Scripture

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Thursday, 11 April 2013 : 2nd Week of Easter, Memorial of St. Stanislas, Bishop and Martyr (Gospel Reading)

John 3 : 31-36

He who comes from above is above all; He who comes from the earth belongs to the earth, and His word belongs to the earth. He who comes from heaven speaks of the things He has seen and heard; He bears witness to these things, but no one accepts His testimony. Whoever does receive His testimony acknowledges the truthfulness of God.

The one sent by God speaks God’s words, and gives the Spirit unstintingly. The Father loves the Son and has entrusted everything into His hands. Whoever believes in the Son lives with eternal life; but He who will not believe in the Son will never know life, and always faces the justice of God.

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Thursday, 11 April 2013 : 2nd Week of Easter, Memorial of St. Stanislas, Bishop and Martyr (Psalm)

Psalm 33 : 2 and 9, 17-18, 19-20

I will bless the Lord all my days; His praise will be ever on my lips. Oh, see and taste the goodness of the Lord! Blessed is the one who finds shelter in Him!

But His face is set against the wicked, to destroy their memory from the earth. The Lord hears the cry of the righteous and rescues them from all their troubles.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves the distraught. Many are the troubles of the just, but the Lord delivers them from all.

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Thursday, 11 April 2013 : 2nd Week of Easter, Memorial of St. Stanislas, Bishop and Martyr (First Reading)

Acts 5 : 27-33

So they brought them in and make them stand before the Council and the High Priest questioned them, “We gave you strict orders not to preach such a Saviour, but you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you intend charging us with the killing of this Man.” To this Peter and the apostles replied, “Better for us to obey God rather than any human authority!”

“The God of our ancestors raised Jesus whom you killed by hanging Him on a wooden post. God set Him at His right hand as Leader and Saviour, to grant repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. We are witnesses to all these things, as well as the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him.”

When the Council heard this, they became very angry and wanted to kill them.

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Wednesday, 10 April 2013 : 2nd Week of Easter (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today in the Gospel reading, we heard the passage which many of us surely knew very well, that shows the degree of the love our God had shown us, that in His infinite love and mercy, He sent down to us a helper, a salvation, none other than His own Son, part of His Godhood, Jesus Christ, to be our Messiah and Saviour.

Yet, even though God loves us so much to this extent of allowing His only Son to descend to this world as a humble man as we are, and even unto death, persecuted and condemned by His own people, the Jewish people, God did not back down, and continued with the plan of salvation. On the hill of calvary, on that fateful day, when Christ was crucified, lifted high between the heavens and the earth, He completed the plan of salvation and snatched the final victory from the evil one.

But sadly, many still reject the words of our Saviour and His teachings, which He passed to the apostles, and from them to us through our priests and bishops who are their successors. The opposition to Christ was evident in the first reading that we heard today, on the capture and arrest of the disciples when they taught in the Temple on the truth about Christ and our salvation in His Resurrection.

The chief priests and the Sadducees represented the very words mentioned in the psalm, that despite the light sent by God to us, through Christ our Lord, who is indeed the Light of the world, many people still live in darkness, and prefer darkness to light. They preferred the entitlements and enticements made by the evil one, who offered them worldly glory, wealth, and honour, that in gaining these, they rejected Christ who is the true font of glory, honour, and salvation.

Even in our own world today, many people hate Christ, and hate the truth that He had brought upon us. They prefer to be mastered by the devil, and rejected the offer of eternal life that Christ had offered, for the sake of temporal enjoyment and temptations that this world has to offer them. Not only content on corrupting them, but the evil one is always at work, and they even entice many against those who believe in Christ, and ridicule us for our faith in God.

But fear not, dear brothers and sisters in Christ! For remember that the Lord is always with us, and He will always protect us from harm. Remember that in the first reading, we were told that the disciples were aided by God through the angels who released them from their captivity, that they can continue to work the mission God had entrusted to them.

Let us therefore, today, pray for our brethren in faith, who risked themselves and even their lives for the sake of the Gospel, and for the sake of our God. May God be with them and protect them against harm and the devices of the evil one. And may we also grow strong and courageous in our own faith, that we too can follow the footsteps of the apostles, in delivering the Good News of our Lord to all mankind, without fear, especially of the evil one. Amen.

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Wednesday, 10 April 2013 : 2nd Week of Easter (Gospel Reading)

John 3 : 16-21

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. Whoever believes in Him will not be condemned. He who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the Name of the only Son of God.

This is how the Judgment is made : Light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For whoever does wrong hates the light, and doesn’t come to the light, for fear that his deeds will be seen as evil. But whoever lives according to the truth comes into the light, so that it can be clearly seen that his works have been done in God.

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Wednesday, 10 April 2013 : 2nd Week of Easter (Psalm)

Psalm 33 : 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9

I will bless the Lord all my days; His praise will be ever on my lips. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the lowly hear and rejoice.

Oh, let us magnify the Lord, together let us glorify His Name! I sought the Lord, and He answered me; from all my fears He delivered me.

They who look to Him are radiant with joy, their faces never clouded with shame. When the poor cry out, the Lord hears and saves them from distress.

The Lord’s angel encamps and patrols to keep safe those who fear Him. Oh, see and taste the goodness of the Lord! Blessed is the one who finds shelter in Him!

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Wednesday, 10 April 2013 : 2nd Week of Easter (First Reading)

Acts 5 : 17-26

The High Priest and all his supporters, that is the party of the Sadducees, became very jealous of the apostles; so they arrested them and had them thrown into the public jail. But an angel of the Lord opened the door of the prison during the night, brought them out, and said to them, “Go and stand in the Temple court and tell people the whole of this living message.”

Accordingly they entered the Temple at dawn and resumed their teaching. When the High Priest and his supporters arrived, they called together the Sanhedrin, that is the full Council of the elders of Israel. They sent word to the jail to have the prisoners brought in. But when the Temple guards arrived at the jail, they did not find them inside, so they returned with the news, “We found the prison securely locked and the prison guards at their post outside the gate, but when we opened the gate, we found no one inside.”

Upon hearing these words, the captain of the Temple guard and the high priests were baffled, wondering where all of this would end. Just then someone arrived with the report, “Look, those men whom you put in prison are standing in the Temple, teaching the people.”

Then the captain went off with the guards and brought them back, but without any show of force, for fear of being stoned by the people.

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Tuesday, 9 April 2013 : 2nd Week of Easter (Scripture Reflection)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as Christ had mentioned to Nicodemus, that all of us have to first believe in the teachings and testimonies of Christ, which we can read and see in the Bible and the Gospels, before we can indeed believe in the mysteries surrounding Christ and the tale of salvation. How can we believe that Christ is divine, and is our Lord, the Son of God, if we do not first believe in the teachings He had given to us through the Apostles, and through them, the Scriptures we are reading today?

Yes, indeed, we have to be born again in Christ, as He also mentioned to Nicodemus even earlier. But be careful, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, that we do not fall into the falsehoods of some who assumed that they are better than the Apostles and the holy fathers of our faith, that is the early fathers of the Church, who established the sacred Doctrine and Traditions of the Church, through which the teachings of our Lord and His words are made easier for us to understand through explanations made by these fathers of our faith, and of course with the help of the Apostles and the evangelists who wrote the Gospels and those who witnessed the Lord and His actions firsthand.

For there are those who call themselves ‘Born-again’ ‘Christians’ who allege that all Christians must be ‘born again’ in order to be saved. They allege that there is a need for a kind of baptism, to be ‘immersed’ that people can then be ‘born again’ and therefore be saved. This kind of teaching ran contrary to the teachings of the Church and the holy Apostles, being aberration born out of ignorance and literal self-interpretation of the Holy Gospels and the Bible. For indeed, while it is important to read the Scripture and discern its meaning, we must never do so without any guidance from competent authorities, otherwise we are risking making the wrong interpretations and having the wrong ideas and approach to our faith.

In the first reading, we read how every early Christians share their possessions and their belongings for the good of one another, and in this way, indeed we can see that our faith is not merely personal faith, another facet of faith that the aberrant ‘Christians’ like to stress, that is to be ‘reborn again in Christ and have PERSONAL relationship with Christ that they can be saved’. Yes, indeed, it is important to have such a personal relationship with Christ, that is the closeness we have between ourselves and Christ our Lord, but we have to always remember that our faith that is personal is not enough, for our faith is as much communal as it is personal, and it is the communal faith that we have as a community of believers in the Church that makes our faith in the Lord perfect and complete.

In this sharing too, the early Christians also showed to us the true value of love and communality, that they share with one another their goods and their possessions, and that rid of the endless desires of man to haul in more possessions for themselves, and rid of greed, they truly practice the teachings of Christ to love one another. This is in fact the meaning of true communism, removed from the taints of Karl Marx and his twisted form of communism, and the ideologies espoused by those who followed after him. We must not be confused between this twisted communism and the true communism as practised by the early Christians.

Love one another, take care of your fellow neighbours, and follow our Lord, through His commandments and His teachings. May our lives truly reflect the love that is of God, and let us all share this love that is given to us by the Lord, that all people, especially the unloved ones, can truly experience the love of God, and share with one another the faith we have in Christ, as a community, caring and loving for one another, just as all of us love God even more.

May God grant us a heart of gold, to share what we have to those who do not have, and to those who hunger, both for food, and also more importantly for love, for those starved of love, that all of us, as we work in the love of God, can make this world a better place for everyone. Amen.

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Tuesday, 9 April 2013 : 2nd Week of Easter (Gospel Reading)

John 3 : 7b-15

Jesus said, “You must be born again from above. The wind blows where it pleases and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It is like that with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Nicodemus asked again, “How can this be?” And Jesus answered, “You are a teacher in Israel, and you don’t know these things! Truly I say to you, We speak of what We know and We witness to the things We have seen, but you don’t accept Our testimony. If you don’t believe when I speak of earthly things, what then, when I speak to you of heavenly things? 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.”

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Tuesday, 9 April 2013 : 2nd Week of Easter (Psalm)

Psalm 92 : 1ab, 1c-2, 5

The Lord reigns, robed in majesty; the Lord is girded with strength.

The world now is firm, it cannot be moved. Your throne stands from long ago, o Lord, from all eternity You are.

Your decrees can be trusted; holiness dwells in Your House, day after day without end, o Lord.