Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests or Saturday Mass of Our Lady)
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.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests or Saturday Mass of Our Lady)
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.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we are called to put our attention into two things, that is firstly, we have to remember the mission which God had entrusted to us all through His Apostles, as St. Paul succinctly placed in what he wrote in his Epistle, that we all are servants and preachers of the Gospel, the Good News of God. We are the evangelisers of this new and current time and age.
We serve the Lord by preaching the Good News which He has brought upon this world, by being witnesses of His death and resurrection. We are God’s servants, and thus we should speak, act and do things in accordance with what He has revealed to us and taught us, or else, others will not come to believe in us if we ourselves do not act in accordance with God’s ways.
And that is in tandem with the second thing that we heard in today’s Gospel, that is about how Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law for their hypocrisy and lack of genuine faith, using the well known parable of the plank and the eyes. They were rebuked as those who wanted to remove the sins in others while they themselves committed great sins and yet they turned a blind eye to these.
In order to understand this, we have to understand what it was like at the time of Jesus. The Pharisees, the teachers of the Law and scribes, the elders and the priestly class and caste are among the elites and the highly respected and influential members of the community, and also rightly feared for their influence and oppression of all forms of dissent against their authority.
They considered themselves pious and great in faith, as guardians of God’s laws and commandments. They treasured their customs and traditions, valuing highly their appearances and showy prayers in public as signs of their faith. And yet, in all these, they did not glorify God, and neither did they honour Him as He should have been honoured. They thought only of themselves and their human needs and desires.
And in that, they did not just oppress others around them but they also misled and misguided them to the wrong path. Instead of bringing the people closer to God, they have closed the path off to many, and including themselves as well. That is a reminder for us not to be like them and not to act as they have acted. We must instead be true to our faith and be committed in all things, that whatever we do, we do not for ourselves, but for the greater glory of God.
Perhaps the example of today’s saint, St. Peter Claver can be a source of inspiration and example for us all to follow from today on. St. Peter Claver was a Spanish Jesuit priest who went forth to the New World, what is today called the American continent. He went specifically to the Spanish colony in what is now Latin or South America, ministering to the people there, preaching among those who have yet to accept the Lord as their Saviour.
It was told that many people listened to his sermons and preachings, and as many as three hundred thousand people converted to the Faith and gave themselves to be baptised through his works, and that he baptised them all by himself throughout his forty years of working among them. He was hardworking and dedicated to his mission, that is to save the souls of those who still lived in the darkness and in ignorance of the Lord and His saving works.
St. Peter Claver did not allow himself to succumb to the same temptations facing the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law. Despite of his privileged position as a priest and as a Spanish, which accorded to him immense benefits and privileges as both a member of the clergy and as a European versus all the natives and the pagans living in the New World, he lived simply and even when given privileges, he chose to live among the slaves, to whom he had dedicated his life’s works to.
The examples of St. Peter Claver should serve as a reminder to us all, brothers and sisters in Christ, that as the disciples and servants of our Lord, we must live according to what He has commanded us to be, that is to love and to give ourselves in love to one another, just as St. Peter Claver had done. And he also gave himself to the poorest, the weakest, those who were oppressed and who were at a disadvantage.
Let us all therefore vow to make ourselves better disciples of the Lord, by following in the footsteps of our holy predecessors, the saints and servants of God, and not fall into the temptations of this world. May God help us to love each other ever more sincerely with each passing day. God bless us all. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Luke 6 : 39-42
At that time, Jesus offered this example, “Can a blind person lead another blind person? Surely both will fall into a ditch. A disciple is not above the master; but when fully trained, he will be like the master. So why do you pay attention to the speck in your brother’s eye, while you have a log in your eye, and are not conscious of it?”
“How can you say to your neighbour, ‘Friend, let me take this speck out of your eye,’ when you cannot remove the log in your own? You hypocrite! First remove the log from your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your neighbour’s eye.”
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Psalm 83 : 3, 4, 5-6, 12
My soul years, pines, for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young, at Your altars, o Lord of hosts, my King and my God!
Happy are those who live in Your house, continually singing Your praise! Happy the pilgrims whom You strengthen, to make the ascent to You.
For the Lord God is a sun and a shield; He bestows favour and glory. The Lord withholds no good thing from those who walk in uprightness.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
1 Corinthians 9 : 16-19, 22b-27
Because I cannot boast of announcing the Gospel : I am bound to do it. Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel! If I preached voluntarily, I could expect my reward, but I have been trusted this office against my will. How can I, then, deserve a reward?
In announcing the Gospel, I will do it freely without making use of the rights given to me by the Gospel. So, feeling free with everybody, I have become everybody’s slave in order to gain a greater number.
So I made myself all things to all people in order to save, by all possible means, some of them. This I do for the Gospel, so that I too have a share of it. Have you not learnt anything from the stadium? Many run, but only one gets the prize. Run, therefore, intending to win it, as athletes who impose upon themselves a rigorous discipline. Yet for them the wreath is of laurels which wither, while for us, it does not wither.
So, then, I run knowing where I go. I box but not aimlessly in the air. I punish my body and control it, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be rejected.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard of St. Paul speaking to the faithful in the city of Colossae about the way of life that they should follow, the things that they ought to do, and how they should obey and walk in the way of the Lord at all times. St. Paul urged them to let go of all their worldliness and sinful past, following no longer the wicked ways of the flesh, but giving themselves completely to the new ways of Christ.
And this call of righteousness is repeated again one more time in the Gospel today, albeit in a somewhat different way. Jesus spoke of the blessings and the curses for the people of God, depending on their ways and actions, in what we know as the Beatitudes, or the Sermon on the Mount. This is another exhortation and guide on how we ought to live as people and servants of our Lord.
In this series of blessings and curses, Jesus praised and favoured all those who have been righteous in their ways and actions, those who have sought peace, love and harmony, and those who walk in the way of the Lord, obeying God’s commandments, loving Him and their fellow men. On the other hand, those who do not walk in the path of the Lord and who ignored the pleas of the needy and the downtrodden were cast out of God’s presence and favour.
What the Lord wanted to remind us is that, if we are faithful to Him, the way ahead of us will not always be easy, and that there will be challenges and difficulties lying ahead of us as many of us will face rejection, persecution, ridicule and even death for the faith which we have in the Lord our God. This is because the way of this world is not in accordance to what the Lord had taught us. The world is following the ways of worldliness, of selfishness and path without real and genuine love.
The ways of this world seem to be easier because they offer us many worldly goodness and temptations that strike at the very heart of our vulnerabilities, at the desires that filled our hearts. There are so many tempting opportunities that keep us away from the love and grace of God, such as wealth, privilege, fame, human praise, status, position, and many others, which in their own ways, they become obstacles on our journey towards the Lord.
For example, the pursuit of wealth makes us to tend to ignore the suffering of others around us, and it makes us to be proud, haughty and boastful of our own human achievements and the great things about ourselves. How many of us bring suffering and injustice upon others because of our actions, and how often was it that we did not bring glory to God and praise Him because of our inability to get out of our pride?
Indeed, it is easier to follow the ways and customs of this world, to succumb to our desires and wants, to listen to the words of the devil rather than the words of the Lord, but in the end, this will lead to eternal and unending suffering, for we will be found unworthy of the Lord and be cast out into hell. Therefore, let us all pay attention to the examples of one saint, whose feast day we celebrate today and whose life is truly exemplary and should be an inspiration to all of us.
St. Peter Claver was a Jesuit priest and missionary who lived and worked during the height of the Age of Exploration, who went to the Americas, the New World as it was known then, and as he became involved with the local peoples and the African slaves sent there to work in plantations, he became their staunch defender and protector, and he ministered to many of them for the rest of his life.
He disapproved of the way how the slaves were treated as less than human beings with equal rights to anyone else, and he worked hard to make their lives better and to reduce greatly their suffering and difficulties. Of course, in the course of this, he encountered many opposition to his works, but he did not give up or became disheartened, and instead he became even more committed to his cause.
The examples of St. Peter Claver is truly something for us all to take note of. Through his works, countless slaves had a better life and they faced less suffering in their lives. He dared to oppose the ways of the world, because in it he saw injustice and wickedness in action, and he did not hesitate to do what is right, even in the face of the disapproval of the world.
Therefore, let us all follow in the footsteps of St. Peter Claver, and let us all seek to follow the way of the Lord and resist the temptations of the world and the devil, which seek to destroy us and bring us away from the grace and salvation of the Lord. May Almighty God help us and guide us in this endeavour. God bless us all. Amen.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Luke 6 : 20-26
At that time, looking at His disciples, Jesus said, “Fortunate are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Fortunate are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Fortunate are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”
“Fortunate are you when people hate you, when they reject you and insult you and number you among criminals, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for a great reward is kept for you in heaven. Remember, that is how the ancestors of this people treated the prophets.”
“But alas for you who have wealth, for you have been comforted now. Alas for you who are full, for you will go hungry. Alas for you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Alas for you when people speak well of you, for that is how the ancestors of these people treated the false prophets.”
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Psalm 144 : 2-3, 10-11, 12-13ab
I will praise You day after day and exalt Your Name forever. Great is the Lord, most worthy of praise; and His deeds are beyond measure.
All Your works will give You thanks; all Your saints, o Lord, will praise You. They will tell of the glory of Your kingdom and speak of Your power.
That all may know of Your mighty deeds, Your reign and its glorious splendour. Your reign is from age to age; Your dominion endures from generation to generation.
Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Priests)
Colossians 3 : 1-11
So then, if you are risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on earthly things. For you have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your Life, reveals Himself, you also will be revealed with Him in Glory.
Therefore, put to death what is earthly in your life, that is immorality, impurity, inordinate passions, wicked desires and greed which is a way of worshipping idols. These are the things that arouse the wrath of God. For a time you followed this way and lived in such disorders. Well then, reject all that : anger, evil intentions, malice; and let no abusive words be heard from your lips.
Do not lie to one another. You have been stripped of the old self and its way of thinking to put on the new, which is being renewed and is to reach perfect knowledge and the likeness of its Creator. There is no room for distinction between Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, foreigner, slave or free, but Christ is all and in all.
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