sinfulness

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Thursday, 21 August 2014 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Pius X, Pope (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 50 : 12-13, 14-15, 18-19

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.

You take no pleasure in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, You would not delight in it. O God, my sacrifice is a broken spirit; a contrite heart You will not despise.

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Sunday, 17 August 2014 : 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we hear a very clear and concerted message from the Lord, on the faith of those who heard the word of God, acted on them and internalised these into their hearts, and became truly faithful to the Lord. And that was what the Lord tried to show the people in the reading taken from the Old Testament, how even foreigners would come and serve the Lord faithfully and became light among the nations, and in how Jesus dealt with the Canaanite woman who showed her genuine faith in God.

If one is to read just literally what Jesus did and said in the Gospel today, then he or she may think that what was Jesus thinking of saying such things? Surely He must know that He was acting arrogantly and totally insulted the poor Canaanite woman whose daughter was in difficulty? Was it what Jesus truly meant? What did He mean to do with those words? Was He not out of His character?

Yes, all these questions, doubts and uncertainties may come into our minds if we do not understand what Jesus wanted to do, and what He wanted to show the world, through both words and actions, in fulfillment of what the Lord had revealed through His prophets long ago. Jesus wanted to show all that the Lord cares not just for a certain group of people or chosen ones to the detriment of others, but instead, He cares for and loves all equally.

For ultimately, all of us had been crafted in the very image of God, and to us He had granted us the breath of life and authority even over the entire creation, and the entirety of this world and all the other creatures God had created. And therefore, all of us are essentially equal before God, and what truly differentiates us is the actions and deeds that we do in this life, on whether they follow or whether they are against God’s ways.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have to understand the mentality of the Jews of Jesus’ time, and even that of other times. This will definitely help us to understand why Jesus did what He had done, and why He said things as He had said it to the Canaanite woman. We all know that Abraham had been blessed by God in the days long past, long before the coming of Jesus, and because of his great faith, God chose to bless him and his descendants.

And from among his descendants, God had chosen Isaac, the son whom God promised to Abraham and his wife, Sarah. To Ishmael, the other son of Abraham, whom he had with Hagar, his slave, the blessing of God was upon him and his descendants too, but not that of the same kind or degree as the inheritance given to Isaac, the heir of Abraham and his descendants.

And then, from among the two sons of Isaac, God had chosen Jacob, the younger son, to be Israel, the one whom He had chosen among the sons of Abraham as the progenitor of a people He chose among all the nations. To Esau, the elder son of Isaac, a lesser inheritance was given. This first caused great struggle and enmity between the brothers, but eventually they reconciled themselves.

The people of Israel was born from the twelve sons of Jacob, who eventually became the twelve tribes of Israel, and all of whom migrated to Egypt during the time of Joseph, and who were enslaved by the Pharaoh and the Egyptians until the salvation of the Lord came to them through His servant Moses. God performed His power before His people and their oppressors, liberating them and bringing them to the land He had promised their ancestors, Abraham and his sons.

As ages passed and years went by, the people of God alternated between faithfulness and rebelliousness to God, and as years passed on, they became more and more restless and unfaithful to the Lord who had blessed them so much, to be the examples for the other nations. Yes, this is what God intended for His people, that the ones He had chosen among many may be examples of faith and goodness, like their father Abraham of old, that others may also follow in their footsteps.

Instead, they looked upon their chosen status as a privilege and a sign of elite status, which they interpreted as themselves being the chosen people of God, as those who are superior, greater and better than all others, than all mankind who also dwell on this earth. This is the very root of the problem which the Lord, through His prophets, and through what Jesus did and said to the Canaanite woman, intended to do.

The Jews of Jesus’ time were the descendants of the returned exiles from Babylon, the survivors of the exile from the destruction of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. They took pride of themselves as the guardians of the faith in the Lord, and many of them zealously looked down upon the others, especially those whom they considered as different from themselves, and who dwelled in the land with them. This was exactly why they looked down so much on the Samaritans and the Gentiles, namely the Canaanites and the Greeks.

The Canaanites were the descendants of those people who lived in the land of Israel since before the people of Israel received that promised land from the Lord. They were conquered and enslaved and treated badly by the people of Israel, but they managed to persevere throughout many ages and many years, and in today’s Gospel, one of them, a woman with a sickly daughter, sought help not from anyone else, but from the Lord Himself.

What Jesus said to the woman was in essence, intentionally trying to show the typical prejudice, stereotype and judgmental attitudes that many of the Jews of Jesus’ time had on these others, whom they deemed to be inferior than themselves and worthy of hellfire, just as much as they thought that their ‘devoutness’ is worthy of heaven. The disciples exhibited this attitude, and the Pharisees and the elders exhibited it to an even greater degree, even to the point of judging the Jews themselves of not being worthy if certain so and so fail to fulfill their ‘criteria’ of faith.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, what is the message and the aim that God desires from us in this Sunday’s readings? That we realise that our faith is faith, and our love is love, and our hope is hope, no matter who we are, what blood we have, or whose descendant we are. We are all the same human beings, sinners descended from Adam and Eve, whose disobedience brought us out of the glory of heaven, like those Israelites of the past who disobeyed God and be destroyed.

We have to throw away all forms of prejudices and judgments on others, regardless of who we are and what we have done in this life. We should never, ever look down on others who also sincerely look towards the Lord and especially those who are trying hard to reach out to God. Instead of looking down on them or scoffing at them, thinking that we are better than them, we should rather offer them a helping hand and a friendly hug, to welcome them into the kingdom of God together with us.

Jesus taught us that if we are faithful and devoted to God with true sincerity, we will all be called the chosen ones of the Lord, and become His beloved children. That was why He praised the Canaanite woman’s great faith, as example for all others who followed and listened to Him. It is because that woman had such a faith not even possessed by many among the supposedly chosen people of God, many of whom ended up betraying the Lord and persecuted Him and His disciples.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, shall we use this opportunity today to renew our faith in the Lord? And renew our love for Him and also for our brothers and sisters around us? Much has been given to us, and much is expected from us. We should help one another to reach out to the Lord and not to be judgmental on others, be it by appearance, action or anything.

Let us rather redirect all our efforts and attentions towards loving God and loving each other with true love and sincerity, that all who sees us, sees and experiences the love of God and may also therefore come towards the salvation in God. God bless us all and be with us in all of our endeavours. Amen.

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Saturday, 16 August 2014 : 19th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Stephen of Hungary (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the essence of today’s Scripture readings that we heard is that we have to cast away our old lives and habits filled with sin. We have to seek the Lord with a faith much like that of the faith of a children. And why children? This is because, as we all know, a children’s heart, mind and soul are pure and immaculate as on the day when they were born, and they had not yet been corrupted by the many evils in the world, which had turned many people away from God and into destruction.

Jesus told His disciples to have faith like that of a children, and rebuked them for being angry with children coming towards Christ. Indeed, the faith of a child is a pure faith and one that is genuine and devoted in fullness of the heart, and also of the mind and soul. And thus, we too should also be like those children, who come and seek the Lord with true and genuine intentions, for them to come and approach the Lord with love and desire to be with Him.

It is much too often for us, for all mankind to be so engrossed with many things in our lives that we have often forgotten about God, our loving Lord and Father. And not only that, we also often forget about the laws and precepts of the Lord, and instead we grow fond of our own way of life, and how we see others live in this world, and therefore we end up defiling ourselves with sin and impurities that made us incompatible with the goodness of the Lord.

However, this does not mean that we have no hope or that we should despair over our conditions. What is necessary is that we are awakened and become aware of our shortcomings and sinfulness, so that we may know of the urgency with which we should act in seeking the Lord and asking for His forgiveness for our sins. Repentance and honesty in seeking forgiveness is the key, and this is very important for us to realise before it is too late.

God desires not our destruction, for each and every one of us are truly dear and precious to Him. We have been created as the greatest of His creations, with His own image printed on our faces and with the breath of His spirit within us, giving us life and strength. He has blessed us with much goodness and blessings, and we have been given so many opportunities to make use of whatever guidance He had provided us along the way that we may find our way towards Him.

Therefore, it is important for us to learn to use these opportunities given to us to help ourselves to escape from the trap and the temptation of sins, and look towards the light that is in the Lord. And today we celebrate the feast of a saint, who helped to bring many people, namely his people to the Lord, repenting from their great sins and come into the light of the Lord in faith.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Stephen of Hungary, who was also the very first king of Hungary, the one who brought the faith to the people of Hungary, who was once the barbarian tribe of the Magyars who came to settle in the land of what is today’s Hungary over a thousand years ago. He was the first of the leaders of Hungary who was devoted to the Lord, and throughout his long reign, he established much of the structures of the Church in Hungary, bringing more and more people towards the faith.

St. Stephen of Hungary was truly a devout servant of the Lord, who worked hard to bring better lives to all of his subjects, and to bring them closer to the Lord through numerous initiatives designed to strengthen the faith via numerous missionary works and charitable acts, of which many were done by the king himself. The king generously donated much properties to the Church that they were able to build up a healthy and sizeable services to the faithful. More and more souls in the end were saved because of the works of St. Stephen.

Therefore, today, brothers and sisters in Christ, we are all invited to reflect on our current lives and the state of our souls, hearts and minds. Have we all been like those children who freely and sincerely sought the Lord Jesus without any reservations or doubts, and whether we have practiced what the Lord taught us through His disciples in our actions and in our words.

Hence, brethren, let us all once again seek the Lord and help one another to reach out to the Lord. Let us also never bar anyone from reaching out to the Lord, especially not those who truly and sincerely want to find God and follow Him. Let us ask for the intercession of St. Stephen of Hungary, that we may also follow his examples in piety and charity.

May Almighty God be with us this day, open our hearts and minds, that we may grow to love Him more and more, seeking Him with every moments of our lives. God bless us all. Amen.

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Saturday, 16 August 2014 : 19th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Stephen of Hungary (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Ezekiel 18 : 1-10, 13b, 30-32

The word of YHVH came to me in these terms, “Why are you applying this proverb to the land of Israel : ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge?'”

“As I live, word of YHVH, this proverb will no longer be quoted in Israel. All life is in My hands, the life of the parent and the life of the child are mine. The lives of both are in My hands, so the one who sins will die.”

“Imagine a man who is righteous and practices what is just and right. He does not eat in the mountain shrines, or look towards the filthy idols of Israel, does not defile his neighbour’s wife, or have intercourse with a woman during her period; he molests no one, pays what he owes, does not steal, gives food to the hungry and clothes to the naked, demands no interest on a loan and does not lend for interest, refrains from injustice, practices true justice, man to man, follows My decrees and obeys My laws in acting loyally. Because such a man is truly righteous, he will live, word of YHVH.”

“But perhaps this man has a son who steals and sheds blood, committing crimes which his father never did. Will such a man live? No, he will not! That is why I will judge you, Israel, each one according to his ways, word of YHVH. Come back, turn away from your offenses, that you may not deserve punishment.”

“Free yourself from all the offenses you have committed and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why should you die, Israel? I do not want the death of anyone, word of YHVH, but that you be converted and live!”

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Thursday, 7 August 2014 : 18th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Xystus II/Pope St. Sixtus II, Pope and Companions, Martyrs and St. Cajetan, Priest (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs) or White (Priests)

Jeremiah 31 : 31-34

The time is coming – it is YHVH who speaks – when I will forge a new covenant with the people of Israel and the people of Judah. It will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt. For they broke My covenant although I was their Lord.

This is the covenant I shall make with Israel after that time : I will put My Law within them and write it on their hearts; I will be their God and they will be My people. And they will not have to teach each other, neighbour or brother, saying : ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the greatest to the lowliest, for I will forgive their wrongdoing and no longer remember their sin.

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Saturday, 2 August 2014 : 17th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Eusebius of Vercelli, Bishop and St. Peter Julian Eymard, Priest (Scripture Reflections)

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

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard the story of the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, the herald and messenger of God, the one who came and went before our Lord to straighten His path in this world. St. John the Baptist preached God’s mercy and love, urging the people to repent before it was too late, while the gate to salvation and forgiveness is still wide open.

However, it did not mean that he had an easy task or life. He met with many oppositions and challenges, just as the prophet Jeremiah encountered in the reading from the Old Testament we heard today as well. The prophet Jeremiah had a different mission, but of the same nature, urging the people to repent and turn away from their path of sin, and return into the light of God. And he rightly met the same kind of opposition by those who did not want to listen to the word of God.

The same opposition had been encountered by many other prophets who spoke the truth about the decadence and wickedness of men, when mankind had forgotten their true purpose in life, which is to serve God and to show that we truly are the children of God. That means we should not be defiant in our actions and follow wickedness of Satan over the love of God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the feast day of two saints, namely St. Eusebius of Vercelli and St. Peter Julian Eymard. Both of them were truly holy men who followed the will of God and walked righteously in God’s path. They lived in a very different time period, with St. Eusebius living at the time of the Roman Empire during the early days of the Church, when the Church was assailed by heresies and divisions, while St. Peter Julian Eymard lived at the dawn of the modern era, in the nineteenth century.

Nevertheless, both of them were equally devoted and dedicated in their lives of service to God, and they worked hard in their respective lives to enlighten many of those who had fallen to the trap and darkness of the evil one. St. Eusebius of Vercelli fought hard against the great heresy of Arianism, which was widespread during his time at the fourth century after the birth of Christ. This heresy denied the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and claimed that He was just a mere man and creation of God.

St. Eusebius painstakingly and patiently worked to bring back many of those who had been seduced by the lies of evil into the true faith. These people were misguided by many things, and some of which include their own human frailties and weaknesses, such as pride, ego, desire and many other similar evils. These were no different from what had afflicted the people who rejected Jesus, and which had afflicted Herod.

Herod was seduced by the temptation of the flesh, in the beauty of his own stepdaughter, to the point that he made a vow without good consideration that eventually led him to a great sin, that is the murder of the prophet and messenger of God, St. John the Baptist. This is what St. Eusebius, as well as St. Peter Julian Eymard tried their best to eradicate from mankind.

St. Peter Julian Eymard had a strong desire to join the religious life since his youth, and despite the opposition from his father and others, he eventually made it to the desire of his life, to serve God. And St. Peter Julian Eymard did many good works for the Lord among the people, and he established two and more religious orders dedicated to the prayerful life to God, and in particular a strong and close devotion to the Most Holy Eucharist.

St. Peter Julian Eymard and St. Eusebius of Vercelli were both great role models for us all. Therefore, all that we need to do now is indeed to look at our own lives and reflect, whether we have been rejecting our Lord as the people had done so many times throughout the ages. And as we all have sinned and walked away from the Lord, let us use this opportunity to renew our devotion to God and strengthen our spiritual life, that we may always be close to God and His ways.

May Almighty God bless us all this day, and keep us in His love, that we may reflect in all of our words, deeds and actions, a true discipleship and proof of all of us being the children of our loving Father and God. Amen.

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Sunday, 20 July 2014 : 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Bible Sunday (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Matthew 13 : 24-43

Jesus told them another parable, “The kingdom of heaven can be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.”

“When the plants sprouted and produced grain, the weeds also appeared. Then the servants of the owner came to him and said, ‘Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? Where did the weeds come from?'”

“He answered them, ‘This is the work of an enemy.’ They asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull up the weeds?’ He told them, ‘No, when you pull up the weeds, you might uproot the wheat with them. Let them just grow together until harvest; and at harvest time I will say to the workers : Pull up the weeds first, tie them in bundles and burn them; then gather the wheat into my barn.'”

Jesus offered them another parable : “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, that a man took and sowed in his field. It is smaller than all other seeds, but once it is fully grown, it is bigger than any garden plant; like a tree, the birds come and rest in its branches.”

He told them another parable, “The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast that a woman took, and hid in three measures of flour, until the whole mass of dough began to rise.”

Jesus taught all this to the crowds by means of parables; He did not say anything to them without using a parable. So what the Prophet had said was fulfilled : I will speak in parables. I will proclaim things kept secret since the beginning of the world.

Then He sent the crowds away and went into the house, and His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” Jesus answered them, “The One who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world; the good seed are the people of the kingdom; the weeds are those who follow the evil one. The enemy who sows the weeds is the devil; the harvest is the end of time, and the workers are the angels.”

“Just as the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so will it be at the end of time. The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will weed out of His kingdom all that is scandalous and all who do evil. And these will be thrown in the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

“Then the just will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. If you have ears, then hear.”

Alternative reading (shorter version)

Matthew 13 : 24-30

Jesus told them another parable, “The kingdom of heaven can be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.”

“When the plants sprouted and produced grain, the weeds also appeared. Then the servants of the owner came to him and said, ‘Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? Where did the weeds come from?'”

“He answered them, ‘This is the work of an enemy.’ They asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull up the weeds?’ He told them, ‘No, when you pull up the weeds, you might uproot the wheat with them. Let them just grow together until harvest; and at harvest time I will say to the workers : Pull up the weeds first, tie them in bundles and burn them; then gather the wheat into my barn.'”

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Sunday, 20 July 2014 : 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Bible Sunday (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Wisdom 12 : 13, 16-19

For there is no other god besides You, One who cares for everyone, who could ask You to justify Your judgments. Your strength is the source of Your justice and because You are the Lord of all, You can be merciful to everyone.

To those who doubt Your sovereign power You show Your strength and You confound the insolence of those who ignore it. But You, the Lord of strength, judge with prudence and govern us with great patience, because You are able to do anything at the time You want.

In this way You have taught Your people that a righteous person must love His human fellows; You have also given Your people cause for hope by prompting them to repent of their sin.

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Friday, 18 July 2014 : 15th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we should grow to appreciate more the tenets of our faith, and not just to know and understand them, but also to put them into the deepest parts of our hearts and minds. It is only if we had done this that we may truly be good and faithful servants of our Lord, who follow Him not out of blind faith, but out of true understanding and appreciation of His precepts and laws.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ time are hardliners and ultra-orthodox purists who took up a very conservative and strict stance on how the people ought to live out their lives in accordance to the faith and to the laws of God as revealed to the people of God via Moses and the prophets who came after him. They criticised Jesus and His followers, and were constantly at their heels, trying to disturb and harass them at every opportunity because they failed to understand the true meaning of the law of God, and in doing so, they believed in God through blind faith and ended up causing greater harm than good.

Jesus today in the Gospel advocated and taught us the importance of understanding the words of the Lord found in the Holy Scriptures, and finding the true meaning of what our faith, and indeed of what our God is all truly about. And He highlighted that using the example of His own servant David, who out of hunger, were allowed to eat the bread of offerings in the Temple, normally reserved only for the consumption of the priests. David and his companions ate the bread.

All of this is to show that God is love, and all about love. He loves all of His creations, and in particular all mankind, the most beloved of all His creations. And the laws which He had given to them through His prophets, is just another form of His love and dedication which He showed them. Through the Law, He hoped that mankind would be able to find their way to Him and ensure that these beloved ones of Him did not fall along the way as they seek the way to reach out to Him.

Sadly, throughout the history of mankind, and the history of the people of Israel, the chosen people of God, they had grown corrupt in their ways, and even with the prophets to remind them about the love of God espoused and enshrined in the Law, they still chose to ignore the pleadings of the prophets even to the point of rejecting and murdering them to shut them up for good.

And even after God had rescued His people when He showed His mercy to the exiled ones of Israel, they still persisted in their unruly behaviour, as shown in the occasions of the apostasies during the time of the Maccabees, when many of the people of God chose to honour their own safety and well-being in exchange for abandoning their Lord and their faith. But the worst of all was indeed not the ways of the people who veered away from the Law of God, but the rise of those who took the Law for granted and used it for their own selfish and self-aggrandising desires.

The Pharisees and the Scribes were among these, and they used the Law to impose on the people a very strict and unbending set of rules and obligations that ended up mocking and ridiculing the Law itself, causing the people to forget the true meaning and intention of the Law, in exchange for a blind observation of the faith which they truly did not understand and misinterpreted, to the point that the Pharisees regarded themselves as being superior to others and casually condemned all those who were against them.

Jesus our Lord came as the Saviour of the world, and of all His beloved people. Therefore, as part of His great mission, He came to clarify all doubts and remove the layers of untruths and distortions which the people had made with the Law. He came to bring the Law into its perfection, the Scriptures and the prophecies of the prophets and servants of God into their complete fulfillment, and to bring love, the love of God Himself, into the world once again.

And to show that love, which God had shown mankind and all creations since the beginning of time, He showed that through His ultimate act of love, the sacrifice on the cross on Calvary, when He bared Himself and opened His own heart to all of His beloved creations. In that, He made the Law perfect and revealed the entirety of the meaning of God’s love and precepts.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, even today there are still those who refuse to listen to God’s loving words and His calls for us to repent and to follow Him and instead, trusting in their own human wisdom and intellect and thinking that they know it all better than anyone else, walk on their own paths towards their own doom.

We must not end up being focused so much on ourselves, that we forget or ignore everything else, especially God and His love for us. Our fear of losing things precious to us and our attachments to the world can often stand in the way of truly becoming faithful disciples of the Lord. The concerns and worries of king Hezekiah of Judah, although a faithful servant of the Lord, was to become his taint and the blotch of ink that spanned through his otherwise immaculate record.

King Hezekiah was so distraught that he was to die young, that he begged the Lord for mercy, and kindly, the Lord heard him and extended his life. But later on, we found that if we read the Holy Scriptures, that King Hezekiah showed off his wealth and glory to the Babylonian ambassadors, priding in his own greatness and human power, all these while rejecting and refusing to listen to the word of God which He had spoken through His prophet.

King Hezekiah is an example of how attachments to worldly things and all other distractions that exist in this world may lead to our detachment from the Lord and His way, and end up being too caught up in our own concerns, worries and others, that we do not glorify God in our works and actions, but instead glorify ourselves and the evil one.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all be mindful of all these, and let us be careful, lest our worldly attachments bring us into ruin. Let us all have a good and healthy relationship with our God, through devout prayer and obedience to the teachings of the Church, through which Jesus our Lord had made clear the purpose of the Laws of God, purified from all the corruptions of men, the Pharisees and others.

May Almighty God bless us and be with us always, that He may guide us to Him, and straighten our path and make it secure, that we may not fall into the darkness, but remain always in the light. Amen.

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Saturday, 12 July 2014 : 14th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

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

Isaiah 6 : 1-8

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted; the train of His robe filled the Temple. Above Him were seraphs, each with six wings : two to cover the face, two to cover the feet, and two to fly with.

They were calling to one another : “Holy, Holy, Holy is YHVH Sabaoth. All the earth is filled with His Glory!” At the sound of their voices the foundations of the threshold shook and the Temple was filled with smoke.

I said, “Poor me! I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips, and yet I have seen the King, YHVH Sabaoth.” Then one of the seraphs flew to me; in his hands was a live coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. He touched my mouth with it and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin is forgiven.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” I answered, “Here I am. Send me!”