St. Peter Damian

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Thursday, 21 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of God in the Scriptures speaking to us regarding the salvation which God has given to all of His people, the Covenant which He has made with all of us mankind, through which He restored us all from the state of disgrace and sin, into a renewed existence in grace and beloved by God.

God has brought Noah and his family, who alone were faithful among the many wicked and unrepentant sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, safely through the Great Flood that destroyed everything in the world, and through the Ark, brought them all into a new life on a renewed earth. And God made a new Covenant with Noah and his family, with him and all of his descendants, that include all of us living here today.

The Covenant that God has made is a Covenant of love, the promise of love between God and His beloved people, in which the two parties involved entered into a most solemn and honourable agreement and binding decision, to be committed to each other, to be devoted and to love each other with sincerity and genuine desire. And God loved His people as He has always done, not desiring their destruction but salvation and liberation from sin.

And because a Covenant is contracted between two parties and is binding between them, therefore, if God Himself has entered into the agreement with us all, and willingly committed Himself to us, then we mankind, who are also part of this same Covenant, must therefore also love God in the same manner, and commit ourselves to a loving relationship with Him. If we love God, then we must be willing to walk in His ways, and change our way of life to do what He has taught and shown us to do.

And God renewed His Covenant as we have heard in our Gospel passage today, through none other than Jesus Christ, His own beloved Son, sent into the world for this very purpose, that is to renew the Covenant He had once made with His people, with a new and everlasting Covenant that surpasses every previous Covenants, sealed with nothing less than the pure sacrifice and the Most Precious Blood of Christ, flowing down from the cross.

Yet, are we able to love Him as He has loved us so dearly? Many of us have not been able to commit ourselves in the same manner as our Lord as loved and devoted Himself to us. He has loved us so totally, so as to give everything for our sake. Many of us love instead the many tempting things in the world, not even giving our attention and time for God. We look for things such as worldly glory, fame, prestige, wealth and power.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as long as we are distracted by all of these temptations, we will not be able to give ourselves totally and wholly to God, and we will always end up failing and falling into sin again and again. We need to make the conscious effort to resist those temptations to sin. Otherwise, we will easily be swayed by the devil and all those who have always been trying to tempt us, day after day, at every moments.

Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Peter Damian, a holy and devout servant of God who should become our inspiration in life. St. Peter Damian was a renowned Benedictine monk who eventually rose to the rank of Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, as one of the closest confidants of the Pope, for his vigorous reforms and commitment to the renewal of the Church at the time, in which corrupt practices were rampant.

St. Peter Damian dedicated much of his life to the eradication of the wicked practices and sins present within the Church, both among the clergy and the laity at the time, when the Church members and officials were deeply embroiled in scandals pertaining their worldly ambitions and ways. St. Peter Damian led the effort to eradicate all of these excesses and wicked practices, helping the Pope at the time to steer the Church through the difficult times.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are called to follow the examples and the commitment shown by St. Peter Damian in living an upright life dedicated to God. We are called to abandon our past attachments to sin, and repent from our past disobediences. Indeed, this is not something that can be easily done, but unless we make the conscious effort to do so, we can see how the devil’s wickedness have once again struck at our Church, both among the clergy and the laity alike.

We have seen all sorts of scandals involving the clergy as well as those counted among the laity, and how all of these are causing hurts and difficulties to the efforts of the Church to bring more souls to the salvation in God. Let us therefore begin from ourselves, the effort to purify our lives and to bring about a renewal of the Covenant of love that God has made with us, through Christ, His Son, our Lord and Saviour.

Let us all turn once again wholeheartedly towards the Lord, loving Him and placing Him at the very centre of our lives. Let us all seek to walk faithfully in His ways, and do our best to obey Him from now on. May the Lord our loving God continue to love us and bless us, each and every days of our lives. Amen.

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Thursday, 21 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Mark 8 : 27-33

At that time, Jesus set out with His disciples for the villages around Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He asked them, “Who do people say I am?” And they told Him, “Some say You are John the Baptist; others say You are Elijah or one of the prophets.”

Then Jesus asked them, “But you, who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” And He ordered them not to tell anyone about Him. Jesus then began to teach them that the Son of Man had to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the Law. He would be killed, and after three days rise again.

Jesus said all this quite openly, so that Peter took Him aside and began to protest strongly. But Jesus turning around, and looking at His disciples, rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are thinking not as God does, but as people do.”

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Thursday, 21 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Psalm 101 : 16-18, 19-21, 29 and 22-23

O Lord, the nations will revere Your Name, and the kings of the earth Your glory, when the Lord will rebuild Zion and appear in all His splendour. For He will answer the prayer of the needy and will not despise their plea.

Let this be written for future ages, “The Lord will be praised by a people He will form.” From His holy height in heaven, the Lord has looked on the earth to hear the groaning of the prisoners, and free those condemned to death.”

Your servants’ children will dwell secure; their posterity will endure without fail. Then the Name of the Lord will be declared in Zion, and His praise in Jerusalem, when the peoples and the kingdoms assemble to worship Him.

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Thursday, 21 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Genesis 9 : 1-13

God blessed Noah and his sons and he said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. Fear and dread of you will be in all the animals of the earth and in all the birds of the air, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. They are given to you. Everything that moves and lives shall be food for you; as I gave you the green plants, I have now given you everything. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is its blood.”

“But I will also demand a reckoning for your lifeblood. I will demand it from every animal; and from man, too, I will demand a reckoning for the life of his fellow man. He who sheds the blood of man shall have his blood shed by man; for in the image of God has God made man. As for you, be fruitful and increase. Abound on the earth and be master of it.”

God spoke to Noah and his son, “See I am making a covenant with you and with your descendants after you; also with every living animal with you : birds, cattle, that is, with every living creature of the earth that came out of the Ark. I establish My covenant with you. Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I make between Me and you, and every animal living with you for all future generations. I set My bow in the clouds and it will be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.”

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Wednesday, 21 February 2018 : 1st Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in today’s readings from the Scripture we heard about the contrast between what happened in the time of the Old Testament, when the prophet Jonah came to the city of Nineveh, preaching to them that the Lord would destroy their city within forty days for their sins and wickedness, and with what we heard in the Gospel passage today, of the Lord Jesus and His unhappiness over the people’s lack of faith as they kept demanding for signs and miracles.

At the time of the prophet Jonah, the people and ruler of the city of Nineveh, which was a great city and capital of the Assyrian Empire, the mighty kingdom that conquered and destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and subjugated much of the Middle East at its heyday, they came to believe in all that the prophet Jonah said before them, that God would punish them for their sinful ways, and they immediately showed great repentance.

And all of that happened without the prophet Jonah even performing any miracles or wonderful deeds at all. They realised their sinful ways and wickedness, and they simply came to believe in the prophet. This is despite the Assyrians, deemed as barbarians and pagans in the eyes of the Israelites, as they worshipped pagan idols and did not believe in God, and despite all of their wicked and heinous deeds, they believed in God when He came to punish them.

Yet, it is a great irony that the people of God, who were supposed to obey the Law and listen to the will of their Lord, were themselves the ones who refused to believe in Him, when He Himself came in person into this world, and not through the intermediary of a prophet as what was the case between the prophet Jonah and the people and city of Nineveh. And the Lord came with many signs and wonders before His people through His Son, Jesus Christ.

The Lord Jesus Himself performed many miracles and wonders, healing many who were sick, feeding multitudes of people by multiplying loaves of bread and fishes, casting out demons and many more, but the people still failed to believe. He has done so many wonders and yet, the people who had seen them kept asking for more signs and miracles, and for the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, they continued to doubt Him and refused to believe in Him.

Why is this so, brothers and sisters in Christ? That is because they hardened their hearts and refused to believe in God, no matter what amazing things and miracles He has performed before them. If the hearts and minds have refused to believe, then it does not matter how much the eyes, the ears, the noses and all the senses experience, we will end up not believing, just as what the people had done.

In this time and season of Lent, all of us go through this moment of exceeding grace when we are given the opportunity to reexamine our lives through the daily readings of the Scripture and by deepening our relationship with God. Are we all able to rend our stubborn minds and hearts that once refused to believe, and open the doors to our minds and hearts wide, to allow God to enter into them and speak His will inside us?

We are called to repentance and to a change in lifestyle, following the examples of the Assyrians living in Nineveh. God has called us all to repent, just as He has done through the prophet Jonah. Are we willing to humble ourselves as the people of Nineveh had done, or are we rather like the people of the time of Jesus, when He came into this world, and they rejected Him and refused to believe in Him because of their pride and their prejudices against Him?

Let us all follow the example of the great saint whose feast we celebrate on this day, namely St. Peter Damian, great and holy servant of God, as bishop and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, an important figure in the Church at that time, who was remembered for his great piety and devotion, leaving behind everything he had to serve the Lord, and many followed his examples to life faithfully in God’s ways.

St. Peter Damian helped to reform the whole Church at that time, and he zealously sought for the renewal of the Church against the excesses of sin and wickedness which dominated many of the people at the time, even those who were among the clergy and the priests, those who were holding high and influential positions in the Church and among the faithful. St. Peter Damian was determined to get the Church to overcome the problem, and through his works, eventually the Church was able to overcome the problem it faced.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the zeal and commitment of St. Peter Damian should be reminder for us that we should also have the same kind of faith and devotion in our own life. Let us all during this season of Lent reflect on what he has done, and how he has devoted himself throughout his life to serve the Lord, abandoning the temptations of worldly power and glory, and sought nothing else other than the greater glory of God.

May each and every one of us draw ever closer to the Lord, and may we find in Him the source of true joy and happiness, and that we may turn our hearts and our whole being to Him, no longer held back by sin and by our refusal to listen to Him and by our stubbornness. May we grow to love Him more and more, every day of our lives. May God bless us all. Amen.

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Wednesday, 21 February 2018 : 1st Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Luke 11 : 29-32

At that time, as the crowd increased, Jesus spoke the following words : “People of the present time are troubled people. They ask for a sign, but no sign will be given to them except the sign of Jonah. As Jonah became a sign for the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be a sign for this generation.”

“The Queen of the South will rise up on Judgment Day with the people of these times and accuse them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and here, there is greater than Solomon. The people of Nineveh will rise up on Judgment Day with the people of these times and accuse them, for Jonah’s preaching made them turn from their sins, and here, there is greater than Jonah.”

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Wednesday, 21 February 2018 : 1st Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 50 : 3-4, 12-13, 18-19

Have mercy on me, o God, in Your love. In Your great compassion blot out my sin. Wash me thoroughly of my guilt; cleanse me of evil.

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.

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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Wednesday, 21 February 2018 : 1st Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Jonah 3 : 1-10

The word of YHVH came to Jonah a second time : “Go to Nineveh, the great city, and announce to them the message I give you.”

In obedience to the word of YHVH, Jonah went to Nineveh. It was a very large city, and it took three days just to cross it. So Jonah walked a single day’s journey and began proclaiming, “Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed.”

The people of the city believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. Upon hearing the news, the king of Nineveh got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth and sat down in ashes. He issued a proclamation throughout Nineveh :

“By the decree of the king and his nobles, no people or beasts, herd or flock, will taste anything; neither will they eat nor drink. But let people and beasts be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call aloud to God, turn from his evil ways and violence. Who knows? God may yet relent, turn from His fierce anger and spare us.”

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, He had compassion and did not carry out the destruction He had threatened upon them.

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Tuesday, 21 February 2017 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day all of us heard the passages from the Sacred Scriptures telling us the true meaning of being a servant of God, as those who have been called to serve Him and to be the instruments of His will in this world. Through all of these God is telling us the true meaning of service, and how we ought to serve Him with all of our heart.

As those who follow the Lord, all of us Christians must be humble in heart and be patient, as the persecutions and sufferings of this world will come to us for sure, and we will face many obstacles on our path, but we must persevere through or else we will fall into temptation and into sin. We must help one another in our path, and we must remain true to our calling as Christians, to be what the Lord had shown us all to do.

Jesus Himself had shown us the way forward, as He showed it through His own actions in life. He is a King, Lord and Master over the whole universe, over all of creation, and yet, He has willingly emptied Himself of His majesty, and came down to us in the form of a Man, taking up our own flesh, so that He might walk among us, and through His works, and by the ultimate sacrifice He made on the cross, all of us can be saved.

While the disciples grumbled and debated among themselves, on who among them ought to be the greatest and the first among all of them, Jesus showed them that in order to follow Him and become His disciple, all must learn humility, obedience and faith, just as Jesus Himself was humble and obedient, obeying the will of His Father, and enduring everything so that by His humble obedience, He became the source of salvation and hope for so many people.

Jesus is teaching us all the meaning of servant leadership. As a leader, truly as the Lord and Master of all, He did not lord it over all those who had been placed under His care. Instead, He showed genuine care and love for them, and He gave Himself wholeheartedly as their leader, guide and shepherd. That was why He represented Himself as the Good Shepherd, Who was willing to even lay down His life for His sheep, namely all of His beloved people.

He humbled Himself before all, even to the point of washing His disciples’ feet. Even though some of them like St. Peter objected to this, but Jesus explained to them through His action the true meaning of service and love. He Himself said that He has done that in order to be followed by His disciples, the action of selflessness and loving one another.

He showed us all that as Christians, we should not act proudly or arrogantly, and we should not boast of our own strength, ability and achievements. Otherwise, we are not true Christians in the sense that, we are not doing what Jesus Himself had done. Instead, to be a true Christian means for us to be selfless in all of our words, actions and deeds, putting others ahead of ourselves, and to love others genuinely, showing real care and concern for each other’s well-being.

Today, we also celebrate the feast day of one of the great saints of the Church, namely St. Peter Damian, a renowned holy and pious man, and also a Benedictine monk whose role in the reforms of the Church approximately more that nine centuries ago could not be overlooked. He was an important part of the effort to reform the practices of the Church led by the Pope at that time, who also appointed St. Peter Damian to be one of the Cardinals of the Church.

As a Cardinal, St. Peter Damian was very influential, and indeed, that position was supposed to bring him great honour, prestige and power, as well as authority and influence. Yet, even though he has been given such a great honour by the Church, he remained very humble and dedicated, and unlike some others who were tempted by the worldly glory and all the temptations of worldliness, wealth and other vices.

He continued to devote his time and efforts to help reform the Church, and through his efforts and writings, he helped to make the Church a more holy place and a more holy institution free from the corruption of the world. His humility and piety were noted by many others, who were also inspired to follow in his footsteps, making the whole Church more committed and true to its roots in the Lord.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all renew our commitment together to live more faithfully as Christians, following all the ways of our Lord, being humble in all things and obey all the laws and commandments of our God. May the Lord help us, and through the intercession of St. Peter Damian, may we grow ever closer to God and be ever more faithful, every days of our life. God bless us all. Amen.

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Tuesday, 21 February 2017 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)
Mark 9 : 30-37

At that time, after leaving the place where He cast out evil spirit from a deaf and dumb boy, Jesus and His disciples made their way through Galilee, but He did not want people to know where He was because He was teaching His disciples. And He told them, “The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill Him, but three days after He has been killed, He will rise.”

The disciples, however, did not understand these words and they were afraid to ask Him what He meant. They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house, Jesus asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they did not answer, because they had been arguing about who was the greatest.

Then He sat down, called the Twelve and said to them, “If someone wants to be first, let him be last of all and servant of all.” Then He took a little child, placed him in their midst, and putting His arms around him, He said to them, “Whoever welcomes a child such as this in My Name, welcomes Me; and whoever welcomes Me, welcomes not Me but the One Who sent Me.”