced the challenges and sufferings he was to face openly, and without fear, for he knows that, it is only by dying to his fears and placing his complete and full trust in the Lord that he will be saved and brought to the eternal glory promised by the Lord.

We can learn from his examples, in how we live our lives. We should follow his example in showing love to one another, caring for the poor and the less fortunate, and by loving those who are unloved and rejected, and then by also having a complete and full trust in the Lord, placing our trust in Him alone, and knowing that all who remain faithful to the Lord will not be disappointed.

May Almighty God be with us all always, and may St. Lawrence intercede for our sake always, that we may be helped on our path towards redemption and eternal life, that we may be righteous and just, and be found worthy at the end of our days. God bless us all. Amen.