Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we are reminded today that Christ had come into our world as our salvation, to save us from our condemnation to death by our rebellion against the love of God. He came into our world as light that shed off the darkness that is in our world, and most importantly, the darkness that is within our hearts.

He had been sent into this world that it, together with all of us who lives in it, can be saved rather than cast off together with Satan and his angels into the sea of fire and eternal damnation and separation from God. God’s love desires that all mankind be reunited into Himself, and Christ, whose birth was announced by the prophets, did exactly just that, by serving as the bridge that spans heaven and earth, and linked mankind back to God their Father, providing the only path to salvation and eternal life.

Today, we also commemorate the feast day of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen, who was a priest, and also a martyr, and while St. Adalbert whom we commemorated yesterday preached the Good News to the pagans, St. Fidelis who lived during the height of the Protestant Reformation and rebellion had to contend against the heretical Protestants, particularly the Calvinists in the region now known as Switzerland.

St. Fidelis fearlessly waged into the Calvinist strongholds and preached the true faith of the Church, against the erroneous beliefs of the Protestants of the era. Despite the harassment and hatred of those to whom he had ministered, and under the threat of death, St. Fidelis pressed on, and was finally martyred when he rejected outright the persuasion of Calvinist soldiers who pressed him to renounce his Catholic faith, and prayed for them, for the salvation of their souls.

In St. Fidelis, and in St. Adalbert, we saw the truth that is in God, which was revealed through Christ and made manifest in this world. Truth is hard, and it is difficult to be taken in by many, who preferred the lies of Satan to the truth of God. Yet, these saints strived to open the eyes of many who had been fooled by Satan and his earthly minions set to destroy God’s people by false prophets and ideas, and even braved martyrdom in the process.

In our modern day world, we may not see such similar scenario and condition as what the two saints had witnessed in their own times, but in fact, in our present day world, the need for the light of Christ to illuminate the hearts of many had never been greater. Many had abandoned God for the relative comfort of this world’s allures and temptations. The evil one has many ways to seduce mankind into his fold, and to abandon the path of God.

We can do our own part in evangelisation, and we do not even need to brave death as what the two martyrs had done, but most importantly, we begin from our own surroundings, that we show the truth of the Lord through our words and actions, to show the light of Christ through our own beings, and through what we are doing in our lives.

May God guide us always in our lives, and make us into lights for all mankind, that in us, those who have yet to believe in Christ or those who had abandoned Him will once again see the true Light that is Christ, our Lord and Saviour. Amen.