spirit of the liturgy

by

Monday, 14 April 2014 : Monday of Holy Week (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today in the Gospel is the sad reality of some portions of the Church and our faith, where people became and end up as hypocrites in their faith, in the name of false almsgiving, charity and humility and end up discrediting the faith itself.

What am I talking about here? It is about some of those who held the view that the Church has to become simple, but for the very wrong reasons. The poverty that these people talked about is literal poverty, stripping the beauty and splendour of the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Lord at the Mass. In the name of false simplicity and poverty, they turned the Holy Mass and its celebration into a playground.

This is a true scandal of the faith, one that is sadly quite existent in our Church these days as it had been in the past decades. They substituted the Lord for their own human desires and lack of appreciation for the true faith that the Lord wants from us. In doing what they had done, they not only doom themselves, but also many others who were innocent, in the process.

In the recent years and decades ever since the end of the renewal of the Second Vatican Council, there had been many mistaken and wayward interpretations on what the Council was truly about, and it ended up on the destruction of the beauty of worship which had been preserved for millenia, and for many years, many parts of the world devolved into anarchy of the faith, because they have failed to understand what the Lord truly wants from them.

They brought low the true meaning of the sacrifice in the Mass, the offering of our hearts and love to the Lord. Yes, just as Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus once offered her love and devotion to the Lord, only to be rebuked unfairly by the betrayer, Judas Iscariot. She offered the Lord her love and the best offering of her humble heart, anointing and preparing Him for His Passion, while Judas rebuked her for the reason of a hypocrite, pretending to love the poor while in his heart, it was truly a selfish concern for himself.

The same too can be said, even today, on those who wreak havoc on the offering of mankind, who had given their best of all as the gifts and offerings of their heart, in the name of false humility and concern for poverty, or the poverty gospel as one may say. We have to love and care for all, especially the poor for they have little or nothing, and there is much that we can give them. But, this must not be used as an excuse to attack the faith or those who love God and seek to glorify Him by giving Him their all.

We like to make these excuses because we fail to understand and have God in our hearts. Our hearts are not filled with the love and goodness of God, but with malice and ill intent, as Judas Iscariot once did, thinking only about himself and his own benefit with the pretext of giving lip service to God and His way.

This we must not do or we risk to walk the same path that Judas had taken. Mankind had lived for far too long under the influence and corruptions of the evil one. Shall we take the proactive stance and say a definitive no to the devil? Let us cast away all the temptations and false promises which the devil has offered us and instead be true followers of the Lord.

May God be with us, and guide us on our way, as we proceed on this journey of life, that we may always persevere and be strong, rejecting the evil and his falsehoods and be like Mary, giving her all to glorify and to serve the Lord. Let us all remain faithful, brethren! Amen.

by

My personal thoughts on the election of Pope Francis I and the current state of the Church

I can only hope that Msgr. Guido Marini, the Master of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations (Papal MC) can indeed stay where he is, as many uttered their concern whether he will still stay as papal MC given the apparent change in this new Pope.

As this is just the first day, I do not know much yet about the direction that our new Pope, Francis I, will bring us all, but I hope that he will not overemphasize inculturation and liberation for the sake of evangelisation, as what was once done under Archbishop Marini, the previous papal MC, but rather focus and renew the spirit of the liturgy as was done by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI when he was Pope, with the help of Monsignor Marini as the chief liturgical reformer.

There is a need to balance between tradition and innovation, and not to tilt too far to the other side. Already these past few years we had seen a great rebound in the number of seminarians joining the seminary, and also the growing accustomisation among many people all over the world of the use of Latin in the Mass, despite of course emphasis remaining on the vernacular language.

Already, many apparently made comments (as I do) on his choice of not wearing the mozzetta and the stole upon making his first appearance, despite the proper winter papal mozzetta had been prepared for the new Pope. These are little things, but I hope this won’t be a precedent, which if not carefully handled, may undo many of the great things and reforms of the reform of Vatican II that had been painstakingly done in the past few years, and have begun to bear fruit in the Church today.

Balance is important. Already we have seen in many cases after Vatican II, churches and groups going too far towards innovation and liberal thoughts that ended up losing their very Catholic identity. What we need is to preserve our tradition, and yet remain open for innovations that can help new evangelisation, and evangelisation must also be carried in the spirit of the preservation of Apostolic teachings and traditions, and not conform to what the world think, that is relativism.

Social media like twitter, Facebook, blogs, and many others are these great innovations that can help spread the teachings of the Church, and yet let us not be like many Catholics, particularly in the USA, which had been commented as being ‘market Catholics’ where they pick and choose what they want to believe in, as long as it suits them, and reject those that they feel don’t fit with them. No, to be a Catholic means accepting the whole teaching as a whole, and not taking just those parts that you like, and discard the rest.

I need to add that going into extremes into the other direction is also abhorred, as what was made obvious by the SSPX Society, which continued to linger in their ultra-conservatism, and refused to take in several important modifications made by Vatican II.

Just some examples : We no longer blame Jews for the death of Christ, and instead they are our elder brothers in faith, having been chosen and called by God first among all nations.

Then, although indeed I firmly believe in salvation only through the One Church of Christ, but I also believe in the Universal Call to Holiness (by Blessed Pope John Paul II), and there are righteous people outside the Church, who do God’s will, but lacking only the necessary faith in Christ, but that doesn’t mean that they are immediately condemned to hell for that. It is our task to bring the Good News and salvation to them, which can be done through new evangelisation, rooted firmly in tradition and prayer.

However, one wish that I want to make is that, I hope Pope Francis I can thoroughly reform the Roman Curia, to purge from it all ties to corruptions and evil, and to purify our Holy Church that it will once again be immaculate and pure as it should always be, as the One, and only Church God had established in this world, through Peter the Apostle.

And I am touched by his selection of name, Francis, which honoured both St. Francis of Assisi, whom I held in high regard, and St. Francis Xavier, the great missionary and co-founder of the Jesuits (with St. Ignatius Loyola) whom Pope Francis I is a member of. St. Francis Xavier is close to my heart as he is also the patron saint of my early education, and which helped me to learn about the faith, and eventually welcomed into the Church.

I am also deeply touched by his humility, especially when he asked that the people pray for him, and even bowed down to show his humility, which does remind me to another Pope, John Paul I, whose motto is Humilitas, but as history went, he did not have the time to accomplish much. Therefore I hope, the legacy of Pope John Paul I can be continued in Pope Francis I, who had the same quality and personality as Pope John Paul I.

However, humility and simplicity must not lead to the simplification of our faith, but rather let these be tools to further deepen our ties to our faith, and understand more about it.

I noted that Pope Francis I is deeply devoted to the Virgin Mary, whose name is part of his personal name, Jorge Maria Bergoglio. He will be another Marian Pope in the likelihood of Blessed Pope John Paul II. It is important for us to have a strong devotion to the Virgin Mary, as she is the best helper that we can have, in guiding our way towards the Lord, and ensuring that we do not go astray from our path.

May God bless our new Pope Francis I, and at this important juncture at the beginning of the new Pontificate, I hope that the Holy Spirit that has elected him to carry this task, will also guide him, that he will make correct choices that will continue the good works that began with Blessed Pope John Paul II, and was accelerated by Pope Benedict XVI, now Pope Emeritus.