sacrifice

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Tuesday, 22 October 2013 : 29th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Blessed Pope John Paul II, Pope (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 39 : 7-8a, 8b-9, 10, 17

Sacrifice and oblation You did not desire; this You had me understand. Burnt offering and sin offering You do not require. Then I said, “Here I come!”

As the scroll says of me, I come. To do Your will is my delight, o God, for Your law is within my heart.

In the great assembly I have proclaimed Your saving help. My lips, o Lord, I did not seal – You know that very well.

But may all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; and may all who love Your saving grace continually say, “The Lord is great.”

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Monday, 21 October 2013 : 29th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Romans 4 : 20-25

Abraham did not doubt nor did he distrust the promise of God, and by being strong in faith, he gave glory to God : he was convinced that He who had given the promise had power to fulfill it.

This was taken into account for him to attain righteousness. This was taken into account : these words of Scripture are not only for Him. But for us, too, because we believe in Him who was raised Jesus, our Lord, from among the dead, He who  was delivered for our sins and raised to life for us to receive true goodness.

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Saturday, 19 October 2013 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. John de Brebeuf, St. Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs, and St. Paul of the Cross, Priest (Scripture Reflection)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs) or White (Priests and the Mass of our Lady)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, God is so faithful to all of us, even when we are unfaithful. He keeps His promise even when we stray away from His path and erred before Him. He is truly faithful and devoted to us, that He sent us salvation in Christ, through whom He made this whole world complete once again, in the. Blood of the slaughtered Lamb of God.

He is faithful to the promise He made to man, and to Abraham His servant. Even if He wanted to break that promise, He could not have done so, that is because it is His nature to be faithful and true to the promise, indeed, any promise that He had made to all of us. There is no instance at all, where the Lord had broken any of His promises, that is the covenants He had made with us.

Covenants are made between two parties, brethren, and if one side break their part of the covenant, that covenant is broken. That is precisely what had happened, we and our ancestors are the ones who had broken the covenant the Lord had made with us, through our rebelliousness, stubbornness, and sinfulness, beginning from Adam our forefather and Eve, his wife, tempted by Satan to disobey God, right down to us sinners, who sin daily and do things abhorrent in the eyes of God.

Yet, the Lord who punishes those who has done evil, is also loving, and despite us having trespassed against Him, in His love, He continues to embrace us, and hope for us to return to Him. That is why, through Christ His Son, He willed to reconcile us to Himself, and reestablish the covenant that had been broken, and at the same time fulfill the promises He had made to us and our ancestors.

Lord Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all God’s promises to mankind, and the One who marked the ultimate and infinite nature of God’s love and the perfection of the divine covenant. God promised man that He will send a deliverer through a woman, a descendant of Eve, the first woman, and the promise that while the snake, the deceiver would bite the children of the woman, that is Satan, will have power over mankind for a time, but the woman, from whom the Saviour came from, will crush the head of the snake, that is Mary, through whom Christ was incarnated into Man, will end the tyranny of Satan, through the death and resurrection of her Son, Jesus, God incarnate into Man.

God also fulfilled the promise to Abraham, by truly making his children as innumerable as the stars. The descendants of Abraham spread wide and numerous, and then, He also fulfilled it through Jesus, in making the descendant of Abraham great, everlasting through Christ, the descendant of David, and therefore of Abraham, through Mary His mother and Joseph, His foster-father.

To David, God had promised that He would establish his descendant on the throne of Israel forever, and that is fulfilled completely through Jesus, the son of David, and at the same time, the eternal and Almighty God. To Jesus will be given the eternal kingdom of glory, and He will be exalted by all creation, by all the angels, for He had broken the power of death, overcome it, and through His resurrection, He had made the whole world pure once again, from the taints of original sin, and bring mankind back towards the Lord.

Yet, many of us spurn and reject this expression of pure and unadulterated love. We prefer to mingle and linger in our sinfulness rather than opening ourselves to God’s infinite mercy and love. We love the darkness of Satan more than we love the Lord who is light and the true guide of our lives. That is because we perceive the lies of Satan as things good and enjoyable, while fearing the anger of the Lord because of our sinfulness. That anger however, is precisely because we refuse to turn away from evil, and continue committing what is evil in the eyes of God. If only that we turn ourselves back towards Him, He who is faithful and loving will surely welcome us back into His embrace.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the holy saints and martyrs of the Universal Church. We commemorate today, the feast of St. Isaac Jogues, St. John de Brebeuf, and their companions, who were martyred in North America, during a time of great evangelisation and missionary work in that country. At that time, most of North America, as was the rest of the New World were still largely populated by the natives of the continent, who looked suspiciously on the activity of the missionaries like the two saints.

Yet, St. John de Brebeuf and St. Isaac Jogues, together with many of their missionary companions, most of which were Jesuits, continued to work hard for the sake of the Lord, gaining converts among the pagan native populations. The hard work of the saints gained the conversion of even the entire Huron native American nation after long years of work in the bitter cold of Northern American winter conditions.

But rivalries between the native American tribes were common at the time, and the saints and their companions were caught in the midst of a vicious and terrible inter-native American tribal rivalry, which saw the Iroquois pagan natives completely defeating and eradicating the Hurons whom the saints had converted to the cause of the Lord. The saints were captured, tortured and mocked for their faith. Yet, they remained firm and devoted to the Lord, and they met their end at the hands of their torturers.

Therefore, brethren, we ought to be inspired by their example, the example they have made in their deep faith and devotion in God, that is in the One who has been promised to us mankind, to be our Saviour and salvation, as the deliverance freeing us from the tyranny of death and evil. Let us not be fearful to express our faith in God, and rather, as St. John de Brebeuf, St. Isaac Jogues, and their companions had done, show that faith through our actions, through our love and dedication to both our fellow men, as well as to God our Lord and Father.
May the Lord strengthen our faith, empower us, and bless us with His Holy Spirit, that our faith in Him will ever grow strong and never grow dim. Amen.

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Monday, 14 October 2013 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Callistus I, Pope and Martyr (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyr)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord Jesus is our promised salvation, the One whom the prophets had been proclaiming about. He is the descendant of David, the One to inherit for eternity the kingdom that had been given to His forefather, to be the king of not just Israel, but over all the world, and indeed, as the Lord Creator of all, as the King of all creations.

He is also the descendant of Adam, the first man, and as a new Man, the Son of Man, becoming the new Adam, the first One to rise from the dead and into glory. Just as Adam had fallen into temptations of Satan, the evil one, with his wife, Eve, then Christ had broken hold of evil over mankind, the descendants of Adam, by being the faithful One, the One who held on true to His faith and love in God, even unto death.

Yes, for through Jesus, the new Adam, mankind had been liberated, ransomed with the price of the Blood of the Lamb, Jesus Himself. That is the price He had paid for the sake of our salvation and liberation from slavery of sin under Satan. That ultimate sacrifice He had done at Calvary, to die on the cross for the sake of all mankind, is the sign of Jonah that He had promised to show the people, who so stubbornly demanded Him to show a miraculous sign.

Yes, brethren, demanding Jesus to show them a sign, while what they have experienced while they were with Him, especially the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, who had always tailed Jesus wherever He went, and tried Him with questions and traps they had laid for Him. They have seen what Jesus had done, and had heard His teachings, and yet they did not believe, or rather, refused to believe in Him or in what wonders He had done.

The sign of Jonah is the reinforcement of what had happened to Jonah, when he tried to escape from his prophetic responsibility, to bring the judgment of God to the city of Nineveh. His escape ship was struck with a vicious storm, and he had to throw himself into the sea so that the ship would not sink. God sent a big fish, a whale, to swallow and protect Jonah in its belly for three days. That is what had happened to Jonah, and precisely what Jesus had shown the people of God.

Jesus Christ Himself was taken away from the world, that after His death, He went down into hell, not as a condemned one, but instead as a triumphant and conquering One, as One who liberates those who had been imprisoned unjustly by the evil one, delivering them from the darkness of the hell and this world into the light of heavenly glory. For three days, He was hidden from the world, just like Jonah who was in the belly of the fish for three days.

And just as Jonah who had been freed from the belly of the fish and went on to continue his ministry to Nineveh and its people, and after realising the benevolence and merciful nature of God, understanding that the people of Nineveh was not punished because they were repentant and regretful of their past sinful ways, so did Jesus bring about salvation and forgiveness for all those who had shunned their sinfulness and embraced Him as their Lord and Saviour.

This is the fundamental core of our faith, one that we have to keep uphold strongly throughout our life. We must never forget that our Lord had died for us and given up His life so that we may live and not suffer death eternal in hell, for He had freed us from bondage to Satan and bring us into new life of holiness and true joy.

Today, brethren, we celebrate the feast of Pope St. Callistus I, also known as St. Callixtus I, one of the first Popes and therefore one of the early leaders of the Universal Church. Pope St. Callistus I faced many difficult experiences in his life, and even more so during his ministry as the successor of St. Peter, as the leader of the Universal Church. There were oppositions and persecutions from the pagan Romans and their Emperors, and life was truly difficult. There were also oppositions from within the Church, with rival factions and disagreements threatening to split the Church apart, especially over treatment of lapsed Christians and forgiveness given unto them when they decided to return to the Church.

Yet, Pope St. Callistus I persevered through these tribulations, and led the people of God through those difficult times, enduring oppositions after oppositions, and led the people of God back to God, reconciling themselves with one another. Pope St. Callistus dedicated himself to the cause of Christ even unto his death, his martyrdom in the defense of his faith. In that, he had upheld the faith that he had in Christ, in the One who had Himself persevered through numerous trials and oppositions, and death so that all of us may be saved.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us then commit ourselves ever more devotedly to the Lord our God who had given His all for our sake, that we will not abandon Him, and truly believe wholeheartedly in His Passion, in the suffering and death He had endured for the sake of us all. And may Pope St. Callistus I pray for us and intercede for our sake before the Lord Jesus, our loving God and Father of all. God bless us all. Amen.

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Monday, 7 October 2013 : 27th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate an important Marian feast, a day dedicated to the Mother of God, Mary, the lady and our mother. Today, in particular, we celebrate an aspect of her that we often find to be ubiquitous in our faith and devotions, that is the holy rosary, the linked beads in chain, that we use to guide us in our prayer.

What is the rosary and what is its significance in our faith, and how does it affect us in our journey of faith in this world and beyond? The rosary is a weapon, a spiritual weapon in a spiritual warfare between the forces of evil led by the devil, against us, the children of the light, the beloved ones of God. This devotion was introduced by Mary herself, when she appeared to St. Dominic, who was then the first to recommend the devotion of the rosary to the people of God.

We often take the rosary for granted, and instead of taking the devotion seriously, we said the prayers without meaning and said the words faster than even the bullet trains! That is exactly what happened if we do not truly understand the usefulness and the purpose of the holy rosary, which is a potent weapon, a spiritual weapon, in the spiritual warfare constantly fought between us and the devil and his servants.

Then how did this feast of our Lady of the Rosary come about? This feast originated in the late sixteenth century, after the great victory of the forces of the faithful, fighting against the forces of the devil, represented by the Muslim forces of the expansionist Ottoman Turk Empire. This battle is the Battle of Lepanto, which happened on this date, today, in the year 1571.

This great victory marked a great turning point in the history of Christendom, where the faithful are no longer on the defensive, after the enemy was dealt a massive defeat by the power of God. Pope St. Pius V, the Pope at the time, decided to commemorate the great victory by dedicating it to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that the victory over the enemy was made possible.

In the same way therefore, today, through the rosary as our weapon, the spiritual weapon, we would like to celebrate our victory and triumph against the evil one and his forces of darkness, as we, the children of the light, had triumphed against the darkness, much like the victorious Christian vanguards at the Battle of Lepanto more than four centuries ago.

Nevertheless, brethren, even though we have been victorious, as through Mary and her Son Jesus, whose sacrifice on the cross dealt the evil one a complete and thorough defeat, but the devil still has plenty of tools under his sleeves. He continues to marshall his forces of darkness to harass us, especially those who are most vulnerable, those whose faith are wavering and weakened.

The devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus our Lord and God, through the holy rosary is a potent tool to prevent this from happening, that is to prevent our brethren to fall into the temptation of Satan and his angels, the fallen ones. The rosary, as I mentioned, is a powerful weapon in this constant spiritual warfare raging daily around us, where angels and devils fight for the sake of our soul, for its salvation or damnation.

Through meaningful and devoted praying of the holy rosary, we invoke the protection of the angels sent by Jesus our Lord, through the intercession of His blessed mother Mary, hearing the prayer we have made through the rosary in complete devotion and love. The Lord will certainly not abandon us to the forces of the enemy. He will smite them and cast them away from us, His beloved children.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, the rosary, in which we pray the prayers dedicated to the Lord and His mother Mary, emulate the Marian virtues of obedience and love, which we ought to follow and emulate ourselves. Through her obedience and love, we have Jesus who came into this world, and we have a hope, hope of salvation and eternal life in Him.

This rosary is our spiritual weapon and also our spiritual defender, a breastplate of faith and devotion, protecting us from the threats of the evil one and his forces. Let us therefore, spread the habit of praying the rosary meaningfully and devoutly, to all around us, especially to those among us whose faith is wavering. May the Lord continue to watch over us, and may His blessed mother Mary continue to intercede for us, for our salvation, as we continue to offer her and her Son, our love and devotion through the rose of the holy rosary. Amen.

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Sunday, 6 October 2013 : 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard the great importance of the faith and love we have in God, because they empower us and give us strength to do many magnificent things. It does not matter whether we have a small or a large faith, since all of these are truly perceptional by us, and what truly matters is in fact, whether we truly have a real faith and devotion to the Lord our God.

Faith is the key component of our life and our salvation. We cannot love God without faith, and vice versa, as we also need love to be able to have faith in God. That is why, faith and love are paramount virtues and values we must have, if we are to be saved in Christ, and receive His grace and love. Faith and love are the essential components of our lives and ought to be the centre of our very lives.

With faith, everything is possible, and certainly, our Lord and God is faithful to us, even when we have that very little faith in Him. This lack of faith is precisely the reason why, if we read the Old Testament, why the people of God, that is Israel, rebelled against God and His love so often, that He casted them out of His sight in anger. And even so, He still have faith in these rebellious children, sending prophets after prophets, and messengers after messengers, in order to convince them to repent their sinful ways and return to Him and His love.

That even in the New Testament, the lack of faith and love in God’s people is why they are so stubborn, and continue in their sinful ways, especially the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, who sought their own glory instead of the glory of God, and led the people into sinning against God. They even rejected Jesus, God’s own beloved Son, the Word made flesh, to bring salvation to the people and condemned Him to die on the cross.

And yet, it is the Lord’s perfect faith and undying love in us that enabled us to be saved through the loving sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, that the offer of salvation and freedom of all evil and sin be extended to all mankind. God can just choose to obliterate us all and condemn all of us to oblivion, and that was indeed the much easier course for Him to take. After all, we have rebelled against Him with Satan, and corrupted His creations with our sins and evils.

And yet, He chose the hard way, to bear all of our sins upon Himself, and to suffer the consequences of all those sins, culminating in His death on the cross at Calvary, when He gave up His life, so that we may not die, but gain new life in Him, who is risen from the dead, rising with Him into glory. All these are because the Lord never abandons us, and He is always with us, loving us tenderly and providing us day by day.

That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, even if our faith in the Lord is just a little, but if that faith is genuine, we can truly do great things with it. The Lord always provides, brethren, and He never fails to do so. His power and authority is exercised in us when we have faith and love for Him, no matter how small it is. After all, we can never accomplish something, if we merely remain idle and believe that we re incapable of achieving anything.

Let me tell you all a story, a simple illustration on this idea of how important faith is in our life. There are two boys in a school, with similar performance in their academics and their studies overall. They are in two different classes, with two different teachers. In this case, both boys are taught very differently from one another.

One boy was taught to be positive in learning, and whenever he failed or did badly in his examinations, the teacher encourages him and convinces him that failure is not necessarily something bad, but in fact as an opportunity for one to learn from past mistakes and make improvements in the future.

The other boy, on the other hand, was taught by a very strict and authoritarian teacher, who always demands result from the students, and always punish severely those who performed badly in their examinations. The boy failed a few times during his studies and was reprimanded by his teacher.

Therefore, in your opinion, brethren in Christ, which among these two boys will likely have a better performance in the end? Certainly it is the boy whom the teacher always encouraged him whenever he failed and did not perform well in his studies. Yes, the one who will perform better is the one whose teacher gives strength and hope at times of despair, one who can therefore develop faith in themselves and their own abilities, and thus will be capable and more motivated to do better in studies or anything else.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, as we heed the words of Christ and the prophets today, let us open ourselves and our hearts to God’s divine love, that He will sow the seeds of faith in us, that our faith and love for Him may grow, and grow well, that we will be firm in our devotion to the Lord our God. Let us not be fearful of any evil, or any troubles, as the Lord will surely take care of us, if we keep strong and burning, the faith and love that is in us.

May the Lord our God strengthen our faith, that with whatever little faith that is in us, we will stay true to the path of the Lord, and remain committed to fulfill His commandments through our actions and our words. May God who is loving and faithful, keep us within His embrace and bring us one day to heaven that is our reward. God bless us all. Amen.

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Friday, 27 September 2013 : 25th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Vincent de Paul, Priest (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today Christ revealed His identity to His disciples, after asking them whether they know who He truly was. And the prophet Haggai in the first reading, comforted the people of God who laid in ruins after they returned to the land the Lord had given them after a long exile in Babylon.

In Christ, the Son of God, the world has been given the salvation that God had promised for them. In Christ, who is not mere man but a divine made man, the world achieve a fullness of glory in the Lord, the perfection that has been taken from us when we became lost after our rebellion at the beginning of Creation.

Christ is the fulfillment of God’s promise to mankind over time which He renewed through the prophets, and finally perfected in Jesus. God resolved to rebuild the destroyed mankind that they once again become His beloved ones, freed from sins and slavery to the worldly pleasures and sins.

Yet, although He is a conquering King who comes to destroy death and sin, and be triumphant over all evils, but He came as a humble King, One who is destined to suffer and die. Yes, death for our sake, that through the death, we may not die but live eternal with Him. He is the Lamb of God, the One to be slaughtered and whose Blood is to be shed, for the sake of all of us, for our salvation.

Although He is great and mighty, He faced suffering, persecution, and death, that He took in into Himself all the sins and sufferings of mankind, that we do not have to suffer them for eternity, and instead enjoy life everlasting in happiness with God. This is the renewal the Lord promised to the returned exiles of Israel through the prophet Haggai and the other leaders of the people. The renewal God had sent through His own Son, Jesus Christ.

The Lord loves us so much, that He was not willing to see us to suffer with the devil in eternal fire, to suffer for the consequences of our sins and faults. That was why He sent us Jesus, to be our Help, our Hope, and our Way, to return to Him, to reclaim the true joy, happiness, and the inheritance that we had forsaken when we disobeyed Him in the garden of Eden.

All that, and He was ready to endure lashes, torture, nails, and the cross itself.  The Lord Jesus walked that arduous path towards Calvary, enduring the weight of that cross, bleeding from His wounds, to die a criminal’s death on the cross, in Calvary, for our sake. Imagine the combined weight of the world’s sins, that is the sins of all mankind. That was the weight of the burden which caused Christ much pain and suffering, and He endured it.

At the same time, through that sacrifice of Himself, God had made His love for His people evident, by the giving of Himself for out sake. He gave us all new hope and light in life. Remember, before the glorious cross, the cross of Christ resurrected from the dead, there is always the cross of suffering, that is the cross taken up by the Christ suffering for our sins.

We cannot abandon the Christ, both in His glory and in His time of greatest humiliation on the cross, the humiliation that he turned into glory. That is why, brethren, we have a mission that has been given to all of us and that is to proclaim the crucified Christ to all people, to all the nations, especially to those who have yet to hear about the wondrous Christ and His works of salvation.

Today, we commemorate the feast of St. Vincent de Paul, one of the great saints in the Church, who was well known for his commitment to the Lord, especially to the weak, the poor, and the unloved. St. Vincent de Paul was born in France and was educated to be a faithful and good follower of Christ, when he was captured among many by the Algerian pirates running rampant in the region during his time, and was made into a slave.

St. Vincent de Paul was enslaved and sold to a renegade Catholic owner, until he managed to convince him to return to the faith, who then helped to get St. Vincent to be released from his slavery. He then committed the rest of his life as a worker of the Lord, caring for the last, the lost, and the least in the society, emphasizing on the need to give love to these people, and not abandon them to the darkness.

St. Vincent de Paul was particularly caring about those who were enslaved, being once a slave himself, and showed them the true nature of Christian love, that is dedication and the giving of oneself for the sake of others in need. He was truly the embodiment of who we all Christians ought to become, to be people for others, to be faithful disciples of the Lord who is Love.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us follow the examples of St. Vincent de Paul, making real our faith in this world, through our dedication and service to our brethren in need. We do not have to do big things, but what we can do is, to do even simple things to those around us, to those whom we meet along the way, giving them simple acts of love.

Even these small acts are significant, brethren, and we must not discount them for bigger and more ambitious acts of charity, as it is in these small acts that we can do daily that truly make the difference, and truly bring out the love that we have in us, and sharing it with one another. St. Vincent de Paul, pray for us always, that in all the things we do, we may be more inspired to be charitable and loving. God bless us all, always. Amen.

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Friday, 27 September 2013 : 25th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Vincent de Paul, Priest (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Luke 9 : 18-22

One day, when Jesus was praying alone, not far from His disciples, He asked them, “What do people say about Me?” And they answered, “Some say that You are John the Baptist; others say that You are Elijah, and still others that You are one of the prophets of old, risen from the dead.”

Again Jesus asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “The Messiah of God.” Then Jesus spoke to them, giving them strict orders not to tell this to anyone.

And He added, “The Son of Man must suffer many things. He will be rejected by the elders and chief priests and teachers of the Law, and be put to death. Then after three days, He will be raised to life.”

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Tuesday, 24 September 2013 : 25th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Ezra 6 : 7-8, 12b, 14-20

Let the governor of the Jews together with their leaders build the House of God on its former site. This is the command I give as to what you should do to help those Jewish leaders rebuild the House of God : pay the expenses in full and without delay, with the income from taxes of the province at the other side of the River which is allotted to the king. I, Darius, give this command. Let it be carried out at once.

And the leaders of the Jews continued to make progress in building, encouraged by what Haggai, the prophet, and Zechariah, the son of Iddo, had said; and they finished the work according to the command of the God of Israel and the decrees of Cyrus and Darius. The House was finished on the third day of the month of Adar in the sixth year of the reign of Darius.

The children of Israel, the priests and the Levites, and the rest of those who had returned from exile celebrated the consecration of this House of God with rejoicing, offering on this solemnity one hundred young bulls, two hundred rams, and four hundred lambs; and twelve he-goats as a sin offering for all Israel, according to the number of the tribes of Israel.

Then they installed the priests according to their ranks, and the Levites according to their classes, for the service of the House of God in Jerusalem, as it is written in the book of Moses. Those who had returned from exile celebrated the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month, for the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together, and all of them were clean.

So, they slaughtered the Passover lamb for all who had returned from exile, for their fellow-priests and for themselves.

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Saturday, 21 September 2013 : Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Matthew 9 : 9-13

As Jesus moved on from there, He saw a man named Matthew at his seat in the custom-house, and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And Matthew got up and followed Him.

Now it happened, while Jesus was at table in Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners joined Jesus and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, “Why is it that your Master eats with sinners and tax collectors?”

When Jesus heard this, He said, “Healthy people do not need a doctor, but sick people do. Go and find out what this means : What I want is mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”