Sunday Mass

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Sunday, 2 June 2024 : Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 80 : 3-4, 5-6, 7-8a, 10-11ab

Start the music, strike the timbrel, play melodies on the harp and lyre. Sound the trumpet at the new moon, on our feast day, when the new moon is full.

This is a decree for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob, a statute He wrote for Joseph when he went out of Egypt. They heard a voice they did not know: “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.”

“I relieved your shoulder from burden; I freed your hands. You called in distress, and I saved you.”

There shall be no strange god among you, you shall not worship any alien god, for I, YHVH, am your God.

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Sunday, 2 June 2024 : Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Deuteronomy 5 : 12-15

Take care to keep holy the Sabbath day, as YHVH, your God, commands you. You have six days to work and do your tasks. But the seventh day is the Day of Rest in honour of YHVH, your God. Do not do any work, you or your child, or your servant, or your ox, or your donkey, or any of your animals. Neither will the foreigner who lives in your land work. Your servant will rest just like you.

Remember that you were once enslaved in the land of Egypt from where YHVH, your God, brought you out with His powerful hand and outstretched arm. For that reason, YHVH, your God, commands you to observe the Sabbath.

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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.

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Thursday, 30 May 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Mark 14 : 12-16, 22-26

At that time, on the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the day when the Passover Lamb was killed, the disciples asked Him, “Where would You have us go to prepare the Passover meal for You?”

So Jesus sent two of His disciples with these instructions, “Go into the city, and there, a man will come to you carrying a jar of water. Follow him to the house he enters and say to the owner, ‘The Master says, Where is the room where I may eat the Passover meal with My disciples?’ Then he will show you a large room upstairs, already arranged and furnished. There, you will prepare for us.”

The disciples went off. When they reached the city, they found everything just as Jesus had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal. While they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it, and gave it to them. And He said, “Take this. It is My Body.” Then He took a cup; and after He had given thanks, He passed it to them and they all drank from it.

And He said, “This is My Blood, the Blood of the Covenant, poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will not taste the fruit of the vine again, until that day when I drink the new wine in the kingdom of God.”

After singing psalms of praise, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

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Thursday, 30 May 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Hebrews 9 : 11-15

But, now, Christ has appeared, as the High Priest, with regard to the good things of these new times. He passed through a Sanctuary more noble and perfect, not made by hands, that is not created. He did not take with Himself the blood of goats and bulls, but His own Blood, when He entered, once, and for all, into this Sanctuary, after obtaining definitive redemption.

If the sprinkling of people, defiled by sin, with the blood of goats and bulls, or with the ashes of a heifer, provides them with exterior cleanness and holiness, how much more will it be, with the Blood of Christ? He, moved by the eternal Spirit, offered Himself, as an unblemished Victim, to God, and His Blood cleanses us from dead works, so that we may serve the living God.

So, Christ is the Mediator of a new Covenant, or testament. His death made atonement for the sins committed under the old testament, and the promise is handed over, to all who are called to the everlasting inheritance.

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

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 115 : 12-13, 15 and 16bc, 17-18

How can I repay the Lord for all His goodness to Me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the Name of the Lord.

It is painful to the Lord to see the death of His faithful. Truly Your servant, Your handmaid’s Son. You have freed Me from My bonds.

I will offer You a thanksgiving sacrifice; I will call on the Name of the Lord. I will carry out My vows to the Lord in the presence of His people.

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Thursday, 30 May 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Exodus 24 : 3-8

Moses came and told the people all the words of YHVH and all His laws. The people replied with one voice : “Everything that YHVH has said, we shall do.”

Moses wrote down all the words of YHVH, then rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve raised stones for the twelve tribes of Israel. He then sent young men from among the sons of Israel to offer burnt offerings and sacrifice bullocks as peace offerings to YHVH.

And Moses took half the blood and put it in basins; and with the other half of the blood he sprinkled the altar. He then took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. They said, “All that YHVH said we shall do and obey.”

Moses then took the blood and sprinkled it on the people saying, “Here is the blood of the Covenant that YHVH has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

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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, 26 May 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Matthew 28 : 16-20

At that time, as for the eleven disciples, they went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw Jesus, they bowed before Him, although some doubted.

Then Jesus approached them and said, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples from all nations. Baptise them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all that I have commanded you. I am with you always even to the end of the world.”

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Sunday, 26 May 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Romans 8 : 14-17

All those who walk in the Spirit of God are sons and daughters of God. Then, no more fear : you did not receive a spirit of slavery, but the spirit that makes you sons and daughters, and every time, we cry, “Abba! (this means Dad!) Father!” the Spirit assures our spirit, that we are sons and daughters of God.

If we are children, we are heirs, too. Ours will be the inheritance of God, and we will share it with Christ; for, if we now suffer with Him, we will also share glory with Him.