Saints

by

Saturday, 5 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Anthony Zaccaria, Priest (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests or Saturday Mass of our Lady)

Amos 9 : 11-15

“On that day I shall restore the fallen hut of David and wall up its breaches and raise its ruined walls and so build it as in days of old. They shall conquer the remnant of Edom and the neighbouring nations upon which My Name has been called.” Thus says YHVH, the One who will do this.

YHVH says also, “The days are coming when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes overtake the sower. The mountains shall drip sweet wine and all the hills shall melt. I shall bring back the exiles of My people Israel; they will rebuild the desolate cities and dwell in them.”

“They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will have orchards and eat their fruit. I shall plant them in their own country and they shall never again be rooted up from the land which I have given them,” says YHVH your God.

by

Friday, 4 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard about the story of the calling of Matthew or Levi by Jesus to be one of His Apostles, and we also heard how the Lord will punish those who are wicked and carry on with their wicked lives at the expense of others. These two stories remind us how important it is for us to seek God’s mercy and to be converted to the true faith in God, and to turn away decisively from our old lives of wickedness into new lives in truth and righteousness.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord is loving and merciful to all of His children, but He does not want us to sin, and He hates sin in all of its forms, some of which examples had been highlighted in the first reading today, namely the actions of those who does not have the Lord in their hearts and the wicked things that they did in cheating others for their own self benefits. The lack of fairness, justice and many other acts that are indeed in violation of the Lord and His truths.

The essence of today’s readings can truly be summarised to the two words that Jesus spoke to Matthew as he was seated at his tax-house, that is ‘Follow Me!’, the desire that God has for all of us, which is to abandon our sinfulness and our obstinate behaviours in resisting His love, and to follow Him faithfully till the end of our lives, as Matthew and the other Apostles and saints had done.

We need to be like Matthew, who did not hesitate to leave all the wealth and worldly happiness that he had, and immediately harkened to the words of the Lord, following Him without condition and without qualms. He left behind all his position could offer him, and all the wealth that his job could have given him, and in doing so, he lost the treasure of this world but gain the treasure of the world that is to come, and this treasure he will never lose.

The first reading indeed warns us that we mankind are easily tempted and swayed by the pleasures and goodness of this world, so that we forget our real purpose in this world and fall into the trick and trap of Satan. What os our real purpose, brothers and sisters in Christ? That is to love and glorify our Lord and God, instead of what many of us are doing now, to love ourselves and seek material wealth and worldly glory, as well as human praise.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the feast day of St. Elizabeth of Portugal also known as St. Elizabeth of Aragon, the Queen consort of Portugal during the high Medieval era Europe. She was truly renowned for her zeal and great piety in life, both before and after becoming the Queen of Portugal. She came from quite a religious family and many of her relatives had already been made saints in their own right.

But what truly set St. Elizabeth of Portugal from her contemporaries was truly how she led a faithful and devoted life to God, shorn of the hunger and greed for pride, human praise and glory, and rather, she lived humbly and with full of love for one another, and for those less fortunate and weak in the society. She inspired many others by her lifestyle and actions, making peace when there were wars, donating food and help to those who were affected by famine and diseases, and many other acts that truly set her apart as a holy woman and an inspiration for the faithful.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, she worked so hard and was eventually overcome by her exertion and sickness. But even as she passed from this life into the eternal life with God, she continued to work her wonders, through the miracles that happened at her tomb, and through her works and inspirations that brought so many people back to the Church and returned so many to their zealous ways before God.

We can all follow her life examples, and aspire to be like her as well. We must be more true and devoted to our faith in the Lord, more than ever before. How do we do so? By following what St. Elizabeth of Portugal had done. Be loving and forgiving to others around us, be charitable to the weak and the needy, and by not thinking and worrying only about ourselves and keeping our ego. Be open, brothers and sisters in Christ! Let everyone and all of us together enjoy the love of God through the doors of our hearts, open wide in acceptance of one another as brethren in Christ.

May Almighty God, through the intercession of St. Elizabeth of Portugal, continue to instill in us, within our hearts the love both for God Himself and for mankind, especially those who are in most need for our help. Amen.

by

Friday, 4 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

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.”

by

Friday, 4 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

Psalm 118 : 2, 10, 20, 30, 40, 131

Blessed are they who treasure His word and seek Him with all their heart.

I seek You with my whole heart; let me not stray from Your commands.

My soul is consumed with desire for Your ordinances at all times.

I have chosen the way of truth; I have set my heart upon Your laws.

Oh, how I long for Your precepts! Renew my life in Your righteousness.

I gasp in ardent yearning for Your commandments that I love.

by

Friday, 4 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

Amos 8 : 4-6, 9-12

Hear this, you who trample on the needy to do away with the weak of the land. You who say, “When will the new moon or the sabbath feast be over that we may open the store and sell our grain? Let us lower the measure and raise the price; let us cheat and tamper with the scales, and even sell the refuse with the whole grain. We will buy up the poor for money and the needy for a pair of sandals.”

YHVH says, “On that day I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your festivals into mourning and all your singing into wailing. Everyone will mourn, covered with sackcloth and every head will be shaved. I will make them mourn as for an only son and bring their day to a bitter end.”

YHVH says, “Days are coming when I will send famine upon the land, not hunger for bread or thirst for water, but for hearing the word of YHVH. Men will stagger from sea to sea, wander to and fro, from north to east, searching for the word of YHVH, but they will not find it.”

by

Thursday, 3 July 2014 : Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the feast of one of the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is St. Thomas, also known as the Twin and famously also as St. Thomas the doubter, the one whom we know in the Gospels to be the one who doubted that the Lord had risen from the dead after His Resurrection and after He had shown Himself to the Apostles except to St. Thomas, who was not with the others on that day.

And St. Thomas also voiced out openly his doubt when Jesus announced His intention to travel to Jerusalem for the last time, when He would eventually face His Passion and death, before the aforementioned Resurrection from the dead, which St. Thomas had no faith in. St. Thomas said to the other disciples, that they would go unto their death with Jesus together as they went to Jerusalem, in his own words, ‘Let us go and die together with Him.’

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this attitude which St. Thomas exhibited is truly common in our Church, and among all of us. It is easy for us to condemn others for their lack of faith, but we often fail to realise that in each one of us, we have our own ‘Thomases’ dwelling in us, and we often exhibited actions and behaviours that marks us as no better than little Thomases.

How often in our lives is it that we have so much on our hands and on our minds that we forget about God and about His existence? How often in our lives is it that we are angry at God for apparently not being there for us and accuse Him of abandoning us and ignoring us? And how many of us actually give thanks to God for His kindness and blessings in our lives, be it in big or small things? If we have done all these, or forgetting to do what is due to God, then we are just like Thomas the doubter.

But the quality of the faith that was in Thomas, was that he believed and repented his previous transgressions immediately once the Lord showed Himself to him in the fullness of His Risen glory. Thomas believed when he had seen and heard the Lord in person, to which Jesus kindly commented that, indeed that is good, but He said that how much better it would be if he had not doubted at the first place, that even without seeing the Lord, Thomas had believed.

We who believe in Jesus today, without witnessing directly the events of His life, death and resurrection are truly blessed indeed, because we believe without the need to witness directly the Lord and His majesty. But are we truly free from doubt and moments of weakness in our faith and devotion to the Lord? More often than not, this is not the case. In our lives, as history had often shown, mankind had succumbed too many times to doubt, especially in God’s providence and saving help, and came to rely on their own strength and ended up in darkness.

This is what we need to avoid, brethren, in each and every one of us. We should support each other to awaken the faith within us, that we are to have genuine faith in the Lord, one not based on blind obedience or lack of awareness of the Lord, but on the genuine faith that arise from the hearts of men. We need to follow in the example of St. Thomas and do even better than that.

Let us realise that the Lord is present, real and concrete, in the world around us through His love for us. Let us realise how much God truly cares for us, and let us doubt no longer but believe truthfully and completely place our trust in God. May we all be able to grow stronger in faith, hope and love, and make this world a truly better place for all the faithful ones in God. God bless us all. Amen.

by

Thursday, 3 July 2014 : Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

John 20 : 24-29

Thomas, the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he replied, “Until I have seen in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in His side, I will not believe.”

Eight days later, the disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them. Despite the locked doors Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you!” Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see My hands; stretch out your hand, and put it into My side. Do not be an unbeliever! Believe!”

Thomas then said, “You are my Lord and my God.” Jesus replied, “You believe because you see Me, do you not? Happy are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

by

Thursday, 3 July 2014 : Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Psalm 116 : 1, 2

Alleluia! Praise the Lord, all you nations; all you peoples, praise Him.

How great is His love for us! His faithfulness lasts forever.

by

Thursday, 3 July 2014 : Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Ephesians 2 : 19-22

Now you are no longer strangers or guests, but fellow citizens of the holy people : you are of the household of God. You are the house whose foundations are the apostles and prophets, and whose cornerstone is Christ Jesus.

In Him the whole structure is joined together and rises to be a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you too are being built to become the spiritual sanctuary of God.

by

Wednesday, 2 July 2014 : 13th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we clearly heard the account of how Jesus rebuked and cast out the demons at Gadara from two men, that the Lord is good, and as perfect goodness that He is, He is the antithesis and opposite side of evil and all forms of sin. And therefore, we too, as the children of God and His beloved ones, have our clear-cut obligations, to shun and be free from all forms of evil in sin.

There can be no compromise to sin and evil, and we should not delude ourselves by thinking that we can get cordial and friendly with the devil and all of his persuasions, and end up falling into sin and thus condemnation. We cannot be children of both God and Satan, and as Jesus had taught His disciples, we can neither be servant of both God and money. We cannot therefore be servant of both good and evil, and either we will be attracted in the end to either one or we will totally hate the other in the end, as our Lord had taught us.

This however, does not mean that we should hate and shun sinners and those who had committed grievous errors before God and mankind. Remember the saying, hate the sin but not the sinner? This is exactly the case, as we must hate and avoid the evils in the works of sin, but we must never hate the person, who has the capacity to do both good or evil. We must instead embrace and welcome them into the Lord and His love through us, that we may help each other to escape the clutches of sin.

We must work together to live holy and worthily of God, and avoid blaming or being prejudiced against anyone on the basis of their sinfulness, for we ourselves are sinners, no matter how small or big our sins are. God is merciful and loving, but He also hates sin, and sin no matter how big or small, has no place in His presence. That is why we believe those who had died righteously in the faith but still were tainted by some venial or non-mortal sins, go through the fires of purgatory to cleanse themselves from those sins before they are admitted into heaven.

Sin, brothers and sisters, is the root of all evil, and if we expose ourselves willingly to sin, we will open the doors of our hearts to all forms of evil, corrupting them for the purpose of Satan, and keep us away from the love of God. And ever since our forefathers listened to the words of Satan to disobey the Lord, we have been prone and weak towards the corrupting nature of sin. Mankind are therefore predisposed to sin, and if we do not make the active effort to avoid committing sin, we will likely commit one before God and men.

And Satan is growing in his power and in his cunningness, in his plethora of means and arsenal of things he can utilise against us, through his agents and his hands in this world. Mankind has grown accustomed to the pleasures and the growing comfort in this world, and it is through this that Satan decided to strike against men, leading them to sin by turning them towards the path of desire and greed.

Our world today is rife with individualism, egoistic and materialistic behaviour. Yes, these behaviours are prone to sin, and in our world today, we can see the direct impact, in how money and material possessions are chased after by many who seek to have more and more of them, and sadly often with disregard to the plight of others, and we even often seek to gain more, at the expense of others around us.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we need to commit ourselves to a new life. Yes, a new life that is no longer based on sin and human desire, and instead based on love, justice and peace, namely a life that is based on God and on His principles and laws. Let us together help one another to reject sin and all the sinful ways of this world, and from now on resolve to love and lead a righteous life as the Lord had taught us.

May we all be truly children of God, and be like Him in all of our actions, words and deeds. May He guide us in our ways and lead us to Him, that we may be purified and absolved of our sinfulness, and emerge from the darkness of our world into a blissful life in the light. God bless us all. Amen.