Saturday

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Saturday, 8 February 2020 : 4th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani, and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints, Holy Virgins or Saturday Mass of Our Lady)

Mark 6 : 30-34

At that time, the Apostles returned and reported to Jesus all they had done and taught. Then He said to them, “Let us go off by ourselves into a remote place and have some rest.” For there were so many people coming and going that the Apostles had no time even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a secluded area by themselves.

But people saw them leaving, and many could guess where they were going. So, from all the towns, they hurried there on foot, arriving ahead of them. As Jesus went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and He had compassion on them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd. And He began to teach them many things.

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Saturday, 8 February 2020 : 4th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani, and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints, Holy Virgins or Saturday Mass of Our Lady)

Psalm 118 : 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

How can young people remain pure? By living according to Your word.

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

In my heart I have kept Your word, that I may not sin against my YHVH.

Praise to You, o YHVH; instruct me in Your statutes.

That, with my lips, I may declare all Your spoken decrees.

I delight in following Your laws, more so than in all riches.

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Saturday, 8 February 2020 : 4th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani, and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints, Holy Virgins or Saturday Mass of Our Lady)

1 Kings 3 : 4-13

The king used to sacrifice at Gibeon, the great high place; on the altar there he had offered a thousand burnt offerings. It was in Gibeon, during the night, that YHVH appeared to Solomon in a dream and said, “Ask what you want Me to give you.”

Solomon answered, “You have shown Your servant David my father a great and steadfast love because he served You faithfully and was righteous and sincere towards You. You have given him proof of Your steadfast love in making a son of his sit on his throne this day.”

“And now, o YHVH my God, You have made Your servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a young boy who does not know how to undertake anything. Meantime, Your servant is in the midst of Your people whom You have chosen – a people so great that they can neither be numbered nor counted.”

“Give me, therefore, an understanding mind in governing Your people that I may discern between good and evil. For who is able to govern this multitude of people of Yours?”

YHVH was pleased that Solomon had made this request. And He told him, “Because you have requested this rather than long life or wealth or even vengeance on your enemies; indeed, because you have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I shall grant you your request. I now give you a wise and discerning mind such as no one has had before you nor anyone after you shall ever have.”

“I will also give you what you have not asked for, both wealth and fame; and no king shall be your equal during your lifetime.”

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Saturday, 1 February 2020 : 3rd Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we continue the discourse on the actions of king David of Israel when committed sin against God by his desire and lust for someone else’s wife, in this case Bathsheba the wife of Uriah the Hittite. David and Bathsheba succumbed to temptations and ended up with Bathsheba getting pregnant, and David tried to cover up the affair by making Uriah sleep with his wife. But when the upright and just Uriah refused to do so, David panicked and ended up plotting Uriah’s death in battle.

The prophet Nathan came to David and went through with him today the faults that he had done before God and men alike. Initially king David did not realise that when the prophet Nathan used a parable to explain, that he was actually referring to David’s unjust actions towards Uriah, in taking what was not his in the first place and instance, namely Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah as David’s own wife after Uriah was killed in battle.

David trusted his own instincts and ways of settling things in that matter rather than trusting in God or following His commandments. He succumbed to the temptation of desire and lust, allowing Satan to rock his righteous and just life, and ended up causing the death of an innocent man and a relationship that was essentially adultery in the eyes of God and the Law. But David then immediately regretted his actions once his eyes were opened by what the prophet Nathan shared with him, the blatant truth of his wicked and dark actions.

The firstborn son of that relationship between David and Bathsheba did die as the just retribution for David’s sinful action, but his genuine repentance in humbling himself totally before God and all of his people, as he fasted and humbled himself in sackcloth for God’s mercy, and accentuated in the Psalm we used today, which was composed by king David himself at precisely that moment when he felt the great regret over his terrible sins. But he also entrusted himself to God’s compassionate love and mercy.

He trusted that God has the power to overcome his sins and wickedness, by the grace of His mercy and forgiveness. And thus, while today we are presented with the unfortunate story of how the righteous and good king David fell into temptation and sin, but we are also reminded that in truth all of us are just like him. We are all sinners just like king David, easily tempted and vulnerable to sin. If we are dependent only on ourselves and only on our own strength as what king David foolishly did at that time, we are likely to fall.

It is what we can also learn from our Gospel passage today where we heard of the story of the moment when the disciples of the Lord were afraid that their boat would sink because of the fierce storm, the gale force winds and the huge waves that threatened to overcome them. This was because they did not have firm faith in God, Who was with them and Jesus Himself showed them that they had nothing to fear and really ought to have more faith in Him.

The boat also symbolically represent us all in the Church as the Church is often likened to that of a boat, with all of us the faithful people of God, the members of the Church as the passengers of the boat, travelling through the often rough waters representing the trials and challenges that are often found in our world. And the Lord, our God, is our Guide and our Navigator, in Whom we really ought to trust. No matter what happened, He has authority and control, as the disciples themselves said, ‘even the wind and the sea obey Him’.

If we panic and turn to drastic actions, depending on our own judgments and strengths, as king David experienced during his time when he sinned against God as mentioned earlier on, we will end up bringing ourselves further and further afflicted and in difficulty. We will end up getting trapped by the situation and by our own actions, dragging us down further and deeper into the dangerous trap of sin.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, the important lesson that each and every one of us must heed today is to trust in the Lord more and allow Him to guide us in life. If we have erred as king David had done, then we must not be afraid to seek God’s forgiveness and mercy, but with a sincere desire to repent and turn away from our sinfulness, that God will truly forgive us and lead us towards the fullness of His grace and love. And we need to make this conscious decision to commit ourselves to God, at each and every moments of our lives.

May the Lord be our Guide and may He strengthen us all in our resolve to be faithful to Him and to do everything we can to remain true to Him. Let us live our lives from now on with God at the centre of our lives and existence, no longer allowing our many desires and all the temptations present in our lives from confusing us and leading us astray. May God be with us always and strengthen our faith, now and always. Amen.

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Saturday, 1 February 2020 : 3rd Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Mark 4 : 35-41

At that time, on that same day, when evening had come, Jesus said to His disciples, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” So they left the crowd, and took Him along in the boat He had been sitting in, and other boats set out with Him. Then a storm gathered and it began to blow a gale. The waves spilled over into the boat, so that it was soon filled with water. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.

They woke Him up, and said, “Master, do You not care if we drown?” And rising up, Jesus rebuked the wind, and ordered the sea, “Quiet now! Be still!” The wind dropped, and there was a great calm. Then Jesus said to them, “Why are you so frightened? Do you still have no faith?”

But they were terrified, and they said to one another, “Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey Him!”

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Saturday, 1 February 2020 : 3rd Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 50 : 12-13, 14-15, 16-17

Create in me, o God, a pure heart; give me a new and steadfast spirit. Do not cast me out of Your presence nor take Your Holy Spirit from me.

Give me again, the joy of Your salvation; and sustain me, with a willing spirit. Then I will show wrongdoers Your ways and sinners will return to You.

Deliver me, o God, from the guilt of blood; and of Your justice, I shall sing aloud. O YHVH, open my lips, and I will declare Your praise.

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Saturday, 1 February 2020 : 3rd Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

2 Samuel 12 : 1-7a, 10-17

So YHVH sent the prophet Nathan to David. Nathan went to the king and said to him, “There were two men in a city : one was rich; the other, poor. The rich man had many sheep and cattle, but the poor man had only one little ewe lamb he had bought. He himself fed it and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and slept on his lap. It was like a daughter to him.”

“Now a traveller came to the rich man, but he would not take from his own flock or herd to prepare food for the traveller. Instead, he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared that for his visitor.”

David was furious because of this man and told Nathan, “As YHVH lives, the man who has done this deserves death! He must return the lamb fourfold for acting like this and showing no compassion.” Nathan said to David, “You are this man! Now the sword will never be far from your family because you have despised me and taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite for yourself.”

“Thus says YHVH : Your misfortune will rise from your own house! I will take your wives from you and give them to your neighbour who shall lie with them in broad daylight. What you did was done secretly, but what I do will be done before Israel in broad daylight.”

David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against YHVH.” Nathan answered him, “YHVH has forgiven your sin; you shall not die. However, because you have dared to despise YHVH by doing such a thing, the child that is born of you shall die.” Then Nathan went to his home.

YHVH struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and the child became very ill. David entreated God for the child. He kept a strict fast and lay on the ground the whole night. The elders of his house asked him to rise from the ground but he refused. Nor did he join them to eat.

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Saturday, 25 January 2020 : Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate a great feast in the Church as we recall the important moment when the Lord called St. Paul, then known as Saul, a young and zealous Pharisee who had once been a great enemy of the Church and the faithful. Saul was very adamant on hunting all the followers of Christ and strove to put them all into prison, and approved even their killing as what has happened to St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Church.

Saul was in the midst of this zealous pursuit when he went to Damascus in trying to eradicate all the faithful people of God who had taken refuge and lived there. The fact that Saul was even willing to venture far outside the land of Judah and even Galilee, was a testament to just how persistent he was in trying to destroy the Church and the Christian faith. Or so he thought, as in the end, he never managed to fulfil what he had planned and wanted.

As we heard in our first reading today, when Saul was still on his way to Damascus, God appeared to him in a great vision in which He revealed Himself to Saul as the One Whom he has been persecuting all the while when he was on a misguided rampage and attack against those who followed the Lord. Saul must have certainly been struck by that experience, and he was also struck blind by that vision.

We heard how Saul had to be helped and assisted, as his whole world turned into darkness for three days without being able to do anything at all. But God then sent Ananias to heal Saul, and after Ananias prayed over him, Saul was healed and received baptism in the Name of the Lord. This was a very significant moment in the history of the Church as the one who used to be a great enemy and persecutor of the Church had in a short moment become its greatest defender instead.

Saul had been called by God and had a moment of great revelation which entirely changed his life and direction. What he had once firmly believed in and championed in defending the purity of the Jewish customs, tradition and faith against the then thought to be ‘heretical’ teachings of Jesus Christ, had instead been overturned completely and the truth was revealed to him that in fact Jesus was the One Who had been right all along.

In the end, Saul became a Christian and as we can see throughout most of the Acts of the Apostles, he became a great champion of the Christian faith. He was known as the Apostle to the Gentiles, through his tireless and extensive missionary journeys throughout the Mediterranean and in his visits to the many communities of the faithful at that time. He also wrote and communicated extensively with those communities by letters, many of which are preserved in our New Testament.

Saul took up the name Paul eventually as a very symbolic act of total conversion as he left behind completely his past life as an enemy of Christ and His followers and embarked on a journey of total devotion to God, suffering so many trials and tribulations, rejected by many and were almost stoned to death and killed on more than one occasion, because he served the Lord and did nothing else than to glorify God.

We have heard and known of how remarkable this conversion that had happened to Saul, becoming St. Paul and had a complete turnover in his life, called to serve God from being a great sinner and enemy of the Lord’s faithful. But what is the real significance for us? How does this real life story of the conversion of St. Paul has to do with us? And the answer is that all of us are just like St. Paul in one way or another.

We must all understand that every single one of us are sinners, and God sees us all equally and we are all the same and equal before Him. He is not prejudiced at all with us, regardless whether we have the greater or lesser sins. In the end, sins, no matter how great or small, significant or insignificant, are still sins that we need to be forgiven from by God. And because we are all sinners, we all need God’s healing and mercy, which He will readily extend and give to us.

If God Himself has called Saul, a great sinner and someone who had caused so much suffering and misery in the lives of many of the early Christians, it means that He must have forgiven him completely and did not take his many sins into account after he had had a change of heart and mind. Through baptism, Saul had been reborn into new life that God has called him into, the new Christian life that he dedicated himself, as Paul from then on. Then, all of us too have been called by God to follow the example of St. Paul.

We must not despise or judge anyone just because we think that we are better than them in any way, especially with regards to sin. If a very terrible sinner like Saul could change and be converted, then so can the worst of sinners as long as they are willing to open their hearts and minds to allow God to enter into their lives and transform them as He once did with Saul. And before we judge or be prejudiced against anyone, we should first look at ourselves.

In this Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, all of us are also called by God to reflect on the conversion of this great saint so as to emulate it in our own respective lives. If we have not been faithful to God, if we have forgotten about Him in the midst of our very busy life schedules and works, if we have abandoned Him and preferred something else to Him, not being thankful to Him for all the love and care that He has shown us, and if we have been being angry at Him just because we thought that He did not listen to our prayers, then I am sure that we need this time to contemplate.

I am certain that each and every one of us, being sinner and imperfect, need God’s healing grace and mercy. But we often closed our hearts and minds against Him that we ended up acting as how Saul once acted in the years of his youth, zealous and very energetic but completely misguided and misled by blind faith and blind obedience. In the same manner, we have often acted out of disobedience and we fell into sin because we prefer to follow our own ways and disregard God’s will.

All of that led us to be lost and separated from God. We must realise that there are still lots of temptations and forces out there trying to keep us away from God and His salvation. Are we then able to commit ourselves to the Lord in the same manner as St. Paul has committed his? He has shown us what it truly means by a genuine conversion, that his whole life was changed for the greater glory of God as he lived for the sole purpose of glorifying God from the moment of his conversion.

How about us, brothers and sisters in Christ? Are we willing to allow God to transform us as well? Are we able to go through a genuine and wholehearted conversion in life, changing our attitude from now on? If we have been lukewarm in our faith, may we be more faithful from now on and love God more. And if we have been distant from God, let us all strive to be closer to Him and to renew our relationships with Him. If we have been sinful all these while, let us all sin no more and seek to live our lives from now with faith.

May the Lord, through the intercession of His Apostle St. Paul, continue to bless us all and guide us in our respective journeys in life. May He strengthen us all and empower each and every one of us to live ever more faithfully in His presence. May God be with us all, now and always. Amen.

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Saturday, 25 January 2020 : Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Mark 16 : 15-18

At that time, Jesus told His disciples, “Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News to all creation. The one who believes and is baptised will be saved; the one who refuses to believe will be condemned.”

“Signs like these will accompany those who have believed : in My Name they will cast out demons and speak new languages; they will pick up snakes, and if they drink anything poisonous, they will be unharmed; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will be healed.”

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Saturday, 25 January 2020 : Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 116 : 1, 2

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

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