suffering of our Lord

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Monday, 14 September 2015 : Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate a special solemnity in the honour of the triumph of the glorious Cross of our Saviour. Today we exalt the Holy Cross as the real symbol of triumph of good versus the forces of evil, and as a clear reminder to all of us, that our Lord had won the battle for us in a triumphant victory against the forces of Satan.

The cross was once an instrument of suffering and torture, and it was once an instrument of humiliation and ultimate defeat and surrender of all those who have been convicted and deemed guilty by the state, particularly the Romans who used them to be an instrument of fear, to show example of what would happen to those who dared to oppose their rule.

But among all the countless thousands and more who suffered on the wood of the cross, hanged and nailed for all the people to see, there was One of them who did not deserve to be punished, and yet He took up for Himself, the punishment of a slave, the scourges designed for convicts and villains, and took upon Himself the responsibility of the entire human race, so that instead of us, He took our sufferings upon Himself.

He did not have to do that, and He could just abandon us, but it was not in His nature to do that, because He is Love, and because He is love, He cannot possibly abandon us when we are in need of help. Thus, He was willing to lower Himself and empty Himself of His greatness, and assume the humble form of a Man. And in Jesus Christ, fully God and fully Man, God made Himself an example to all so that by His actions and by His example, He made us all righteous and showed us the way to go.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, in the first reading today from the Book of Numbers, we heard about how God punished His people, the Israelites for their refusal to listen to His will and walk in His ways. He punished them by sending them the fiery and poisonous serpents to bite them and bring death to them. This is the punishment for all those who disobeyed and refused to listen to God, just as the price for death is sin.

The serpents are like the angels of death, representing the judgment of God for all those who have sinned and have committed wicked things before the Lord and before men. And their destruction was seemingly assured, until Moses begged the Lord and beseeched Him to have mercy on His people, and to give them deliverance out of their great predicament.

And God instructed Moses to build up a bronze serpent and place it on a high pole, so that raising it up, it could be seen by many people who have been bitten and harassed by the fiery serpents. Those who saw the bronze serpent became well again and lived, and they did not die. This is a very clear and strong premonition to God’s own plan of salvation, where He Himself would raise Himself up for all to see, so that through Him, all who believe in Him will be saved.

As you all should see, that the fiery serpents are the punishment for the sins that caused us to all suffer death and destruction, but Christ is the new bronze serpent, raised up high even as He bore all of our sins upon Himself, all the punishment due to us, and on the cross, lifted high up between the heavens and the earth, He made Himself an example visible to all, and the testimonies of His truth were passed on to His Apostles, and from them to us.

St. Paul pointed out that just as the first Adam, our ancestor, had sinned and disobeyed the Lord, and by his actions, he had made us all condemned and fallen into sin, and if one man’s action brought all of mankind into sin and into condemnation, then it needs One Man’s action to bring all mankind back towards the Lord and towards salvation, with eternal life promised by the Lord as the goal.

And thus, Jesus Christ our Lord is the new Adam, through whom the salvation of the world was to come from. It is because of His perfect obedience to the will of His Father that had brought mankind to righteousness, because just as He is God, He is at the same time also fully Man, and by assuming the flesh of Man, by His obedience, He restored to all of us, the life and the grace of God which had been withdrawn from us when we disobeyed through sin.

And the cross He made to become a symbol of triumph and victory, and a symbol of the glory that we all are to have, if we keep our faith in the cross of Christ. But it is not just any cross, for cross by itself has no meaning, and a cross would still always be remembered for being the brutal method which the Romans used to treat those who rebelled against them. Instead, it is the Holy Cross of Jesus Christ which we commemorate, the crucifix, where our Saviour hung upon on that day in Calvary.

It was from that cross that Jesus was shown to the whole world, just as the bronze serpent was lifted up in the desert, that all who look up to Christ, believe in Him and follow Him shall not suffer the penalty of death, but live and live forever with the Lord, enjoying forever the bliss of heavenly glory, as worthy disciples, followers and children of our God.

And the empty Cross of Christ is a reminder always, that Christ had won that victory over sin and death, and nothing could hold Him, even death itself. The empty tomb is the proof of triumph together with the Holy Cross, that our Lord had won a complete, total and resounding victory forever against Satan and all of his allies and forces. And whenever Satan looks upon the Cross, he knows that his defeat is assured and his doom is at hand, and the Lord who stood by us had dealt that crushing victory against him.

Therefore, today, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us put our trust ever more in the Cross, and as Christ had at one time showed Himself to the Roman Emperor Constantine, the first to be baptised as a Christian, ‘In Hoc Signo Vinces’ or ‘In this Sign you shall conquer’, and indeed he won a resounding victory against his enemies by placing his trust and faith in the Lord, then we too should do the same.

Let us ever put our trust in the Holy Cross, the symbol of our triumph and victory against all forms of evil, the bane of Satan and the sign of our deliverance. May our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ continue to be with us and guiding us on this way, so that the Cross will be our guide, and we continue to have hope as we look on the triumphant Cross, and fear no more. May Almighty God, the Crucified Lord, be with us and bless us always. Amen.

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Sunday, 13 September 2015 : Twenty-Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, the core message of the Scripture readings from both the Old Testament and the New Testament, as well as from the Gospel is about the Lord who came down to this world to dwell among us, and then brought us free from the chains and the bonds of sin that have kept us enchained and enslaved to suffering and death.

It was through the willing sacrifice, the willingness to bear all the huge burdens and the mountains of our sins that had been accumulated and is accumulating through time, as every man committed sin before God, on the weight of the cross that Christ our Lord had brought with Him as He walked down that road from Jerusalem towards Calvary, where He would give Himself up for the sake of all mankind.

The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is not just the physical burden of the wood that made it up. It is filled with the entirety of mankind’s sins and the punishments that were to be due for it. Ever since mankind had first sinned against the Lord, by disobeying Him and following their own path, they have been cast out from the grace and the love God had prepared for them, and they have gotten for themselves the sufferings of the world, for they have chosen the path of suffering by disobedience, and death claimed them as its own, as their sins brought about their mortality.

Yes, because of our sins, we would have endured eternal suffering and hell, not the hell filled with fire and all the imaginable forms of suffering as how hell was often illustrated like, but the hell of suffering due to the lack of the love of God, the lack and the total absence of hope, because God’s favour is not with us, and when we look on our Lord, our Father and Creator, He would say to us, “I do not know you, begone from My presence, you wicked people!”

But this is not to be the case, as our Lord is ever merciful and ever loving. Indeed, He despises all forms of sins and wickedness, all the disobedience and rebelliousness, all the evils that had kept us away from Him. Yet, God despises not each one of us individually and without good reason, but instead it is our sins He despises, and not us as a person.

Why is this so? That is because He knew that all of us have good in each one of us, and each of us has the potential for both good and for evil. He had crafted each one of us from the earth, from the dust and the ground, fashioned us in His own image and then breathed life upon all of us, giving us His own Spirit of life. The Lord created us pure and immaculate, although the taint of original sin once overshadowed us, but we have been freed though the works of Christ.

And as all of us were created pure and clean, white as wool and immaculate as an empty slate, then all of us have to write and define what our lives would become. And we have to realise that this faith which we have through baptism, by the Sacrament of Baptism we have been made clean, freed from the taints of any sins, our original sins, our other sins big and small.

But our faith should not be just that, and our faith cannot be just a mere profession of faith or a mere proclamation or testimony. That is not enough, as faith is more than just words or profession, but it involves true and real commitment, as St. James made it clear in his epistle or letter to the faithful in the Church, that faith without good works is just the same as a dead and nonexistent faith.

For faith that benefits us and the state of the salvation of our souls is the kind of faith which Jesus had taught us all through His many parables. Faith cannot just be left by itself or else it will perish and be gone without any good. Let is look into the parable of the sower that Christ had taught His disciples, which represents all of us, the faith which we have received, and the outcome of our faith depending on our actions.

The Word of God are the seeds of faith which God, the Sower had placed in our hearts, by the life He had given us, and by the truth which God had revealed to us through the Scriptures and through the Church. And yet, if we notice in that parable, depending on where the seeds fell, be it on the roadside, on rocky ground, amongst thorny bushes or amongst rich soil, the result of the crop is very, very different.

If our faith is not strong or founded upon solid foundation built by hard work, devotion and total commitment to the Lord, then it will be like the seeds that fell on the roadside, or on the rocky ground, or on the thorny bushes, because the devil comes and then plant his seeds of evil and dissension, and the temptations which he brings us all is too much for us to bear, and without deep roots in the faith, it is very easy for us all to fall back once again into sin and darkness.

That is why, in the Gospel today, we have to pay very close attention to what the Lord Jesus spoke to His disciples, and how He rebuked Peter for refusing to believe what would happen to Him. To the feeble and easily tempted minds of men, it might indeed seem to be incoherent and impossible to hear Jesus speaking on one side, of His truth as the Messiah and Lord of all, but then on the other hand, to hear of His prophecy of His own suffering at the very hands of the people to whom He had been sent to.

Satan’s temptation is exactly that we may think that to follow the Lord is all good and easy, and when we find that it is not so, then we feel confused and vulnerable, and then Satan comes in to tempt us and to lure us back into sin, by offering us the alternative pathway that seems to be easier and without obstacle, unlike the path which we will face if we are to follow the Lord our God.

Jesus Himself had endured this when He was tempted by Satan in the desert during His forty days of fasting and preparation in the desert after His baptism by St. John the Baptist. At that moment, Satan tried to persuade Jesus to sin and to disobey the Lord without success, and He remained committed to the mission given to Him, that is the salvation of all mankind.

And when Satan saw that his temptations and attempts were thwarted, he tried yet again to persuade Jesus to abandon His ministry and works, by trying to dissuade Him from taking such a perilous task and enduring such sufferings for the sake of men, and indeed, a common argument for Satan in doing so is that mankind is not worth the great suffering which our Lord Jesus was to endure for the sake of all of us.

But to our Lord who loves us all beyond anything else, no pain or suffering is great enough to warrant Him to abandon us or to cast us out without trying to release us from the burden that had weighed us down all these while. He rebuked Satan and rejected him, and warned him that his dominion over men has come to an end, for God has come to take back His people, and He did so through the cross.

Tomorrow we shall be celebrating the feast of the exaltation of the Holy Cross, and indeed it is very timely and apt that the celebration of the triumph of the Holy Cross ties in very closely to today’s readings and theme. It is indeed through the cross that our Lord had redeemed us all from our sins and bore the punishments meant for us, and He has also turned that symbol of ultimate shame and defeat, into the ultimate symbol of triumph and victory.

Now, all that remains for us is that, if we become the followers and disciples of Christ, we take a share in the suffering which He bore, the rejection and the ridicule He endured, not because of our sins, which have been taken from us and from which we have been redeemed, but it is because of the opposition and jealousy of Satan and all of his allies that had brought about this suffering.

Let us all ask ourselves, if we are able to renew our commitment which we made at our baptism, either by ourselves or by our godparents, and which we renew yearly at Easter. If we want to be true disciples of our Lord, then we must be ready to reject Satan and all of his lies and false promises, and embrace fully the way of the Lord. And indeed, as our Lord had told us, that we all have to bear our own crosses, following the path of our Lord towards eternal life.

This means that the path ahead will be filled with challenges and difficulties for us, and there will likely be opposition ahead, even from amongst those close to us. But if we are truly committed, then I am sure that even all these should not hinder us from moving onward. Carrying our cross may be heavy for us, but that is where we should help one another, and doing the will of God by loving our brethren and helping those in need are also in fact part of what carrying our own crosses is about.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us grow ever more confident in our faith, and let us devote ourselves more and more to our loving God, and commit ourselves not just in mere words and proclamations of faith, but even more, through our own actions and deeds, so that in all the things that we do, we proclaim the glory of God, carrying the crosses of our lives, and following Jesus, may all of us attain the eternal life God has assured all of us who keep our faith in Him. God bless us all. Amen.

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Saturday, 12 September 2015 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Mary (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Most Holy Name of Mary)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate another feast honouring the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, after her Nativity just a few days ago, when we celebrated her birth into the world, and then today, we celebrate her Most Holy Name, the name that is the terror of demons and evil. Just as the Name of her Son Jesus is the Name above every other names, the name of Mary is significant and important for us as well.

Why is this so, brothers and sisters in Christ? That is because at the Name of Jesus, all the devils, all the forces of evil, all those opposed to the Lord, chief of which is Satan, Lucifer, the prince of evil, all these shake in fear and despair, for they know perfectly well, that in Jesus Christ, the Messiah and Saviour of the world, their doom is at hand, and they know perfectly well, their fate of eternal suffering for their wickedness.

They have tried to rise up against the Lord in rebellion and they have failed. They have tried to bring down mankind, God’s most beloved creations, and they have failed as well. They have not been able to do this as they have to face our loving God and Father who cares for the souls of us all. Those who are plotting for our downfall must come to face with the One who cares for us all at every single moment.

And then, what is the significance of Mary in all this? That is because just as they feared and trembled at the Holy Name of Jesus, whenever they hear the Holy Name of Mary uttered in good faith, they too would tremble and hide out of fear, because they also know perfectly well that it was by Mary, her faith and obedience to God and His will, and by the special role she played in God’s plan of salvation.

It is through Mary that the Saviour of this world was born, and through her that salvation was able to come down upon us all. It was her perfect and total obedience to the will of God, that even when she was faced with the daunting task of being the mother of our Saviour, all the uncertainties, doubts and fears accompanying that, and yet she did not give in to her fears, and instead, she faced all of them with faith.

This is why, Mary is an inspiration and example to all of us. It was her dedication and commitment to the mission which God had entrusted her with that had helped us all on the way towards God’s salvation. And even then, she did not end her work and her role there. Even after her Son Jesus had died and risen from the dead, and even after He had ascended in glory to heaven, she continued to be a guide to the early Church, until her own Assumption into glorious heaven.

Mary in her unique position in heaven, as the mother of our Lord and God, has been crowned by her Son as the Queen of the heavenly forces, the angels and the hosts of heaven. And thus, not only that her faith and unfailing dedication commitment to God brought terror to the hearts of Satan and his allies, because they were unable to faze and corrupt her to sin, sinless as she was, is and will always be, but then, she also leads the forces of heaven in the resistance against evil.

We all ought to know that in Mary we have such a great ally against the devil, for she is constantly praying for our sake, beseeching her Son Jesus on our behalf. She leads the angels and the saints in prayer to God, for our intercession. When we sin and fall into darkness and evil, Mary and the angels and the saints led the forces of good in the constant battle and struggle with evil and its forces in the daily and constant spiritual battle for our sake.

Let us all from now on, invoke the holy name of Mary, as well as the Holy Name of her Son, Jesus, with good and genuine faith, so that we may receive her protection through her prayers and intercessions, and as the commander of the forces of heaven, the angels and all fighting to defend us from the evil one, that we may be brought away from the depredations of those seeking our downfall.

May all of us be ever closer to the Lord our God, by showing it through our actions and deeds. Let us all also put our trust in Mary, His mother, who always prays for our sake, and who is the bane of the evil one. Let us ask for her intercession at all times, and promise her that we will draw ever closer to her Son and abandon all of our sinfulness and wickedness. God bless us all. Amen.

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Friday, 11 September 2015 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard about God who leads us on the way out of sin and darkness, and into the light, who have awakened us from the sleep of sin that we experienced, and brought us back into soberness after the drunkenness of our stupor in sin. This is certainly what St. Paul could relate to, as in the first reading today he exhorted Timothy his disciple and fellow worker in Christ to do and to tell the people of God.

This is because St. Paul himself was a sinner, a great one at that, as he was once a great enemy of the Lord and His faithful, as the merciless and fierce persecutor of many of the faithful in the early days of the Church before his repentance and redemption by the merciful act of God, who called him out of the darkness and into the light, as the events unfolded in the city of Damascus, where Saul the persecutor of the faithful became Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ and defender of the Faith.

When he was younger, St. Paul as Saul was naive and blind to the realities and truth of the Lord, and he blindly followed the faith of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, whom Jesus rebuked frequently and as we heard in the Gospel today, the criticism levelled at them for being blinded to their own sin and faults, and as a result, becoming the blind leading the blind in faith.

The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law were proponents of tough enforcement of the Law of God, the laws of Moses as practiced by the people of Israel throughout the ages, and they enforced on the people the rigid rigour of the numerous laws, rules, prohibitions and commandments that they thought as the way to be rightful and just disciples of the Lord.

Yet, in their fulfilment of the Law and in their way of following the rules, regulations, prohibitions, rites and commandments, they lost their way and instead of understanding what the Lord had given them in the Law, its purpose and the true reason why God had revealed to them such things, they ended up following them blindly, for the sake of following the laws, and even worse, as they thought of themselves as just and righteous because they had done what they had done, and they thought that they were right in condemning others because they had not followed the laws as they had done.

In the same manner therefore, St. Paul as Saul in his youth had been led to believe in such falsehoods, in leading such a false and wicked life as taught to him by the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law because of his lack of understanding in what God truly wanted for us all mankind, for all of us His beloved people. And they failed to look upon their own faults and sins, thinking themselves as righteous and condemning others for their faults instead.

In the end, God called Saul out of darkness and into the light, and after having revealed His truth to him, St. Paul became awakened and realised the truth of it all, and he regretted all the things he had done, and from then on, he became a tireless and courageous servant of the Lord God, telling and preaching the truth to all others without fear and without reservations, knowing that he wanted to help them to get out of their ignorance and blindness as well.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, therefore, let us all also come to the realisation of our sins and faults, of the imperfections and the wrong things which we have committed in life. Let us not be blinded to the truth, and let us not be prideful in refusing to admit that we are all sinners, and that we have been wrong at times. Let us be humble and admit our mistakes, and seek the forgiveness for our sins, and find the mercy of God, which our Lord generously offers us.

Let us therefore also help one another in finding our way to the Lord, and be inspired by St. Paul and all that he had done in revealing the truth about the Lord to all the people whom he had visited and worked with. Let us walk in his footsteps, and let us all dedicate ourselves all the more, to be true and faithful disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ, in all that we say and do in our lives. God bless us all. Amen.

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Thursday, 10 September 2015 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, we heard about the famous saying by Jesus, that when someone strikes us on the cheek, we should offer the other cheek as well, and when someone wants to take our coat, then we should offer our clothes as well. This is the principle of being a Christian, a follower of our Lord Jesus Christ. It means that if we call ourselves a Christian, then we must be ready to die to ourselves and seek the good of others first before ourselves.

It was mentioned how if we all care only about ourselves, or to those whom we want to care for, then it is very often that our care and concern are not truly genuine. This is because in relationships and interactions between peoples, we often seek to be compensated for whatever we have given, and for everything we have given, naturally we seek to have a return of what we gave, in a similar way with what we granted.

It is in our nature to expect something in return of what we have done, or what had been done to us. If we have done something good for others, then we think that we deserve to be treated equally good as well by the ones to whom we have given that good thing, and if we have been wronged or slighted in any way, then we also by our nature would seek revenge and expect to see the other party to be injured and to suffer at least what we have suffered.

Yet, it is exactly this attitude and vulnerability of ours that had led us to continue in an endless cycle of sin and wickedness. As we try to preserve our ways and follow our own whim and desires, we tend to push our own interests first and ensure our own safety and satisfaction first, at the cost of others around us who may suffer because of our actions.

It was because of the selfishness of mankind, that so many people remained in suffering and continued to suffer even until now, as they were unable to shake free from their ego and their desires. Many people were oppressed, manipulated and persecuted because those in power and with influence, wealth and authority misused the gifts which God had entrusted to them. Instead of using these for the betterment and for the good of everyone, there were those who instead wanted to gain more and expand what they have already had, ignoring the pleas and the plight of those who have less or none.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, all these showed us that there is a need for us to reexamine our lives’ priorities and what we should truly do, and indeed what we are expected and ought to do as those who proclaim themselves as the disciples and followers of the Lord, the members of His Church. If we call ourselves Christians, the we would try our best to put the interests of one another, and others around us ahead of our own needs.

As Christians we are all called to be sensitive and attentive to all those who are around us, especially if any of them are in need of anything, be it love, sustenance to keep them from hunger and to allow them to have a comfortable life, or for guidance when they fall into darkness and sin. We have to remind each other to keep their faith in God, and to help one another living in this difficult world full of challenge.

In the first reading today, St. Paul in his letter to the faithful and the Church in Colossae reminded them that if they call themselves God’s people, and indeed they are God’s chosen, then they should truly clothe themselves and fill themselves up with everything that show their identity as belongings and possessions of Christ. So, then, we too are challenged to do the same.

If we profess ourselves to be Christians and those who follow the Lord and His commandments, then we should practice our faith in our daily life, in our actions and deeds, in everything we say and do. Then, people will truly believe that we are all followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, because they can witness what we are saying and doing, and they too may even believe in Christ because of us.

On the other hand, if we commit things that are contrary to the way of the Lord, and if we act in ways that do not show us as members of God’s Church and as His children, then we create scandals of the Faith, which not only that we would answer to it, but it is also because of our own actions, many people who would otherwise have believed in Christ had been led astray or lost their faith in Him.

Therefore, it is a clear reminder to all of us that we all have to always be mindful of what we are doing, on what we are saying and ensure that all of these are in accordance with the will of God, and conform to God’s ways. Let us all seek then, to be faithful and devoted servants of our Lord, and commit ourselves anew in His ways. May Almighty God bless us all, forgive us all our sins, and help us to keep ourselves firmly planted on the way towards salvation. God bless us all. Amen.

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Wednesday, 9 September 2015 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Claver, Priest (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

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.

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Tuesday, 8 September 2015 : Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we celebrate a special feast and occasion, celebrating the birth of the mother of our Lord Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today’s feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a reminder to all of us, of the way how God had brought us all mankind to salvation, that through her, God brought the Saviour of the world into the world itself, in Jesus Christ, His Son.

We heard today about Bethlehem, a city seemingly without much significance throughout the history of Israel, and even more seemed to be a small village without importance, both as part of Judah and as part of the land of Israel. But it has been prophesied that one day, the Saviour would come from that city, and through that seemingly unimportant and unassuming place, God would deliver His people out of darkness and into the light.

It was likely the place where David, the famous and one of the greatest kings of Israel came from, a humble shepherd who was beloved of the Lord and who rose to be a king over all Israel. And God had renewed the promise He had made to His people, beginning from Adam and Eve, and then Abraham, and then David as well as the people as a whole, to whom God devoted Himself to them with a promise.

For God promised Adam and Eve deliverance from sin and death, and from all the harm that Satan the deceiver has brought upon them, and although for generations Satan and his allies would harm the children of mankind, but God promised that the Woman would bring about the destruction of Satan, and the Son born of the woman would be that salvation, the One to bring mankind out of their fated destruction.

And to Abraham, God renewed that promise, showing His favour to him because of his great faith. God promised that Abraham would become the father of great nations, and his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, and as the grains of sand on the beach. God blessed him and his descendants, one of whom, David, to whom He renewed yet again the promise and the covenant He had established with men.

God told David that his descendant will rule forever and his kingdom and throne will last forever, and will never end. And all the promises God had made was fulfilled in its perfection and completeness through Jesus, God’s own Son, the Divine Word made flesh, who was born through the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, His earthly mother. By assuming the flesh of man and born of Mary and Joseph, God had fulfilled the promises He had made.

Firstly, that through Jesus Christ, the Son and Heir of David, God fulfilled His promises to David, as through His everlasting kingdom, God secured the throne and kingdom for the family of David forever. And by the means of faith in Jesus Christ, as all those who follow the Lord became the children of Abraham, God fulfilled also the promise made to Abraham, that he would become the father of many nations.

But the most important of all is the promise He had made to all mankind at the beginning of time, which as mentioned that when Satan brought about mankind’s fall into sin, God promised us that deliverance would come, and through Mary, our Lord made salvation a reality, by being born into this world to deliver all men from destruction of death.

The role of Mary is very important in the history of our salvation, since she alone among all mankind were prevented from suffering the same taint and corruption of sin, which we believe in the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, where she was conceived and born without the taint of the original sin of men. She had been prepared from the beginning to be the New Ark of the new Covenant of God, which is Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

And thus, Mary is the Woman prophesied and promised by the Lord, to be the one through whom Satan would face his final and irreversible ultimate defeat. That is because through Mary, the Saviour would be born, and by the action of the Saviour, Jesus, mankind would be freed from sin and death, and all those who believe in Him shall forever be brought free from the hands of the devil, who will be cast down forever and will be brought down low.

We all have to realise that in Mary, we have a very powerful ally, friend and mother, who cares for all of us just as she loves and cares for her Son, Jesus. She is special because she is the mother of our Lord, had been prepared for such since the beginning, and her birth heralded a new hope for the world. But during her life, she was also very dedicated and committed to the mission entrusted to her by God, living her life faithfully and with impeccable and exemplary faith, which should be an example to all of us.

Today, as we celebrate the birthday of Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the mother of us all, let us all dedicate ourselves to her more, and seek her help ever more, and following in her footsteps let us all live righteously in the sight and presence of God, so that by our faith and action, God’s salvation will be ours and the Covenant and promise He has made with us will be fulfilled to its completion.

Mary is a great example to all of us, and a great source of inspiration, as well as our greater intercessor before God. She is the closest to her Son in heaven, and all the time, she is always interceding for us, whom her Son had entrusted to her as He looked down from the cross that day at Calvary. And as her Son had triumphed over sin and evil, she would not want to see us all to fall back into our old way of sin.

Let us ask our Blessed Virgin, whose birth we celebrate this day, that we may be always preserved and protected by her Son, from all forms of malicious and evil influences that threaten to tear us away from the salvation that God had given us. Let us change our lives for the better, and commit ourselves to do what the Blessed Virgin Mary had done in her life, keeping faith and righteousness in everything we say and do.

May Almighty God be with us always, protect us and deliver us from all harm and from all evil, and may His blessed mother Mary always intercede for our sake, praying and beseeching for our redemption and deliverance, that God may remind us in our hearts to repent whenever we sin. God bless us all. Amen.

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Monday, 7 September 2015 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about the salvation which God had brought upon us all mankind, and how He healed us from our afflictions, the sickness and the shackles of sin, which He cast away from us and brought us to freedom with Him. In the first reading, St. Paul in his epistle and letter to the Church and the faithful in the city of Colossae reminded them about the Lord who revealed the truth about His salvation through Jesus Christ, His Son.

God can just abandon all of us and leave us all to be destroyed by our own foolishness, by our own disobedience and sins. Instead, He chose to reveal to us His infinite and everlasting mercy, through which He had brought is out of our misery and despair, from our fate of annihilation and suffering, into the new assurance and certainty of His love, and the everlasting life He had promised to all those who keep their faith in Him.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, in the Gospel today, this message is reiterated even more strongly, as we can hear how Jesus healed the paralytic man’s hand and made it whole and healthy again. And the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law tried to use that opportunity to find fault with Jesus, to criticise Him, to accuse Him and eventually to bring Him down and remove the One whom they have considered as a rival to their teaching authority.

In this alone, we can see how we behave in our own lives with regards to sin and with regards to God’s loving offer of mercy and forgiveness. Whenever we sin, we often act like the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, who refused to listen to God, and preferred to listen to their own heart’s desires, and closed themselves up against the Lord.

They acted high and mighty, appearing to be pious and also zealous guardians of the faith and the Law of God, criticising and condemning all those who did not follow the tenets and words of the Law as they prescribed. And they thought of themselves as righteous and just, as arbiters of God’s law among men. But they themselves had not acted and done things in the way the Lord had wanted them.

How many of us when we were accused to be wrong, or found ourselves to be in the wrong, went forth and tried to place the blame on others instead? Instead of trying to look at and contemplate our own faults and mistakes, we tried to come up with reasons to cover up our faults. We do not want to be blamed for something, worst of all is if the mistake is our own mistake.

But that is exactly what the problem is. The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law were too adamant that they were righteous and without fault, and they were unable to comprehend that the problem lies with them, the pride that is in their hearts and minds, the hubris which prevented them from seeing the truth about their own sin. Just as Jesus spoke about this in another parable, when He rebuked the Pharisees also for not being able to see their own faults while pointing out the faults of others, likening it to those who could see a splinter in the eye of another and yet a plank in their own eyes, they could not see it.

If we want to be forgiven, then all of us ought to be sincere and make the effort to seek the Lord and love Him with all of our hearts. God will see our love and devotion, and He who is loving and merciful will show His tender mercy upon us. But we have to really look deep into ourselves and discern what is the problem that we have with us.

Let us all seek to be forgiven for all of our faults, and let us all commit ourselves to changing our lives for the better. Let us all walk in the path of our Lord and be righteous in all things. May Almighty God, our Father, bless us all and keep us all in His grace and love. May He heal us from our afflictions and help us to remain always humble and dedicated to Him, that we may be able to help one another to repent our sins and find our way to the Lord. Amen.

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Sunday, 6 September 2015 : Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard how God had showed forth His love, care and concern for all of us mankind, by the sending of His Son Jesus into the world, as the real, concrete and perfect manifestation of His love. We heard about God who opened the eyes of the blind, who made lame people and paralysed people to be able to move and walk properly again, and God who made the mute speak and the deaf hear again.

Throughout the Bible, in the Old Testament, and especially in the Gospels, we heard how Jesus performed many miracles healing those who were sick, allowing the blind to see once again, the deaf to hear again, the lame to jump with joy and walk again, and eventually, all these aside, as we all should know, He healed us all from the one affliction that is most dangerous of all of them, that is sin.

For while the diseases and sicknesses of the flesh affect only the flesh, our bodies without harming the mind, the heart and the soul, sin affects everything, both in our bodies, in our heart, mind and soul. And the corruptions that sin caused made us all dirty and unworthy to be in the presence of our Lord, because of all the wickedness that tainted our souls, once pure and immaculate, but because of sin, we all have been afflicted.

And this affliction had affected mankind since the beginning of time, ever since mankind first sinned before the Lord, by disobeying what He had taught us and told us, and preferring to walk in our own path and satisfying our own selfish desires. Satan tempted mankind by playing to our desires and our heart’s wishes and wants, pretending to help us and be good to us, but in reality, he wished for our downfall together with him, that in our disobedience we will also be cast out the love of God just as Satan himself had been cast out.

But God did not create mankind just for nothing or without good reason. God Himself is perfect and all good, and He has no need for anything else save Himself. And in the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is united in His Three Divine Persons, in the perfect union of love and harmony, and He truly has no need for anything else. But in that love, He wanted to share the love He has, and thus He created all of us.

And we have to realise how special we are for the Lord. Nothing else in creation was created in the same way we have been created. We were created in the very image of the living God Himself, and our countenance is the image of God personified in each one of us. And God breathed His Spirit into each one of us, that through the Spirit of God we may have life, and no longer be dust where we came from.

But sin and disobedience had sundered us from all the goodness and the life which God had intended for us. In our greed and desire, we fail to look beyond them to find the true meaning of life, that is to be together with the Lord our God in perfect harmony, and instead we would rather listen to the devil and his lies, as he knows the vulnerabilities of our mortal bodies and hearts.

He got us right in our innocence, trying to persuade us that if we just let go of what the Lord had forbidden us to do, and eat of the fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then we would become like God. Indeed, we were made in the image of God, and His Spirit of life is inside us, but we are like a clean slate, ready to be filled with the love of God, and with God we would have lived forever in perfect harmony and goodness, not knowing any evil, for all that God created was good.

Instead, because of our disobedience, we were tainted with sin, and when we know about the evil we have done, we became ashamed and felt guilty, and we hid from the Lord. Is this not the exact same things as what we often normally do? Whenever we sin, did we not hide in shame for our sins and even pretend as if nothing had happened because we feared the repercussions, or that we were too proud to admit that we were wrong?

We flee away from the Lord out of fear and out of shame, and often, as mentioned, out of pride and hubris. We certainly would like to think that the Lord must have been disgusted by our actions and by our wickedness, but this certainly is a frequent major misconception of who the Lord is and how He looks upon us, each and every day. He despises our sins and wickedness, but He does not despise us as we are.

This is why He came for us, for our sake, and by His own hands, He brought healing, redemption and salvation to all of us sinners and delinquents, who have rebelled against Him. His love for us is greater than all that, and through His works, He had made us all whole. How is this so, brothers and sisters in Christ? It was by His suffering, every wounds inflicted on His flesh and body, as He was stripped from all dignity on the way to Calvary, that our Lord had saved us.

He was willing to suffer for the consequences of our sins and faults, which should have been ours, because of the love He had for us. He created us all out of love, and His desire for us is to share together in His everlasting peace, harmony and joy, and not suffering, pain, death and despair which had been part and parcel of our lives ever since we succumbed to the forces of sin.

To that extent He is willing to come to us and heal us from our sickness. He came to seek those who are sick from the diseases and plagues that afflicted us, primarily of which is our sin. For while bodily sickness and diseases cannot affect beyond our flesh, but sin affects everything. If we continue to dwell and live in sin, then we would risk ourselves to fall into hell, that is the suffering for eternity of not being able to enjoy God’s love and grace anymore, because we are unworthy due to our sins.

God wants us to be saved, brothers and sisters in Christ. He wants to touch us, comfort us and bring us to rest, rest from all the depredations and troubles of sin that we have had thus far. He desires our salvation and freedom from our affliction of sin, and that was what He has done. Whenever we look upon the crucifix and see the Lord Jesus crucified, we see the ultimate love which God shows us all.

Then, ultimately we have to ask ourselves, what have we done to make ourselves worthy of God’s love and mercy? God forgives freely and His mercy is freely available to all, but it depends on us in the end, whether we are willing and are capable of committing ourselves to the Lord’s mercy. We have to remember that when we are sick, we want to find a doctor that we can be healed and return to good health. Should it not be the same for our spiritual health?

Do we seek the Lord for forgiveness, and are we sincere in our desire to be forgiven? Do we make the effort to abandon our past sinfulness and live no longer in sin but in the light of God? If our answers to all these questions are yes, then that means we are ready and prime to receive God’s forgiveness, and then receive the fullness of His grace and love. If our answers are not, then we have a long way to go before us.

Shall we take the concrete step towards salvation in God? God offers us so many good things, and yet mankind, either fearful or prideful, failed to understand His love for them. May Almighty God, our loving God and Master, our loving and merciful Father help us all to understand His love and mercy, so that we may take the necessary steps to be forgiven of our numerous and myriads of sins. May all of us be healed and be made whole, and may our mouth filled with sinful words, hands tainted by wickedness be made clean and whole. God bless us all. Amen.

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Saturday, 5 September 2015 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Religious (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

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

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about how St. Paul mentioned to the faithful and the Church in Colossae in Greece, that they have been saved by the work and by the grace of God, and even though they were once delinquents, rebels and sinners, who disobeyed the Lord and lived in great wickedness, but God had made ourselves redeemed through His Son, Jesus Christ, by His sacrifice on the cross for us.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have to realise the great love and mercy that God had given to us. He had given us a new opportunity and a new chance to redeem ourselves from our faults and mistakes. And He wants us all to be loved and to be saved, and for Him no one should go alone on His own, rejected, hungry and downtrodden. He wants us all to be loved and cared, and He wants to forgive us our sins if we sincerely look for redemption.

That is why in the Gospel today, we heard of His confrontation with the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law. The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law were so transfixed on their laws, rules and regulations, so that they failed to realise and understand the true meaning, purpose and importance of the Law of God. The Law is a gift from God for us all mankind as a guide and a path for us to follow so that by walking with the Law, we may remain true to the Lord and be found righteous and worthy of being with our Lord once again.

The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law instead looked at the Law as something to be blindly obeyed and followed, even without proper understanding. They focused on external appearances and fulfilment of the Law without transformation of the heart, the mind and the soul. They enforced the laws of the sabbath day, where everyone was not supposed to do any work or activity, but they did so for the sake of enforcing it, and not understanding the true intention.

God did not intend for the Sabbath to oppress the people and making it a burden for them. Instead, His intention to instate such a rule is to help the people to coordinate and regulate themselves that out of their busy daily schedules, we may find the way to love our God and devote ourselves to Him, and spend some time with Him, speaking with Him, knowing Him and understanding His will rather than being preoccupied so much with our lives and our worldliness.

Ironically, the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who insisted so much on enforcing the laws of the sabbath were themselves the ones who became preoccupied with themselves and worldly concerns. They wanted to be seen as holy and pious when they went about doing whatever they could to fulfil the Law’s obligations. But in fact, they were dooming themselves for failing to understand God’s true intention, and in doing so they also led the people into ruin by their false ways.

The same often happen to us all as well, and we often lose the understanding of the bigger picture of our lives for the sake of fulfilling our own ego and our own desires. It is our selfishness that is often our greatest enemy and our greatest obstacle. And today, we celebrate the feast of a holy woman, whose life had been an inspiration for countless people, and whose actions had brought a new hope to countless people who had no hope.

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta was born an Albanian, and in her young age the desire to serve the Lord and His people grew in her heart, and she joined the missionaries and devoted herself to a life of celibacy and service. She went on to India and served there for the rest of her life. As we all should know from all that we had heard about her, she would go on to serve the poor people in Calcutta.

She established the Missionaries of Charity, a religious congregation devoted to the service of the least and the poorest in the society, those who had been rejected and without love, those who were suffering and on the brink of death. She brought hope to the destitute and those who thought that everything was hopeless to them. This is exactly what God had done for us, remember? He lifted us up out of the pit and the darkness, and He brought us a new hope and into the eternal life He promised to all of us.

Therefore, as we remember the examples of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, what she had done and how she devoted herself to the poor and the downtrodden without worry for herself, let us all also realise, first that God is loving and merciful, and He truly cares for all of us, and He wants all of us to be saved and redeemed from our sins and wickedness. We would have fallen into hell and eternal suffering for sure, if God did not come and help us.

Then, we have to realise that we have to let go of our own ego and die to our own selfishness if we are to be able to truly be the disciples and followers of the Lord. It was the selfishness of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law that made them as hypocrites in their faith, as they served themselves first and thought only of making themselves look great at the expense of righteousness and genuine faith.

Let us all follow in the footsteps of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the many other holy saints of God, and let us all show love, care and concern for others around us. Let us all show more concern and effort to bring all of us to true and genuine life filled with the love of God, and care for one another. May Almighty God, our Lord and loving Father be with us always, love us and may He guide us always to the right path, to love Him with all of our hearts. Amen.