Sunday Mass sermon

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Sunday, 7 July 2024 : Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday all of us are reminded through the readings of the Sacred Scriptures that we must always be obedient to God, be humble in all things and keep in mind that no matter how great we are, ultimately everything that we have, and all of our greatness and achievements, all of these are only possible because of God, His guidance and blessings towards us. Through God’s help and guidance all of us have received the strength and the means to persevere through the challenges of life, and by His providence, we have been guided to reach the path towards salvation and eternal life with God. However, we must always be ever vigilant and careful, lest the many temptations present around us may lead us astray into the path of ruin and damnation.

In our first reading this Sunday, we heard from the Book of the prophet Ezekiel in which God called Ezekiel and sent him to the people of Israel in exile in Babylon, to speak to them all at the place of their exile to remind them all of their loving God and Master, the One Who had chastised and punished their ancestors and predecessors for their sins and wickedness, but One Who also would embrace them all once again with His ever generous and enduring love because after all, despite all the anger and punishments that He had given against those same people. This is because ultimately, God has always loved His people, whom He had called and chosen to share in His love and inheritance, and as a loving Father to His beloved ones, that He had treated as His children, He wanted them all to grow up well and to follow the path that He has shown them.

Therefore, God’s chastisements and punishments to the Israelites were ultimately meant to lead those wayward people back towards Him. He wanted them all to repent from their sinful ways and to remember His love for them, and how as God’s chosen people, they were supposed to live righteously and virtuously in God’s path, and not to give in to the wickedness of the world, all the temptations of sin that could bring them all into destruction and damnation. Their exile in Babylon was meant to remind them all that without God, there would be no good future for them, and there would only be desolation and suffering if they continued to disobey the Lord. On the other hand, if they embraced God’s mercy and love, His compassion and kindness, then there will be path out of the darkness and despair for them.

In our second reading today, taken from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Church and the faithful in Corinth, we heard of the words of the Apostle St. Paul reminding the faithful there about the dangers of temptations and the corruptions of human desires and pride, all of which can lead the people into the path of sin and evil. He used himself as an example and told the faithful in Corinth about how he has constantly been reminded by the ‘thorn of Satan’ to keep him reminded of his own imperfections and frailty, lest he became to proud because of all of his works and achievements in proclaiming the Good News of God to more and more people among the Gentiles in his missionary journeys. Through this example, St. Paul wanted to remind and warn the other faithful people of God not to give in to the very dangerous allures and temptations of worldly fame, glory and ambitions which could lead them astray from the path of God’s righteousness.

Then in our Gospel passage today, we heard of the moment when Lord Jesus returned to His hometown of Nazareth after He has raised the daughter of Jairus the synagogue official from the dead. We heard how the townspeople of the Lord’s own hometown doubted and questioned whatever the Lord had done and performed in other places, which certainly had been spread widely among the people, and the people of Nazareth as we heard, many of them refused to believe that the Lord Jesus could have done all the miracles and the wonders which they heard that He had done in other parts and towns of Galilee. They also raised up the point and fact of how He grew up in their midst, and His own Mother Mary and other family members were there in that town, and how He was the mere Son of the town carpenter, namely St. Joseph, His foster father.

From all these things which we have heard today, all of us are shown again the dangers of our pride and ego, our thinking that we know it better than God on how we should progress in our lives and how we should act. Those people of Nazareth, the Lord’s own neighbours and relatives, all of them refused to believe in Him simply because they likely presumed that they knew Him well and they knew about His humble background, being the Son of a small town carpenter, an occupation that was considered as honourable and was necessary, and yet often maligned against and disregarded by the community as a poor man’s job, as a hard labour job that was done only by those who were uneducated and illiterate. And hence, those people hardened their hearts and minds with their prejudices, refusing to believe that the Lord could have performed all those miracles and wonders, and spoke all those wise words and teachings.

It was this same pride and ego, this inability to restrain the desires for worldly glory and temptations which had brought the Israelites, the people of God to their downfall all those years ago. Those temptations misled them down the path towards ruin and condemnation, and God chastised them all for those sins and wickedness that they had committed. Yet, the Lord still loved them all and sent them His prophets and messengers to help them, even though in their stubbornness, they refused to listen and believe in Him, persecuting those prophets and messengers of God, as they had also done to the prophet Ezekiel. And in the same manner, the Lord Himself had also been rejected and persecuted by those whom He had been sent to, the ones that whose midst He had come into so that He might help and lead them out the path of darkness into the Light of God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we listened and remembered the words of the Lord contained within the Scripture readings which we have received this Sunday, let us all therefore reflect on our own way of life, our own actions and all the things which we had done. Let us all ask ourselves whether we have allowed our pride, ego, desires, ambitions and all the things that often distracted and misled us in this life to bring us away from the path of God’s salvation. Let us all continue to dedicate ourselves and our every moments in life to serve the Lord ever more faithfully, and let us continue to be humble, to be willing to listen to God speaking to us all through His Church and through everyone we encounter in life, so that by listening to Him and obeying His will, we may find our path in life, and be guided ever more to walk in the path towards God’s salvation and grace.

May the Lord, our ever loving God and Creator, continue to love and help us in our journey, and may He continue to bless us all in our every actions, words, deeds, and our every efforts to carry out His Law and commandments in every moments of our lives. May God be with us all, His beloved people and His Church, so that by His Presence and ever loving guidance in our lives, we may continue to walk faithfully in His path, and be the good and worthy role models and inspirations for one another, that our lives may always be illuminated with God’s light, His love and truth, at all times. Let us always remember God’s ever enduring love, and be thankful for all that He had done for us, now and always. Amen.

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Sunday, 30 June 2024 : Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday all of us are reminded through the words of the Sacred Scriptures which we have heard and received that each and every one of us as God’s most important Creation, as the pinnacle of His works in this Universe and world, as His most beloved ones are truly precious to God, and we should truly be thankful to Him because He has always shown us His grace, kindness and love despite our many transgressions, stubborn attitudes and disobedience against Him. He has always put us first and foremost in His mind, reaching out to us to find us, to be reconciled with us and to help us all out of our predicament. He has always wanted each and every one of us to find our way back to Him, so that what was once lost from us through disobedience and sin, we may regain through our renewed obedience and faith in Him, through His love and ever generous forgiveness for our sins and transgressions.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Book of Wisdom in which it was highlighted that God created all things good and perfect, and what we all must realise is that because God Himself is all good and perfect, He did not create evil or sin, or any of the imperfections in this world. He created all things including all of us mankind in the state of perfection, all good and wonderful, truly worthy of God as the Master and Lord of all creation. Especially for us, we have been made and crafted in the very image and likeness of God Himself. All of us were never meant to suffer and to endure all the challenges and trials present before us and our predecessors in this world, as we were all meant to exist in the Presence of God, to enjoy fully His love and grace, experiencing fully His inheritance and everything that He has prepared for us in this world.

And as mentioned by the author of the Book of Wisdom, God also did not create death or rejoice in our destruction. Rather, our deaths came about because of our own doing, by our failures and inability to follow the Lord wholeheartedly, in our conscious choice to follow the path of rebellion and disobedience against God, which essentially us rejecting the love of God, His grace and kindness, and hence, when we reject God, the Lord and Master of life, then the life which He has granted to us will depart from us, and we will not have share in Him, and that was how death came to claim us, because when life departs us, then we suffer from death, as the prime consequence of sin, which in turn is the consequence of our disobedience against God.

If we wonder why God Who made us all good and perfect had allowed us to disobey Him and to commit such evils, this was because He granted to us the gift of free will, the great gift which He has bestowed on us, because He wants us to love Him by our own free will, and that we truly choose to love Him and not by coercion or force. This is because true love is something that comes voluntarily and freely from the heart, and not something that God can force from us. Thus, He gave us the gift of free will, which is something that His Angels have also been given, as was evident from how Satan, once known as Lucifer, the most brilliant and mightiest of all the Angels that God had created, chose to embrace and give in to his pride and ego, his ambition and desire, rebelling against God and falling from grace, becoming the great enemy of all the faithful. It was him who also successfully tempted our first ancestors to sin, to disobey God just as he himself had done.

In our second reading today, we heard from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Church and the faithful in Corinth in which the Apostle exhorted all of the faithful people of God to be filled with love just as much as they had been filled with knowledge and other riches of all sorts, imitating and following the good examples of Christ Himself, the Lord and Saviour of all, Who had loved everyone, all of us so greatly, that He was willing to empty Himself of all glory, honour and riches, of all dignity so that by His loving embrace of our sufferings and by bearing upon Himself all of our sins and their consequences, He might open for us the path to salvation and eternal life, showing us all the path to return once again to the loving Presence and grace of God, to regain what we have lost.

God had sent unto us all His own beloved Son, so that while our ancestors sinned by engorging upon the forbidden fruits and desiring and craving after knowledge, glory and riches of the world, thus, by His Son’s perfect obedience, and by His willingness to abandon all glory and honour, He has shown us all how we can come out from our state of deprivation and the darkness all around us in this world. Through His Son, God wants us all to find our way back to Him, and to have the chance to be reconciled with Him. He has given us many opportunities, again and again, for us to embrace Him and to accept the generous love and mercy which He has always shown us. He has reached out to us, calling out upon us to follow Him once again into the path of righteousness, abandoning our wickedness and sins.

And in our Gospel passage today, we heard from the Gospel of St. Mark of the story of the two great miracles that the Lord Jesus performed during His ministry, the well-known healing of the woman who had long suffered from haemorrhage or bleeding issue, and also the raising of the dead daughter of Jairus, the synagogue official, back into life. These two miracles showed us first of all the love of God which He has generously given to us through His Son, through which He has come into our midst, touching our lives and strengthening us, leading us back to His loving embrace, giving us new hope and rejuvenating our lives. And as the Lord had done to both the woman suffering from haemorrhage and the dead daughter of Jairus, He showed us all that He is truly in charge of all things, over all the matters of the world, over all life and death. And again, He does not want us to be lost forever to death, but to return to Him and to live and exist with Him forever in a renewed bond of love.

That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday as we listened to these words from the Scriptures, all of us must heed the message which the Lord through His Church had been giving to us, as He calls upon us to listen to Him and to embrace His love, compassion and mercy. He wants us all to seek Him with faith and love, just as how the woman while trying to hide her shame and condition, dared to brave through the huge crowd around the Lord with the firm hope and faith in her heart, that the Lord could heal hear from her predicament, and that of Jairus, who remained faithful and trusting in the Lord when He reassured him and his family that his daughter did not die and would be returned to him, while others laughed at the Lord and mocked Him. We too must have this strong, enduring and vibrant faith, trust and hope in the Lord, at all times.

Each and every one of us are sinners, brothers and sisters in Christ, and by our ancestors’ disobedience against God and by our own conscious choice to disobey Him and to disregard His Law and commandments, we have fallen into the state of sin, and been corrupted by sin’s dangerous stranglehold on us. But the Lord Who has loved us all has never given up on us, and He has given us the sure hope and guarantee of our liberation and salvation through His own Beloved Son, and what we all need to do now is for us to embrace this most and ever generous love and mercy. The question is then, are we willing to humble ourselves and seek Him, recognising how wicked and fallen we have ended up in, and are we willing to embrace Him with the faith and trust which those people mentioned in our Gospel passage today had shown us all?

Let us all therefore return to the Lord, our loving God and Father, with renewed love and desire to serve Him and to follow Him all of our lives, rejecting from now on all the allures, temptations and false pleasures that sin and evil have tempted us with, and committing ourselves henceforth to live ever more faithfully in God’s Presence. May the Lord continue to help, guide and strengthen us all in this journey of faith throughout our lives, and may He bless our every good works, efforts and endeavours, now and always. Amen.

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Sunday, 23 June 2024 : Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday all of us are reminded that in God alone we have hope and salvation, and as His people, we must always have this strong faith and trust in Him, believing that it is in Him that we shall always have the assurance of true happiness and eternal glory, all of which shall be ours if we remain steadfast in our dedication and commitment to God. We need to have faith and trust in the Lord even when we are encountering difficulties, challenges, trials and tribulations, as it is during all those period of challenges that we often lose our faith in God and ended up veering off into the path towards destruction and damnation. This is why we are all reminded this Sunday that we must always stay steadfast to this faith that we have in the Lord.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Book of Job in which the Lord spoke to His servant Job, who had been afflicted greatly by many misfortunes affecting his property, family and personal health due to the attacks from the evil one, Satan, who wanted to test Job’s faith and trust in God. Job suffered greatly, but earlier on in the Book of Job, he did not waver in his faith and remained steadfast in trusting the Lord, not allowing all those misfortunes from tempting and misleading him down the path of rebellion and disobedience against God. He did not give in to despair, and while he struggled amidst the trials and challenges that he had faced, he continued to follow the Lord faithfully and blamed himself more for the misfortunes that he had faced.

This was where God reminded Job of the vastness of His mysteries and all the things that were hidden from human understanding and perception, as something that is beyond our capacity and ability to know and understand. God told Job that He has the power and dominion over all things, and everything in this world happened because of what He has willed to be, and nothing is ever beyond His reach and ability. This is why through these words and reminders, we are also called to heed the fact that we must always put our faith and trust in the Lord, and we must never lose hope and the focus on Him, as it is in Him alone that we can find lasting and true peace that endures and saves.

In our second reading today, taken from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Church and the faithful in the city of Corinth, the Apostle spoke of the salvation which everyone has received from the Lord through His Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour, the Son of God, through Whom God had revealed His salvation to everyone, so that through His Son, all of us mankind, who have once been separated from Him, may find the sure path to be reunited once again with Him. It was indeed a great mystery of God’s salvation and saving works among His people that He has sent none other than His own Beloved and begotten Son to be Our Saviour, and through the amazing manner by which He had done so, in lovingly bearing for our sake, our many burdens and the punishments for our sins and wickedness.

Again, we are all reminded that our hope is in the Lord, which He has made clear through His Son, through Christ’s Light and Hope, which has illuminated our path in the darkness surrounding us, all the evils and wickedness, the power of sin and corruption that have surrounded and dominated us all these while. Despite all these things arrayed against us and all the challenges and trials that we have to face in our path and journey, but God reminds us all that in Him alone that there is truly the path to eternal life and true happiness. Separated from God, we truly have nothing and we cannot persist amidst all the challenges and trials facing us, and without Him as the anchor of our lives, we will easily be swept away by the destructive forces and waves of sin, evil and wickedness around us.

This is precisely what we have heard in our Gospel passage today, in which the famous story of how the Lord Jesus calmed and dissipated a great storm was told to us. We heard how at that time the Lord and His disciples were struck by a great storm which battered their boat and threatened them with all the winds and the waves, all of which were greatly dangerous, and the disciples were all panicking, thinking that they would drown in that place with all that went against them. When they awakened the Lord, He rebuked them for their lack of faith in Him, their lack of trust in God’s power and providence, and then went on to calm the waves and the storm with the mere power of His words and will.

This occasion is a reminder for us all, that God is always with His Church, represented and symbolised by that boat that was floating and battered by the great waves and the wind. The disciples were representing all of us, all the holy people of God, the members and parts of God’s Church. Those winds and great waves represent the great obstacles, trials and challenges which were facing us all in the Church, all the oppositions, persecutions and hardships that many among the faithful had to face. All those challenges and obstacles may indeed seem to be very daunting and terrible, scary and seemingly insurmountable, but we must never lose faith in the Lord, and remain firmly faithful in Him. We must not lose heart and give in to the temptations and challenges, or else, we may end up losing everything.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday all of us are reminded that we must always establish our lives and our livelihood, our actions and everything in our lives upon the firm foundation that God alone can provide us. It has certainly been too often that we have been disappointed again and again by the many worldly means and provisions which had been our staple and our means of survival, and yet, none of those could truly provide us with true and lasting satisfaction and happiness besides that of the Lord and His loving providence. That is why we are reminded again and again this day that we should always strive to put God at the centre and as the focus of our whole lives and existence.

May the Lord continue to be with us all, His beloved people and His Church, and may He empower each and every one of us so that by our whole lives, our actions and by our examples, we may always be good role models in leading and inspiring more and more people to be ever more faithful to the Lord, to commit themselves to Him and to do His will, as we have all been called to do. May God bless our every efforts and endeavours, and may He be with His Church, and grant us all His strength and grace, now and always. Amen.

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Sunday, 16 June 2024 : Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday all of us are called to live faithfully in the Lord and to commit ourselves to the path which the Lord has shown to us so that we may truly bear rich fruits of our Christian faith. Each and every one of us are reminded that as Christians, our lives cannot be idle and devoid of virtues and good deeds, for if we do not live our lives as Christians should live, then we may end up scandalising our faith and our Christian way of life, as well as besmirching the Holy Name of God. We Christians are known by our fruits, the fruits of our Christian faith, that is our actions and lives that are truly in accordance with God and His ways, as we live out our lives faithfully each day in His Presence. Those who profess to be Christians and yet act in a different manner are truly deficient and dead in faith.

In our first reading today, taken from the Book of the prophet Ezekiel, we heard of the words of the Lord to His people, the Israelites and their remnants, which was at that time in exile in Babylon and in other places, that He would renew His people, just as they had fallen from grace and been cast down into defeat and exile from their homeland. The Lord used the allusion to a cedar tree to show how the Lord would renew the cedar tree, that a new sapling would regrow and be reestablished on the mountain of Israel, which firstly showed us all how God would not abandon His people even as He chastised and punished them because of their sins and wickedness. God after all still loved all of His beloved people who were all like His children. And like a loving and caring Father, He wants all of His children to grow up well and in the right way.

This is why He chastised and disciplined them when they disobeyed and refused to follow Him and His ways. The Lord does not want any one of them to be lost to Him forever, which could indeed happen through our disobedience and wickedness, all of which led into sin, and sin brings us all into the dominion of death and eternal damnation, condemned and separated forever from God, from His love and grace. That was why, while mankind disobeyed Him from the very beginning of time, God did not obliterate and destroy them all. He gave them chances and opportunities, again and again for them to return to Him and to find their way once again towards Him. Many had been lost along the way, but not few had been saved from the precipice of destruction, and brought into salvation in God.

In our second reading today, we heard from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Church and the faithful in Corinth in which the Apostle reminded all the faithful people of God that they must all live in faith, in the spirit and not in the way of the flesh. St. Paul often exhorted the faithful to be vigilant and to guard themselves against all those things of the flesh which may cause us mankind to fall into temptation and hence into disobedience against God. Throughout history, many people have fallen into these various temptations, failing to resist all the things that led them to follow the whim of their desires and greed, all the things that kept them from finding the path towards the Lord. When mankind prioritised themselves and forgot about God, His path and His teachings, that is when we are likely to fall into sin and destruction.

That was why the Lord reminded us all through His Apostle St. Paul that as Christians, we are all God’s beloved and holy people, and as is therefore expected from us, we should strive to live each and every moments of our lives worthily of the Lord, by cultivating our faith within us, allowing our faith to continue to grow and flourish throughout time, so that we may truly bear rich fruits and wonderful things and deeds in each and every moments of our lives. This is why we believe that our faith must always be supported and made alive and vibrant, living and true through our actions, by showing it in our love for God first and foremost, and then in our love for one another, for our fellow neighbours, brothers and sisters just as the Lord Himself had taught us.

Without these genuine and real actions, then our faith is no better than those of hypocrites and unbelievers. Those were the faults of many among our predecessors, as they made empty gestures and meaningless faith, while on the other hand, they committed grievous sins and wicked deeds against God and their fellow brothers and sisters alike. That is why we are cautioned that we should not walk down this same path which had led so many of our predecessors towards their downfall and destruction. We should always strive to inspire each other that even in the smallest and simplest things we say and do, we will always strive to embody our Christian faith in all things. This is how we can then make our faith truly alive, and how we can bring real impact and great fruits of our dedication, the fruits of love and hope, the fruits of goodness and virtues in our community of the faithful and in our world today.

In our Gospel passage today, taken from the Gospel of St. Mark, we heard of the Lord speaking about the parables of the Kingdom of God, comparing the Kingdom of God firstly to a sower of seeds and what happened when the seeds germinate and grow into plants that bear rich fruits and products, and then also to a small and tiny mustard seed which when it germinates and grows, it becomes a great and large tree under which many birds and other animals may take shelter in. All of these are ways for the Lord to explain and to make it clear that each and every one of us are parts of this same Kingdom of God, the Church that the Lord has established in this world, manifesting God’s kingdom and dominion through each and every one of us, through our very lives and efforts.

Through us and our works, our contributions and efforts, each one of us are part of the nurturing of the Kingdom of God being present in our midst, by us all partaking in the good works and efforts of the Church in each and every unique areas in life and in every particular missions and vocations that we have been called into. Through our every actions, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, all these will lead to the blossoming of the Kingdom of God in our midst, and we must never underestimate the impact of our actions. Our actions and way of life can either positively or negatively impact those present around us, as good and virtuous acts and works can truly lead to many others believing and following the Lord as well, and more therefore would be doing good deeds and works, but on the contrary, the same will also happen if we do negative and wicked acts, which may turn people away from the Church and the salvation in God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore realise that each one of us are cooperators of the truth and love of God, each and every one of us are the labourers in the vineyard of the Lord, and we have been called to our respective vocations and ministries, to proclaim the Lord through all of our words and deeds, and to be the shining beacons of God’s truth and Good News. May all of us continue to grow ever stronger in our faith in the Lord, and may the Lord continue to help, guide and support us in our journey throughout life, to do His will and to glorify His Name, now and always. Amen.

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Sunday, 9 June 2024 : Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday we are all reminded of our human nature and the sins which we have committed because of our inability to resist the temptations of worldly glory and desire, the temptations and coercions which the evil one and his forces have placed in our paths in life. All of us are reminded that we are all God’s people and we should always strive to do what is good, right and just, all in accordance to everything that God has shown and taught us, to be truly and holy, worthy and appropriate in our lives for Him at all times. Otherwise, how can we truly call ourselves as Christians, as God’s holy and beloved people?

In our first reading today, we heard from the beginning of the Book of Genesis in which the story of the moment of mankind’s fall into sin was told to us. It was the moment right after Adam and Eve, our first ancestors, ate of the fruits of the forbidden Tree of knowledge of good and evil, the tree that the Lord specifically told Adam and Eve not to eat from because if they were to eat of the fruits, then they would die. Indeed, that would come true, because when Adam and Eve, tempted by the falsehoods and lies of Satan chose to disobey God and ate the fruits of the Tree of knowledge of good and evil, they had to suffer the trials and hardships of the world, suffering in this world and eventually like all of us, we have to endure death.

It was never God’s intention to make us suffer and endure death, but it was by our own conscious choice, choosing the falsehoods of the evil one that had deceived and deluded us with temptations of worldly glory, power, knowledge and all the things that we ourselves often desired for in this world. God created us all good and perfect, all in His own image, and we have indeed been intended to a life of pure bliss and perfect harmony with Him forever, but because of our wickedness and sins, we have fallen into this state, and by our own choice we have fallen into this path of wickedness and evil, and we should have been crushed and destroyed for this rebellion.

And yet, God Who loved each and every one of us desired that all of us should be reconciled and reunited with Him. Despite our imperfections and evils, He wanted that each and every one of us may overcome our challenges and imperfections, all the temptations and evils present around us so that we may truly discover the true purpose in life, that is to be in perfect love and harmony in God, to be once again blessed and full of God’s grace just has how it was at the very beginning of time. That is why He has repeatedly sent us again and again His help, reaching out to us through His servants and messengers, His prophets, and ultimately, His own Beloved Son.

In our second reading this Sunday, we heard from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, St. Paul the Apostle spoke to all the faithful including all of us reminding us that through Christ, Our Lord and Saviour, God had revealed the fullness of His love and the intention to be reconciled with us. Each and every one of us are meant to overcome the limitations of our worldly and earthly selves. Our human existence and our sufferings in this world are part of this journey, of repentance and reconciliation with God. And the Lord has sent us His only begotten Son, to be the One to bridge the gap between us and Himself, and to show us all the truth of His salvation and love.

Through Christ we have received the assurance of eternal life, and the new life in the Lord, through the Holy Spirit that He has sent down to be upon us in His Church, to dwell within us and among all of us. And He also gave us all His own Most Previous Body and Blood to partake, that by partaking in Him, the Bread of Life, we may have life in us, a new life that is truly blessed and filled with God’s grace. And by accepting Him as Our Lord and Saviour, becoming part of this One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, we have all been called to return to the Lord, to our loving Father and Creator, Who has always loved us all these while, and Who wants to be reconciled with us.

But at the same time, as we all heard in our Gospel passage today, we must also be careful of the continuing and constant efforts by the evil one and all of his allies in sowing seeds of doubt and divisions in our midst, as Satan is always ever busy with his fellow forces of evil to lead us astray and to bring us all into our downfall as he has always done since the very beginning. We heard in the Gospel of St. Mark of how the Lord was confronted by a group of the Pharisees who accused Him of healing and casting out demons from a possessed man because He had been colluding and working with evil spirits, especially the prince of demons, Beelzebul.

The Lord rebuked those Pharisees and told them that what He had done, all had come from the Lord, and it was ironic that the devil and all of his forces, including that of Beelzebul, would not have fought among them and with each other. In fact, they were no less united in their efforts to attack and to destroy us all through their works in sowing doubts and confusion, just as they did at the time. The Pharisees themselves had in fact allowed these evil and wicked forces to tempt and mislead them down the wrong path, by persuading them to oppose the Lord and all of His works out of their jealousy, arrogance and desires. And by doing all that, they were in fact helping the devil with his works against us.

The Lord reminded all of us through all of these that we must always strive to oppose the temptations of sin, the allures of wicked desires and evils all around us, and we must strive to obey the Lord and His reminders to us, that we must always do His will, and do what He has commanded and taught us to do in our every moments throughout life. We must always remind ourselves not to allow the evil one to tempt and to drag us into our downfall, but instead we must continue to remain firmly faithful to the Lord and put our complete faith and trust in Him at all times.

Let us all hence continue to live our lives worthily in the Lord, doing whatever we can so that by all of our words, actions and deeds, we will continue to walk in this path of grace towards the Lord, and that we may grow ever stronger in our faith in Him. Let us all continue to persevere in faith, in our every day moments and lives so that we may not be discouraged by all the challenges and the hardships we may have to encounter in our journey. May the Lord, our loving and compassionate God continue to guide and strengthen us in each and every moments of our lives, and in our every works and endeavours. Amen.

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Sunday, 2 June 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the great occasion of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, also known as Corpus Christi, marking just like last Sunday’s Trinity Sunday, a very important and core tenet of our Christian faith and beliefs. All of us as Christians believe that the Holy Eucharist, which we celebrate at the Holy Mass or more appropriately, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, is none other than the Most Holy and Precious Body and Blood of Our Lord Himself. This is the belief in the Doctrine of the Transubstantiation, one of the core tenets of the Christian faith, that God has given us all His own Most Holy and Precious Body and Blood for our salvation, through the New and Eternal Covenant He had established with us.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Book of Exodus of the words of Moses, the leader of the Israelites during the time of their Exodus from Egypt and their journey towards the Promised Land of Canaan, who spoke to the Israelites regarding the great and most wonderful love which God has shown to His people in all that He had done for them, and this culminated with the Covenant which He established anew with all of His people at the holy mountain of God, Mount Sinai, where the people of Israel had journeyed towards. There at the holy mountain, through Moses, the Covenant between God and His people was sealed and established, by the sacrifice and the outpouring of the blood of a sacrificial lamb upon the altar.

This was in fact a prefigurement of what would happen much later on, mentioned in our second reading today from the Epistle to the Hebrews. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews often linked the Lord Jesus to the role of the High Priest for indeed, Christ is the one and only True, Eternal High Priest for all mankind. Why is this so? This is because by His Passion, His sufferings and His trials, His crucifixion and ultimately His death on the Cross, our Lord has willingly offered the perfect and only worthy offering to the Lord for our salvation and redemption. In the past, the sacrifice and the outpouring of the blood of the animals like lambs were used to represent the redemption and forgiveness of God for the sins of His people.

However, the blood of the lambs alone would not have been enough to redeem all of mankind for all their innumerable sins and faults, and that was why the sacrificial and sin offerings were repeatedly done again and again by the priests and the high priests who offered them for the sake of the people of God. But God had promised His salvation to all of His people, telling and reassuring them all that one day He would send His Saviour, Who would deliver them all from their sins, much as how He has once delivered them and freed them from the hands of the Pharaoh and the Egyptians, leading them to freedom and bringing them to the Promised Land where He settled them and made them to dwell in peace.

Again all of those were prefigurement of the salvation that is to come for all of us, the whole people, all the children of mankind. For through His Beloved Son, His only Begotten Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Our Eternal High Priest, He showed us all the sure path to eternal life and salvation, because by His offering of the perfect and most worthy offering, which is worth all of the immense and unimaginably great extent of our many sins and wickedness, of all mankind that has, is and will ever exist, from the beginning to the end of time, He has redeemed all of us, once and for all through this supreme act of sacrifice and offering. And what is this perfect and most worthy offering, brothers and sisters in Christ? It is none other than His own Most Precious Body and Blood, the Body and Blood of the Lamb of God, broken and outpoured upon us from the Altar of the Cross. Through His Precious Body and Blood, Christ has made with us all, a New and Eternal Covenant between us and God.

In our Gospel passage today, we then heard of the account from the Gospel of St. Mark of the Institution of the Holy Eucharist during the Last Supper, which happened just before the Lord was to begin His Passion, His suffering and death. He gave His disciples the bread that He has blessed, prayed over and broken up, sharing with them His own Most Holy and Precious Body, with the words, ‘Take this. It is My Body.’ And afterwards, He also shared the chalice or cup filled with the wine He has also blessed, and told them that that wine is His Blood, the Blood of the New Covenant.’ When the Lord said this to His disciples, He truly meant it as He said that the bread is His Body and the wine is His Blood.

He never meant for the bread and wine to be merely symbolic or memorial representation of His Body and Blood and His Sacrifice on the Cross. He literally and truly meant that the disciples, and all of His Church, are truly consuming, partaking and having His own Precious Body and Blood, the Body and Blood of the Lamb of God, the Bread of Life, Who would soon suffer and endure the most bitter and painful sufferings for their sake, for all of us, so that by His willing sacrifice, He might provide for us the sure path to salvation and eternal life, breaking forever the chains of sin and death that had dominated over us from the beginning of time. This is also what He meant when earlier on during the discourse on the Bread of Life, the Lord also said that His Body is truly food and His Blood is truly drink, and all those who partake of the Bread of Life, of His Body and Blood, will never perish but have eternal life.

This is why from the very earliest beginnings and history of the Church, the Church fathers from the Apostles and their successors, throughout time and history and right down to this present moment have all preserved this core belief and tenet in the Real Presence of the Lord in the Holy Eucharist, that in each and every celebration of the Holy Mass, the bread and wine have indeed been turned by the power of God through the Holy Spirit, through the hands and prayers of His priests, to be the very essence and reality of His own Most Precious Body and His Most Precious Blood, although in appearance, they may still appear as bread and wine to our senses. Through our faith in Him, we believe that what we partake is none other than the Lord Himself.

But it is also important that we understand that each and every celebrations of the Holy Mass, unlike what some people outside and even within the Church had misunderstood and misrepresented, are not the repetitions of the sacrifice of the Lord at Calvary. Instead, every time the Holy Mass is celebrated, it is exactly the same Sacrifice that the Lord has offered and given to us at Calvary, at the moment of His Passion, His suffering and death on His Cross. What the Church fathers and the early Christians, and all of our predecessors in faith throughout time had partaken in the Holy Eucharist, is the same Precious Body and Precious Blood of the Lord just as what we have partaken and received, and all of us share in this Holy Communion, uniting all of us in this One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Body of Christ and Kingdom of God on earth.

The Lord has instituted the Holy Eucharist and also the Ministerial Priesthood at the Last Supper, to perpetuate this celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, so that by the power that He had granted to those whom He had chosen, and to their successors, the bishops and priests throughout time and history, right up to this day, at every celebration of the Holy Mass, the bread and wine have indeed been consecrated and transformed into the essence and reality of His own Body and Blood, which we believe as the Doctrine of Transubstantiation. When the Lord asked His disciples to ‘do this in the memory of Me’, some misunderstood that the celebration of the Eucharist is a mere symbol or memory, but the reality is that, each celebration is indeed meant to bring unto us the Sacrifice of the Lord at Calvary, and we all truly partake His Body and Blood, not merely having a symbol of His loving sacrifice.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we commemorate this great Solemnity of the Most Holy and Precious Body and Blood of Christ or Corpus Christi, let us all reflect on how much we truly believe in the Real Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist. The sad and unfortunate reality in our Church today is that, many even within the Church had no longer believed in the Real Presence, and the belief in the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the Real Presence have been steadily slipping to an all-time low. Many of us treated the Lord and His Real Presence with indifference and lack of reverence and faith. We often treat the Eucharist as nothing more than bread and wine, and we lack the proper reverence and respect, honour and worship of the Lord’s Real Presence.

That partly explain why increasingly there are more and more lapses from among us in the Church, as we steadily and continuously losing people to the world, to the many temptations present around us, and many others do not believe in the Real Presence in the Lord either, especially those who have not believed in God, whenever they see us treating the Eucharist with indifference and lack of respect and proper adoration. That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, today, let us all renew our commitment to the Lord, remembering the New and Eternal Covenant that He Himself has made and sealed with us all by the breaking of His own Holy and Precious Body and the outpouring of His own Holy and Precious Blood, through His perfect and loving sacrifice on the Cross.

Let us all renew our devotion to the Lord, particularly in the way we treat the Holy Eucharist, Our Lord’s very own Most Precious Body and Blood, in how we honour and respect Him, and in ensuring that each and every one of us keep ourselves truly worthy to be the Temple of His Holy Presence, as we all partake His Holy and Precious Body and Blood into ourselves, into our very beings. Let us all strive to be truly holy and worthy to receive the Lord, our most loving God, Who has shared with us this most perfect and loving gift of His Body and Blood, so that as He had said, that we who partake in Him, will receive the assurance of eternal life and glory with Him, and will be raised with Him on the last day.

May the Lord, our God and Saviour, Who has given us all His Most Holy and Precious Body and Blood in the Eucharist, continue to bless us all and guide us in our journey of faith throughout our lives. May He empower and strengthen each and every one of us so that in all the things that we do, so that by our worthy lives and by our proper respect and belief in the Real Presence of the Lord, more and more people may come to the Lord and be healed by Him, and seek Him as their Lord and Saviour, now and always. Amen.

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Sunday, 2 June 2024 : Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday we are all reminded that we all exist for God and all the things we do in this life, our every moments, our whole beings, our whole reason for living should indeed be for the Lord, to glorify and to praise Him ceaselessly, for all the great and wonderful things which He had done for us. Each and every one of us have been called to follow the path of the Law, to obey His Law and to do whatever is needed for us so that our lives may truly be holy and worthy of Him. However, at the same time, we are also reminded that we must practice our faith in the manner that is truly embodying our faith, and develop a genuine and loving relationship with God, through those actions and piety which we have carried out in our daily living, or else, we are no better than hypocrites and unbelievers.

In our first reading this Sunday we heard from the Book of Deuteronomy in which Moses reminded the people of Israel, God’s first chosen people to observe the Sabbath day, which is the last or seventh day in the week. The Sabbath is a day of rest in which work and labour, activities that are not focused on the Lord are not allowed and when the people of God were encouraged to spend their time in prayer and devotion to God, firstly in connection with how the Lord Himself also rested on the seventh day when He created the Universe and the whole world. This day of Sabbath rest was also then meant to remind the people that they were truly God’s people and their livelihood, their activities and all their daily living should have God as the centre and focus of all things.

That was the intention and purpose why the Sabbath Law was enacted and imposed by the Lord on His people, the Israelites. As otherwise, it would have been very easy for the people to forget about God, to go on with their daily lives and activities, in their pursuits for glory and wealth, for worldly satisfactions and pleasures. All of these would have drawn the people ever further away from God and His salvation. Throughout time and history, again and again, people have been swayed by the many temptations of worldly glory, forgetting about God and His teachings, His path and truth that they ended up falling ever more and deeper into the path towards their ruin and destruction in sin. This is what the Lord wanted to prevent, and what He sought to avoid by instituting a day dedicated for everyone to keep holy and committed to Him, rather than to their various jobs and preoccupations.

Then, in our Gospel passage today, we heard from the Gospel of St. Mark in which the Lord was confronted by the Pharisees who were criticising His disciples for having committed and carried out actions that were supposedly forbidden and outlawed during the Sabbath. Contextually, the Pharisees were those who were very particular about the way how the Law was to be observed and practiced, and they paid close attention to the Sabbath Law as well. To them, who advocated very literal and strict interpretation of the Law, absolutely no activity of all sorts could be done by anyone, not even when those activities were to be done out of necessity and for good and worthy purposes. And this was why they criticised the Lord and His disciples for their works and actions on the Sabbath.

The Pharisees upheld such beliefs and practices because, in opposition to the other dominant group, the Sadducees, representing those Jewish elites who had been exposed and supported Hellenic or Greek influences, the Pharisees wanted to preserve the Jewish ways and customs, practices and other beliefs very closely. However, in their obsession to do so, they became stubborn and selfish in their behaviours and ways, thinking that they alone were able to interpret the Law and their version of the Law and its observances alone could be followed, and anyone else who did not practice the Law in the manner that they had done, all of them had erred and ought to be condemned and criticised. The Lord pointed out to them therefore the folly of their ways and their arguments.

The Lord Jesus healed a paralysed man in the synagogue before those self-righteous and proud Pharisees, pointing out to them the folly of their idea that absolutely no actions could be done by anyone, not even those that brought about good deeds and glorification of God. The Lord wanted to remind all of us through this that the Sabbath was meant to help redirect us and our attention towards God, but was never meant to oppress and chain us with obligations and with restrictions that could even cause harm. For example, when those disciples were hungry, as they had been going from places to places to minister to the people of God, they indeed had to eat, and it was a necessity that they had to pluck the grains and feed themselves even on the Sabbath day.

This is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, it is imperative that we truly understand and appreciate why God had reached out to us, showing us the path for us to follow Him through His Law and commandments. Such laws and regulations were put in place to help us all, as God’s people to keep our lives centred and focused on God, but not to make our lives and existence difficult and tough. Otherwise, that led to what happened to those Pharisees who took the Law to the other extreme, by focusing so much on the details and the way the Law had to be applied, observed and practiced, that they forgot and overlooked the true intention and purpose of the Law of God, which is to lead mankind back towards God. Instead, through their overly strict application of the Law and their self-righteous and high-handed actions and manners, those Pharisees had done the opposite instead.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday as we have been reminded by the Lord to turn our attention and focus back towards Him, let us all hence be committed to Him and be truly genuine in following God in all of our words, actions and deeds, and not merely paying lip service to the Lord and yet our hearts and minds are not directed and focused on Him. Each and every one of us should always strive to grow ever stronger in our commitment and faith, and we should do our best so that we may ourselves be good inspirations and strength for one another, at all times. May the Lord continue to encourage and strengthen us all in faith, and may He bless us all in our every efforts, good works and endeavours, to obey Him genuinely and lovingly through His Law and commandments. Amen.

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Thursday, 30 May 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the great occasion of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, also known as Corpus Christi, marking just like last Sunday’s Trinity Sunday, a very important and core tenet of our Christian faith and beliefs. All of us as Christians believe that the Holy Eucharist, which we celebrate at the Holy Mass or more appropriately, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, is none other than the Most Holy and Precious Body and Blood of Our Lord Himself. This is the belief in the Doctrine of the Transubstantiation, one of the core tenets of the Christian faith, that God has given us all His own Most Holy and Precious Body and Blood for our salvation, through the New and Eternal Covenant He had established with us.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Book of Exodus of the words of Moses, the leader of the Israelites during the time of their Exodus from Egypt and their journey towards the Promised Land of Canaan, who spoke to the Israelites regarding the great and most wonderful love which God has shown to His people in all that He had done for them, and this culminated with the Covenant which He established anew with all of His people at the holy mountain of God, Mount Sinai, where the people of Israel had journeyed towards. There at the holy mountain, through Moses, the Covenant between God and His people was sealed and established, by the sacrifice and the outpouring of the blood of a sacrificial lamb upon the altar.

This was in fact a prefigurement of what would happen much later on, mentioned in our second reading today from the Epistle to the Hebrews. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews often linked the Lord Jesus to the role of the High Priest for indeed, Christ is the one and only True, Eternal High Priest for all mankind. Why is this so? This is because by His Passion, His sufferings and His trials, His crucifixion and ultimately His death on the Cross, our Lord has willingly offered the perfect and only worthy offering to the Lord for our salvation and redemption. In the past, the sacrifice and the outpouring of the blood of the animals like lambs were used to represent the redemption and forgiveness of God for the sins of His people.

However, the blood of the lambs alone would not have been enough to redeem all of mankind for all their innumerable sins and faults, and that was why the sacrificial and sin offerings were repeatedly done again and again by the priests and the high priests who offered them for the sake of the people of God. But God had promised His salvation to all of His people, telling and reassuring them all that one day He would send His Saviour, Who would deliver them all from their sins, much as how He has once delivered them and freed them from the hands of the Pharaoh and the Egyptians, leading them to freedom and bringing them to the Promised Land where He settled them and made them to dwell in peace.

Again all of those were prefigurement of the salvation that is to come for all of us, the whole people, all the children of mankind. For through His Beloved Son, His only Begotten Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Our Eternal High Priest, He showed us all the sure path to eternal life and salvation, because by His offering of the perfect and most worthy offering, which is worth all of the immense and unimaginably great extent of our many sins and wickedness, of all mankind that has, is and will ever exist, from the beginning to the end of time, He has redeemed all of us, once and for all through this supreme act of sacrifice and offering. And what is this perfect and most worthy offering, brothers and sisters in Christ? It is none other than His own Most Precious Body and Blood, the Body and Blood of the Lamb of God, broken and outpoured upon us from the Altar of the Cross. Through His Precious Body and Blood, Christ has made with us all, a New and Eternal Covenant between us and God.

In our Gospel passage today, we then heard of the account from the Gospel of St. Mark of the Institution of the Holy Eucharist during the Last Supper, which happened just before the Lord was to begin His Passion, His suffering and death. He gave His disciples the bread that He has blessed, prayed over and broken up, sharing with them His own Most Holy and Precious Body, with the words, ‘Take this. It is My Body.’ And afterwards, He also shared the chalice or cup filled with the wine He has also blessed, and told them that that wine is His Blood, the Blood of the New Covenant.’ When the Lord said this to His disciples, He truly meant it as He said that the bread is His Body and the wine is His Blood.

He never meant for the bread and wine to be merely symbolic or memorial representation of His Body and Blood and His Sacrifice on the Cross. He literally and truly meant that the disciples, and all of His Church, are truly consuming, partaking and having His own Precious Body and Blood, the Body and Blood of the Lamb of God, the Bread of Life, Who would soon suffer and endure the most bitter and painful sufferings for their sake, for all of us, so that by His willing sacrifice, He might provide for us the sure path to salvation and eternal life, breaking forever the chains of sin and death that had dominated over us from the beginning of time. This is also what He meant when earlier on during the discourse on the Bread of Life, the Lord also said that His Body is truly food and His Blood is truly drink, and all those who partake of the Bread of Life, of His Body and Blood, will never perish but have eternal life.

This is why from the very earliest beginnings and history of the Church, the Church fathers from the Apostles and their successors, throughout time and history and right down to this present moment have all preserved this core belief and tenet in the Real Presence of the Lord in the Holy Eucharist, that in each and every celebration of the Holy Mass, the bread and wine have indeed been turned by the power of God through the Holy Spirit, through the hands and prayers of His priests, to be the very essence and reality of His own Most Precious Body and His Most Precious Blood, although in appearance, they may still appear as bread and wine to our senses. Through our faith in Him, we believe that what we partake is none other than the Lord Himself.

But it is also important that we understand that each and every celebrations of the Holy Mass, unlike what some people outside and even within the Church had misunderstood and misrepresented, are not the repetitions of the sacrifice of the Lord at Calvary. Instead, every time the Holy Mass is celebrated, it is exactly the same Sacrifice that the Lord has offered and given to us at Calvary, at the moment of His Passion, His suffering and death on His Cross. What the Church fathers and the early Christians, and all of our predecessors in faith throughout time had partaken in the Holy Eucharist, is the same Precious Body and Precious Blood of the Lord just as what we have partaken and received, and all of us share in this Holy Communion, uniting all of us in this One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Body of Christ and Kingdom of God on earth.

The Lord has instituted the Holy Eucharist and also the Ministerial Priesthood at the Last Supper, to perpetuate this celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, so that by the power that He had granted to those whom He had chosen, and to their successors, the bishops and priests throughout time and history, right up to this day, at every celebration of the Holy Mass, the bread and wine have indeed been consecrated and transformed into the essence and reality of His own Body and Blood, which we believe as the Doctrine of Transubstantiation. When the Lord asked His disciples to ‘do this in the memory of Me’, some misunderstood that the celebration of the Eucharist is a mere symbol or memory, but the reality is that, each celebration is indeed meant to bring unto us the Sacrifice of the Lord at Calvary, and we all truly partake His Body and Blood, not merely having a symbol of His loving sacrifice.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we commemorate this great Solemnity of the Most Holy and Precious Body and Blood of Christ or Corpus Christi, let us all reflect on how much we truly believe in the Real Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist. The sad and unfortunate reality in our Church today is that, many even within the Church had no longer believed in the Real Presence, and the belief in the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the Real Presence have been steadily slipping to an all-time low. Many of us treated the Lord and His Real Presence with indifference and lack of reverence and faith. We often treat the Eucharist as nothing more than bread and wine, and we lack the proper reverence and respect, honour and worship of the Lord’s Real Presence.

That partly explain why increasingly there are more and more lapses from among us in the Church, as we steadily and continuously losing people to the world, to the many temptations present around us, and many others do not believe in the Real Presence in the Lord either, especially those who have not believed in God, whenever they see us treating the Eucharist with indifference and lack of respect and proper adoration. That is why, brothers and sisters in Christ, today, let us all renew our commitment to the Lord, remembering the New and Eternal Covenant that He Himself has made and sealed with us all by the breaking of His own Holy and Precious Body and the outpouring of His own Holy and Precious Blood, through His perfect and loving sacrifice on the Cross.

Let us all renew our devotion to the Lord, particularly in the way we treat the Holy Eucharist, Our Lord’s very own Most Precious Body and Blood, in how we honour and respect Him, and in ensuring that each and every one of us keep ourselves truly worthy to be the Temple of His Holy Presence, as we all partake His Holy and Precious Body and Blood into ourselves, into our very beings. Let us all strive to be truly holy and worthy to receive the Lord, our most loving God, Who has shared with us this most perfect and loving gift of His Body and Blood, so that as He had said, that we who partake in Him, will receive the assurance of eternal life and glory with Him, and will be raised with Him on the last day.

May the Lord, our God and Saviour, Who has given us all His Most Holy and Precious Body and Blood in the Eucharist, continue to bless us all and guide us in our journey of faith throughout our lives. May He empower and strengthen each and every one of us so that in all the things that we do, so that by our worthy lives and by our proper respect and belief in the Real Presence of the Lord, more and more people may come to the Lord and be healed by Him, and seek Him as their Lord and Saviour, now and always. Amen.

by

Sunday, 26 May 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday we celebrate the occasion of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, or also known as Trinity Sunday. On this Sunday we commemorate and focus our attention on this important tenet in our Christian faith, one that is truly Christian in nature, and one of the core tenets and beliefs of our faith in God. This is because unlike any other monotheistic beliefs, there is none other that beliefs in the Holy Trinity of One God in Three Divine Persons as we have believed in, the belief in the Triune God Who is One and only One, and yet manifesting Himself in Three Divine Persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, distinct and yet indivisible and perfectly united to each other as One.

This is our Christian faith, our Trinitarian beliefs and our faith in the One Lord Who in His Person of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have each interacted with us, and shown us all His love and truth, His compassion and grace. But what is the Holy Trinity all about? Do we truly know and understand what it means for us to believe in the One Lord in Three Divine Persons? There are many people both within and outside the Church who misunderstood what the Holy Trinity is all about, and there are not few of those who think that we worship not one but three Gods. This is definitely false, and it does not help that there are quite a lot of falsehoods and inaccurate representations of the Holy Trinity that are believed by those outside the Church, misrepresentations of the Holy Trinity that perpetuated this misunderstandings, that even quite a number within the Church also followed and believed in.

What is the Holy Trinity? As mentioned, as Christians we believe in the One and only True God, Creator and Master of all the Universe, which has Three Divine Persons or Aspects just as we profess every time we say the Creed. The Nicene Creed begins with, ‘I believe in One God’, which states clearly this belief in the Oneness of God, and then continues with ‘The Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth’, and then ‘I believe in One Lord Jesus Christ, the only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages… consubstantial with the Father’ which highlights that there has always been only One Lord and God, and the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit are all part of this One God, with Jesus Christ, the Son of God being ‘begotten’ and not ‘created’. The Son and the Holy Spirit are part of this Holy Trinity together with the Father, from before the beginning of time.

The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all co-equal and co-eternal, having existed before the beginning of time, for eternity. And unlike what some heresies and false teachings propagated, we all believe that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all equal to each other, and the Son and/or the Holy Spirit are not subordinated to any of the other members of the Holy Trinity. Then, at the same time, the Holy Trinity is incomplete without any of its members, and this highlights the fact mentioned earlier that the Three Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity are both distinct and indivisible at the same time. Each and every members of the Holy Trinity are present at the moment of Creation and throughout all history. The Father willed the Creation and the Universe into being, through the Son, the Word of God, by His words, ‘Let there be…’, and the Holy Spirit being the Spirit of Creation and Life present in all of Creation, making all things coming to be.

At the moment of the Incarnation, the Holy Spirit was also present, with the Father’s will again making the impossible to be possible, that the Son of God, the Divine Word, became incarnate in the flesh, taking up our human form and existence, our nature to be the Son of Man, in the Person of Jesus Christ our Lord, by the power of the Holy Spirit that made it all happen, in the holy womb of Mary, the Holy Mother of God. The Holy Trinity has been mentioned in the many parts of the Scriptures, and throughout the history of the world, and at the supreme moment of our salvation when the Lord died on the Cross, the Holy Trinity is again present, as the Son of God, lay dying on His Cross, gave up His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, back to God the Father, with the words, ‘Father, into Your hands, I commend My Spirit.’ Truly, the Lord in His Most Holy Trinity, has been always present in our midst, all these time, just as through His Son, He has made Himself visible, approachable and tangible to us.

The most tangible proof of the Holy Trinity itself is the words of the Lord, Who said that ‘I and the Father are One.’ and in another occasion with, ‘May they all be one, just as We are One.’, referring to the Oneness and the Unity of the Holy Trinity in the One God, and the relationship between the Father and the Son, and then also the Holy Spirit, which the Lord Jesus in more than one occasion send upon the disciples, with the words, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ And the Lord Himself told the disciples and all of His Church as we heard in our Gospel passage, the Great Commission that He has entrusted to each and every one of us, that is to go forth to all the peoples and all the nations so that everyone from all the nations may receive the Good News of God, believe in Him and be baptised in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. All these are the reasons why although throughout time and history, there were those who denied the Holy Trinity, and yet the belief in the Triune God remains strong to this very day.

Now, after we have discussed the nature of the Holy Trinity and our belief in the Triune God, we also need to ask ourselves, why the Lord then created us all? In our first reading this Sunday, we heard from the Book of Deuteronomy in which Moses spoke to the people of Israel during the time of the Exodus about their great privilege to have been called and chosen as the holy people of God, as the ones whom God had first made to be His own people, to be loved and cared for by Him. Why did God then create all of us if He is already perfect and all good? First of all, we must understand that the Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is united by the perfect bond of love, which overflows from the Holy Trinity to all of us. God is Love, and He is so full of love that He wants to share this love with each and every one of us. We were created so that we may share in God’s love.

That was why we heard from the Book of Deuteronomy, of Moses reminding the people of just how much God had loved them, taken care of them and provided for them despite of their many disobedience and rebellious attitudes. God is so full of love that He has done all that were necessary to bring them out of their slavery and bondage in Egypt, and providing them with the means to survive the long journey in the desert, protecting them all from harm and from their enemies. And while they were also chastised and punished by the Lord for their disobedience and rebellion, but God did so with the intention to help His people to find their way back towards Him, and for them all to realise that their attitudes and actions were causing them to be sundered and separated from His wonderful love, grace and kindness.

In our second reading today, we heard from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Church and the faithful people of God in Rome in which he spoke of how every one of them have become and have indeed been made to be the children of God, as through His Spirit and by His Son sharing in our human nature and existence, all of us have received this adoption, by becoming members and parts of the Body of Christ, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church that just as Christ Our Lord called God the Father as His Heavenly Father, thus we are all also able to call the Lord our God as our Father as well. This is what all of us have received from the Lord Himself, showing us just how loving and compassionate He is, and how fortunate all of us indeed are, to have been beloved in such a way.

What we all now need to do as Christians is that we need to first of all remember this core tenet of our faith in the Most Holy Trinity, our Lord and God, Creator and Master of all the Universe, Who is One, but having Three Divine Persons in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We have to appreciate and understand the significance of this Trinitarian Doctrine so that we may help many others both within and outside the Church to know what it is that we all as Christians truly believe in the Lord, in one God Who manifested Himself in the Three Divine Persons, co-equal and co-eternal, distinct and yet indivisible from one another. We must also give thanks to Him Who has loved us so much that this overflowing love from the perfect bond in the Holy Trinity has been outpoured on us from the very beginning.

Then, reflecting upon the unity within the Most Holy Trinity, let us also remember our own community of believers as Christians, who are all members of the same Body of Christ, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. If Our Lord Himself is perfectly united in the indivisible bond of love in the Most Holy Trinity, then we ourselves cannot and should not be divided against each other. Unfortunately and sadly, such divisions are quite common both in the past and present, as there were various schisms and heresies that led to the splintering of the unity of the Body of Christ, the One Church of God. This is why on this Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, we must renew our faith in the Lord and strive to advance and champion unity among all the believers in Christ, our Lord.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore as Christians, as those who believe in the One Lord in Three Divine Persons, the Most Holy Trinity and Triune God, continue to live our lives most worthily, so that by our most exemplary lives, we may truly be the bearers of Our Lord’s truth and Good News, and be the worthy bearers of His love and compassion, His ways and examples into this world. O Most Holy God, forever worthy of praise, honour and worship, Our Lord and God in the Most Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us all sinners and be with Your Church, so that in all that we do and in our every good efforts and endeavours, may You continue to bless and guide us all in our path, in serving You at all times. Amen.

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Sunday, 19 May 2024 : Solemnity of Pentecost Sunday (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday as we celebrate this most joyful occasion of the Solemnity of Pentecost Sunday, we recall the fullness of joy and great celebrations that we have done in the past glorious and most joyful fifty days of Easter since that of Easter Vigil. Pentecost celebrates the coming and descent of the Holy Spirit from God upon His Church, to all the disciples and followers of Christ. On that day, the Lord fulfilled His promises to His disciples that He would send the Holy Spirit, Whom He called as the Helper or the Advocate, to lead and guide the path of the Church and all the faithful, strengthening them in their journey of faith, empowering them to be courageous and to be able to persevere despite the trials and challenges that they may have to face.

This important day and celebration is a reminder for all of us that through the coming and descent of the Holy Spirit to all of us, we have received once again the grace of God that had been separated from us due to our sins and wickedness, and through the Holy Spirit, God had shown that He is always ever present with His Church and faithful ones, having guided us all throughout these past two millennia of history, from the very beginning of the Church and up to this very day, through all the challenges and trials facing the Church and all the Christian faithful. The Holy Spirit had guided the Church fathers and leaders in walking down the path of the Lord, that while at times the Church and many among the faithful had fallen into the wrong paths, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, eventually the Church is moving ahead again in the right path.

Many people often wrongly associate Pentecost with the so-called ‘Birthday of the Church’ and it does not help that in some places, popular practices related to this birthday celebration of the Church are commonplace. The Church according to the Church fathers and Apostolic tradition, as written in the Catechism of the Catholic Church was ‘born’ and established from the side of the Lord, from the outpouring of the Blood and water that came from the Lord’s Body, lay broken and crushed on Good Friday, at the end of His Passion, His suffering and death. Through His earlier institution of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and the Ministerial Priesthood at the Last Supper, and through His completion of the perfect offering and sacrifice of the New and Eternal Passover, the New and Eternal Covenant, Christ has formed the Church that is His Body, uniting all of the believers with Himself.

What the Pentecost is more accurately associated with is the moment when the Church is ‘revealed’ to the world, with an analogy and comparison similar to that of Christmas and Epiphany. While Christmas marks the moment when the Lord Jesus, Our Saviour was born into this world, it is at Epiphany that He is revealed and manifested to the whole world through the representation of the Three Magi or the Three Wise Men. Thus, the Church that is born on Good Friday and the Paschal Triduum, was also revealed to the whole world at the moment of the Pentecost, at the time when there was a very major shift in the attitude of the Apostles and disciples of the Lord, who began to actively proclaim the Word of God and His Good News to everyone when previously they had been hiding in fear.

This was what we have heard in our first reading today, detailing to us what happened on the day of the first Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon all the Apostles and disciples who were hiding in fear from the Jewish authorities who had threatened everyone that taught in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and who had put in place efforts to silence the disciples of the Lord. They were fearful because the Lord was no longer physically with them, having ascended into Heaven just ten days earlier, but with the arrival and descent of the Holy Spirit, and as they were inflamed and strengthened by the fire of the Holy Spirit, their hearts were encouraged and they received the strength, the wisdom and the power to go forth and to proclaim the Good News of God with great fervour and courage as we have heard.

And through their efforts, many people who were then gathered in Jerusalem for the Festival of Pentecost, coming from the different regions and countries of the world, many of whom were Jews who were living in the diaspora, came to hear of the Lord Jesus, as many of them might not have heard or known about Him before. Those people came to be touched by the message of God’s truth and His Good News that the Apostles told them in their various languages, the gift which the Holy Spirit had brought to them, and about three thousand people accepted the Lord on that day, becoming the earliest members of the Church of God together with those Apostles and disciples of the Lord. The rapid growth of the Church from that day of Pentecost and the changing attitude of the Apostles and disciples of the Lord, empowered by the Holy Spirit made the Church no longer hidden but instead revealed to the whole world, which is what Pentecost is all about.

In our second reading today, we heard from the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle, either to the Church in Corinth or Galatia, of the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit which God had imparted to all of us who have received this most wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit through the Sacraments of the Church. The Holy Spirit has many gifts, and these, traditionally seven, are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord, all of which are the things which God had bestowed on us all through His Spirit, alongside with various blessings, talents and abilities that allow us to carry out whatever it is that He had entrusted to us all to do with our lives. Each and every one of us have been given and equipped with these various gifts and opportunities so that we may truly live our lives worthily and in accordance to what the Lord has shown and taught us, so that by our exemplary lives, we may indeed be good role models and inspirations for others to follow, and that we may lead others to God’s truth and salvation.

Meanwhile, the fruits of the Holy Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, all of which are manifestations of the works and the gifts of the Holy Spirit which God had granted to us. All of us are called and expected to do what God had called us to do, and to make good use of the gifts and the opportunities that have been revealed and passed to us all. Like the parable of the talents that the Lord had used in teaching His disciples, all of us as God’s stewards, disciples and servants are expected to make good use of the various things and blessings which God had given to us, so that we may indeed bear rich fruits of the Holy Spirit in our various communities, and be the exemplary role models and the shining beacons of God’s light and truth in our world today.

Lastly, in our Gospel passage today, we then heard of the Lord Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to the disciples, reminding them of what they were supposed to do as His disciples and followers. This gift of the Holy Spirit which the Lord had mentioned and explained on several occasions would eventually came to the fullness and completion with the coming of the Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descending on the Apostles and the disciples of the Lord, the Church of God, giving them the guidance, strength and the peace in their hearts and minds to carry out to the best of their abilities everything which God had entrusted to them to do. Through the Holy Spirit, God had sent forth His disciples and followers to carry out the most important mission which He entrusted to them, His Great Commission, that is to proclaim His Good News and truth, His salvation and love to all the nations, and to make disciples of every people of every nations, baptising them in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

As we all reflect upon the messages of God’s truth and love as contained within the Sacred Scriptures and what we have discussed regarding the Holy Spirit and how God has empowered us all with the strength and the new life and opportunities to do His will through the Holy Spirit, let us all therefore allow Him to guide us all and turn away from all sorts of wickedness and evils that had caused us to not be able to follow the Lord wholeheartedly. As one united Church of God, revealed to all on this great Solemnity of Pentecost, let us all continue to carry on the missions entrusted to us, to be ever full of the Holy Spirit and allow the Spirit to guide us in our respective vocations and missions in life, that through us and our faithful living and testimony, our every actions and deeds, we may always be fruitful in all things.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of all the faithful and strengthen us with the warmth of God’s most wonderful love. Come and renew the whole world and all of us mankind, and enkindle in us the great passionate fires of Your love. Come Holy Spirit, come and be with us all, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of God. Amen.