Saturday

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Saturday, 21 September 2019 : Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Ephesians 4 : 1-7, 11-13

Therefore, I, the prisoner of Christ, invite you, to live the vocation you have received. Be humble, kind, patient and bear with one another in love. Make every effort to keep among you, the unity of spirit, through bonds of peace. Let there be one body, and one Spirit, just as one hope is the goal of your calling by God. One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God, the Father of all, Who is above all, and works through all, and is in all.

But to each of us, divine grace is given, according to the measure of Christ’s gift. As for His gifts, to some, He gave to be Apostles; to others, prophets, or even evangelists; or pastors and teachers. So, He prepared those who belong to Him, for the ministry, in order to build up the Body of Christ, until we are all united, in the same faith and knowledge of the Son of God. Thus, we shall become the perfect Man, upon reaching maturity, and sharing the fullness of Christ.

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Saturday, 14 September 2019 : Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day the whole Universal Church celebrate together the great Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, remembering that moment when the Lord’s one and holy True Cross was discovered in the city of Jerusalem. At that time, just two decades or so after the Edict of Milan in the Year of Our Lord 313, the True Cross was discovered by St. Helena, the Empress Mother of the Roman Empire.

At that time, the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, famous as the Emperor who first adopted the Christian faith for himself and also for the Empire, had finally triumphed over all of his rivals and enemies, having finally reunited the whole Empire under one reign and liberating the whole people of God, communities of Christians who were still persecuted from time to time by the rival rulers of the Emperor Constantine who supported or courted the support of the pagans.

As the Holy Land and the city of Jerusalem was under the control of the rival Emperors, it was then that finally, after the reunification of the whole Empire under the rule of the Emperor Constantine the Great that the whole land knew peace again after decades of continuous strife and conflict. The Christian population in particular finally had a reprieve after almost constant persecution from the very early days of the Church.

The Emperor’s mother, St. Helena, who was already a Christian long before that of her son, went to the Holy Land for pilgrimage, and it was told by tradition that in Jerusalem she discovered three crosses at the place near the site where the historic Crucifixion of the Lord took place when the pagan temples that once stood over the sites were demolished. The three crosses therefore correlated with that of the Lord’s Cross and the two crosses used to crucify the two thieves who were with Him that day.

In order to find out which of the three crosses is the one True Cross of the Lord, St. Helena brought a woman who was suffering from terminal illness, and when she touched one of the three crosses, she was completely healed from her issues, indicating that the one which the woman touched, was the one and holy True Cross. The discovery of the True Cross was not just a very significant event in the whole history of the Church, but it is also a very symbolic event marking the triumph of Christ over that of the enemies of the Church.

And even more so than just merely marking the victory of Christianity over the pagans and their false pagan gods, the gods of the Romans and Greeks and the many other peoples of the Empire, but the Cross of the Lord itself is a powerful and real symbol of victory of mankind against their greatest enemy, that is sin. Sin has always been our great enemy, as sin leads to death and separation from God, the Source of all our lives.

And by His Passion, suffering and death on the Cross, Our Lord Jesus Himself has conquered sin and death. He has been victorious and triumphant in the battle against them, and through Him, all of us mankind have received the assurance of eternal life and salvation. Thus, through the Cross, God has shown His light and a new hope to all of us, as a victorious and conquering sign against all of our enemies and all those who sought our destruction.

When we then look at the Cross again, we must understand the context in how God made use of this humble and simple instrument to be the ultimate weapon and means by which the final victory and triumph against sin would be won. For the Romans who ruled all of Judea and the whole lands around the Mediterranean at that time, the cross was the symbol of ultimate humiliation and fear, as crucifixion was a punishment reserved only to the worst of all criminals, to those who betrayed the state and those who committed unforgivable crimes.

But God converted that symbol of ultimate shame and indeed defeat, into a symbol of ultimate victory, hope and glory, by what He has willingly done in embracing the Cross to be crucified despite Himself being totally blameless and faultless. And in parallel to what we have heard in our first reading today from the Book of Numbers, through the Cross, Christ changed the ultimate symbol of our defeat into the ultimate symbol of victory.

At the time of the Exodus, as recorded in the Book of Numbers, the people of Israel frequently and constantly rebelled against God, in refusing to believe in Him and in rejecting the truth and the laws which He has laid before them. They chose to follow their own selfish paths, worshipping pagan gods and doubting all that they have been shown through Moses. Because of all these disobedience, the people sinned against God.

The fiery serpents sent against them were actually representative of mankind’s sins, our own sins. St. Paul mentioned in one of his Epistles, the Epistle to the Corinthians that ‘the sting of sin is death’, clearly alluding to this moment depicted and recorded in the Book of Numbers, when the fiery serpents bit many of the Israelites and killed them. And then, God asked Moses when the people begged Him for forgiveness, to build a bronze serpent and to place it on a tall pole that everyone might see the bronze serpent and live.

Prior to His Passion, suffering and crucifixion, the Lord Himself had revealed to Nicodemus, one of the Pharisees who was sympathetic to Him, that this was a prelude and prefigurement of the moment of Christ’s Crucifixion. Just as the bronze serpent, representing the fiery serpents that killed the Israelites was raised up high, the Lord told Nicodemus that He Himself would be raised up on the Cross for all to see.

And He, the Sinless and Perfect One, willingly took up all the sins of the world, gathering to Himself all the burdens, the sufferings, the pains and tortures of the sins we should have endured and faced, and took them upon Himself. He lowered Himself such that, while He had done nothing wrong at all, He willingly accept total humiliation and nakedness, total rejection and pain, of being treated less than a human being on the Cross.

It was so painful and terrible to see the suffering Christ on the Cross, that even before He was crucified, as He was carrying His Cross, the women of Jerusalem wailed and wept for Him. All those who saw the Lord at that time would have been terrified and struck with fear and sorrow seeing just how much He has suffered. Yet, that was not the end, as we all know that the death of Christ is not the end of it all.

Instead, by His glorious resurrection on the third day, the Cross, a symbol of the ultimate shame, punishment and sorrow has been transformed into the symbol of ultimate victory and triumph. For at long last, death and therefore sin no longer has the final say over man. The Son of Man and Son of God Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ, has conquered death and rose in glory. And in parallel to what had happened in the time of the Exodus, all those who come to believe in the Lord, will not die but live.

That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us have the Crucifix, the Holy Cross of Our Lord as the centre of our faith as is the Eucharist. For it is by shedding His Blood and Body on the Cross, the Bloody Altar of God’s sacrifice, that He brought unto us the salvation through His death and resurrection by which He defeated death and sin. It was His great and undying love for each and every one of us that has allowed Him to endure the sufferings for our sake.

Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, as we recall the triumphant Cross of Christ, how it was rediscovered by St. Helena and all that the Lord had done in bringing about our salvation through His Cross, all of us as Christians should reflect deep into our own respective lives, in our actions, words and deeds. Have we all loved God just as God has loved us all so much and so unconditionally? Have we devoted ourselves wholeheartedly to Him just as He has done so for us?

In a world today filled with darkness and many uncertainties, temptations and sins, we must hold true to that Cross, the Cross of our hope, the Cross by which the Ultimate Victory has been won by Our God. Let us all not be disheartened but be hopeful and be strong, always fixing our gaze on Him Who has suffered on the Cross. And let us all remember that He suffered because of our sins, every single one of our sins and disobedience.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, are we able to commit ourselves anew to the Lord from now on? Are we able to turn away from being sinful and disobedient against God, in each and every moments of our lives? Are we able to love God ever more unconditionally through our every words, deeds and actions from now on? May the Lord bless us all and continue to guide us in this journey of life, and may He be with us all our days through reminding us of the glory of His triumphant Cross. Amen.

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Saturday, 14 September 2019 : Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

John 3 : 13-17

At that time, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “No one has ever gone up to heaven except the One Who came from heaven, the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.”

“Yes, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him may not be lost, but may have eternal life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world; instead, through Him the world is to be saved.”

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Saturday, 14 September 2019 : Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Psalm 77 : 1-2, 34-35, 36-37, 38

Give heed, o My people, to My teaching; listen to the words of My mouth! I will speak in parables; I will talk of old mysteries.

When He slew them, they repented and sought Him earnestly. They remembered that God was their Rock, the Most High, their Redeemer.

But they flattered Him with their mouths; they lied to Him with their tongues, while their hearts were unfaithful; they were untrue to His Covenant.

Even then, in His compassion, He forgave their offences and did not destroy them. Many a time He restrained His anger, and did not fully stir up His wrath.

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Saturday, 14 September 2019 : Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Numbers 21 : 4b-9

The people were discouraged by the journey and began to complain against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is neither bread nor water here and we are disgusted with this tasteless manna.”

YHVH then sent fiery serpents against them. They bit the people and many of the Israelites died. Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, speaking against YHVH and against you. Plead with YHVH to take the serpents away.”

Moses pleaded for the people and YHVH said to him, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a standard; whoever has been bitten and then looks at it shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a standard. Whenever a man was bitten, he looked towards the bronze serpent and he lived.

Alternative reading

Philippians 2 : 6-11

Though He was in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking on the nature of a servant, made in human likeness, and in His appearance found as a Man.

He humbled Himself by being obedient to death, death on the cross. That is why God exalted Him and gave Him the Name which outshines all names, so that at the Name of Jesus all knees should bend in heaven, on earth and among the dead, and all tongues proclaim that Christ Jesus is the Lord to the glory of God the Father.

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Saturday, 7 September 2019 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of God speaking to us about the need for us to understand fully what God has intended for us through what He has given to us and through what He has done for us all these while. We must not lose focus on what is important just because we are distracted in life by the many temptations and distractions present all around us.

In our Gospel passage today we heard of the encounter and the disagreement between the Lord Jesus and those Pharisees and teachers of the Law who followed Him and questioned Him and His disciples along the way, doubting and refusing to believe in what He has done and in what He has taught the people. And in today’s passage, the focus was on the matter of the Law of the Sabbath.

For the context, the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law were those who preserved the customs and practices of the Law of Israel, educated and intellectual, and also strove to impose strictly the laws and rules of the Law to the people of God. They were very particular on how the rules and the precepts were to be observed and they took great pride in themselves being supposedly the role models for the people that they showed off their piety publicly.

But the Lord pointed out to the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law when they criticised the actions of His disciples which supposedly broke the strict provisions of the Law, in particular the law of the Sabbath when they picked grains of wheat in a field as they were all hungry at that time. The true purpose of the Sabbath law has been forgotten by the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who saw the Sabbath law as merely a letter of law to be obeyed.

In fact, the Sabbath day was meant to be a day kept holy for God, as He Himself revealed in the Ten Commandments, in the third of the ten commandments, ‘Keep holy the day of the Lord’. And the intention of the Sabbath was to remind God’s people that they are truly obliged to spend time for their Lord and Master, and to focus themselves and reorientate themselves from time to time especially when they have been led astray.

The Sabbath day was meant to allow the people to stop themselves from being overly busy and preoccupied, which was easily the case when the people were busy with their daily work, their daily pursuit for worldly glory and power, for fame and influence, for glory and satisfactions of the world, which prevented them from truly being able to focus their attention and hearts on God.

And that is why even in the Church, we have always kept the day of the Lord, the Sundays to be sacred, in the same spirit as how the Sabbath day had been kept sacred. But we must be very clear with the intention and purpose of the rules and regulations pertaining to this because just as the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law had done, they misunderstood that the Sabbath was not meant to restrain the people of God with rules and strict ordinances, but rather to redirect them towards God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all remind ourselves that God truly is the focus and the heart of all of our actions, words and deeds. Let us all not be distracted by other things and by all those obstacles that try to keep us away from God. Let us all turn towards God wholeheartedly from now on and seek to glorify Him through our every actions, and grow ever stronger in our faith and dedication towards Him, each and every days of our lives. Amen.

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Saturday, 7 September 2019 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 6 : 1-5

At that time, one Sabbath Jesus was going through a field of grain, and His disciples began to pick heads of grain, crushing them in their hands for food. Some of the Pharisees asked them, “Why do you do what is forbidden on the Sabbath?”

Then Jesus spoke up and asked them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his men were hungry? He entered the house of God, took and ate the bread of the offering, and even gave some to his men, though only priests are allowed to eat that bread.”

And Jesus added, “The Son of Man is Lord and rules over the Sabbath.”

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Saturday, 7 September 2019 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 53 : 3-4, 6 and 8

By Your Name, o God, save me; You, the Valiant, uphold my cause. Hear my prayer, o God; listen to the words of my mouth.

See, God is my Helper; the Lord upholds my life. Freely will I offer sacrifice to You, and praise Your Name, o YHVH, for it is good.

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Saturday, 7 September 2019 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Colossians 1 : 21-23

You, yourselves, were once estranged, and opposed to God, because of your evil deeds, but now, God has reconciled you, in the human body of His Son, through His death, so that you may be without fault, holy and blameless before Him.

Only stand firm upon the foundation of your faith, and be steadfast in hope. Keep in mind the Gospel you have heard, which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

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Saturday, 31 August 2019 : 21st Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

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

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day the Lord continues to remind us all through the words of the Sacred Scriptures of the need for us to be truly faithful to Him, not just by formality or by empty faith, but through genuine commitment and dedication, through our very actions and deeds, our efforts and all that we do in our daily living that we are truly being faithful to God in all things.

In our Gospel passage today, the Lord spoke of the parable of the silver talents in which He spoke of a master who entrusted part of his properties to his servants, giving them varying amounts of silver talents to be made use of and invested so that when he returned from his travel abroad, he could gain back the investment with much returns from the efforts of his servants.

And we saw how the servants who were given five and two silver talents each made use of the wealth entrusted to them and invested them until their master’s return, when they could return him the original five and two silver talents and doubled the original investment. The master was pleased and entrusted them with even more things. And the servant who had one silver talent and hid his silver talent was rebuked by the master for his laziness and unwillingness to make use of his entrusted wealth.

What is the significance of all of these, brothers and sisters in Christ? The silver talents in fact represent the many gifts, talents, abilities, blessings and wonders that God had granted to us all mankind, each one of us having been given unique gifts from God. But many of us have not realised or appreciated these wonderful gifts and in fact many of us even made use of the gifts and blessings in the wrong way.

Take for example the many sufferings present in our world today. Many of us suffer because we have misused the gifts and the talents we have received, in order to satisfy our own selfish desires, our own greed and wants for more of this world’s goods and temptations. Those with power and wealth, influence and achievements became greedy and filled with desire for more of what they already have, and instead of doing what the Lord has asked them to do, they chose to follow their own way, much like what the lazy servant had done.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we must be aware that as Christians, meaning as those whom the Lord had called to be His own and that by our faith we have taken Him as Our Lord and Saviour, we have been entrusted by God with responsibilities and duties over His creation, that is over this world in various capacities. Each and every one of us are stewards of God’s creation, and at the same time we are also charged with the care of one another, our fellow brothers and sisters in faith.

Are we able then to live our lives with good responsibility in our every actions, words and deeds then, brothers and sisters in Christ? Are we able to put our effort to be exemplary in our respective capacities and callings in life, and do whatever we can within our power and ability to serve God to the best of our abilities, and do all within our power to bring greater glory to God and to serve Him with love.

Let us all be true and devout Christians from now on, and be inspiration for one another in how we live our faith life. May the Lord continue to guide us through this journey of life, and may He strengthen our resolve and give us the courage and perseverance to endure the difficult challenges we may face, the many temptations that we have to endure, and may He bless all of our good endeavours and works for the greater glory of His Name. Amen.