Sunday

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Sunday, 24 April 2016 : Fifth Sunday of Easter, Memorial of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen, Priest and Martyr, Eleventh Anniversary of the Papal Coronation and Inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI, Vicar of Christ and Supreme Pontiff (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 144 : 8-9, 10-11, 12-13ab

Compassionate and gracious is the Lord, slow to anger and abounding in love. The Lord is good to everyone; His mercy embraces all His creation.

All Your works will give You thanks; all Your saints, o Lord, will praise You. They will tell of the glory of Your kingdom and speak of Your power.

That all may know of Your mighty deeds, Your reign and its glorious splendour. Your reign is from age to age; Your dominion endures from generation to generation.

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Sunday, 24 April 2016 : Fifth Sunday of Easter, Memorial of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen, Priest and Martyr, Eleventh Anniversary of the Papal Coronation and Inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI, Vicar of Christ and Supreme Pontiff (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Acts 14 : 21b-27

Paul and Barnabas returned to Lystra and Iconium and on to Antioch. They were strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain firm in the faith, for they said, “We must go through many trials to enter the Kingdom of God.” In each church they appointed elders and, after praying and fasting, they commended them to the Lord in Whom they had placed their faith.

Then they travelled through Pisidia, and came to Pamphylia. They preached the Word in Perga and went down to Attalia. From there they sailed back to Antioch, where they had first been commended to God’s grace for the task they had now completed.

On their arrival they gathered the Church together and told them all that God had done through them and how He had opened the door of faith to the non-Jews.

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Sunday, 17 April 2016 : Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, Vocation Sunday (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we commemorate the Fourth Sunday of Easter reckoned from the first Easter Sunday of our Lord’s Resurrection. And on this day, every year, we also celebrate a special occasion, with regards to the passages referred to in this Sunday’s reading, on the Lord Jesus as the Good Shepherd, the Shepherd of all the faithful.

Yes, today is the Good Shepherd Sunday, and which is also known as the Vocation Sunday, due to how related is the vocation to the priesthood to the concept of the ‘good shepherd’ which our Lord, the One and True Good Shepherd is showing those who walk in His path and follow His call to serve the greater purpose and higher calling to benefit the community of the faithful.

Jesus spoke of a good shepherd as those who know the sheep well, as compared to the thieves and the crooks who wanted to steal the sheep and bring these to harm. He is comparing Himself to the persona of the good shepherd in this manner, as He was leading His people like that of a shepherd to God His Father. And He as the Good Shepherd has set the example for us all to follow.

Therefore, there are a few important meanings to what we have heard in the Scriptures today. First of all, is that God is our Shepherd, and just as the true shepherd loves his sheep, thus God also loves each and every one of us. And He knows us all deep in our hearts, all of our secrets and thoughts, just as good shepherds know their sheep by heart.

And He Who loves us all will not want us to be lost to Him, as He will do His best to keep us all together and find us when we are lost. And in this, we should realise that this is why, God was willing to love us, to show us His mercy and to help us, even though we have erred and sinned many times in our lives, and even though we have indeed been very wicked. He is willing to give us another chance, as long as we are willing to change our ways, repent for our sins and return to Him in faith.

In another parable mentioned by Jesus, about a lost sheep from a flock of a hundred, He mentioned how the shepherd would leave behind all the sheep that are safe and sound, and set out to search for that one lost sheep until it is found and brought to safety. And when the shepherd had found the lost sheep, the joy of the shepherd and all the keepers will be great indeed, even greater than having all those that are already safe and sound in the flock.

That is the proof of how much God loves us, even more than the shepherd loves all of his sheep. In the first place, He did not create us all for nothing. He created everything, every beings and every creatures, all things out of love, and for us all, the greatest among His creations, He showed us all the greatest love of all. We were not intended from the beginning of time, for a life of suffering and difficulty, and neither should death have any power over us.

But it was because of our waywardness, and because of our disobedience and refusal to follow the laws of the Lord, that we have gone astray from our paths, and therefore became lost to sin and darkness. We are like sheep who are attracted to the sights and things outside of the safety of the flock and the guidance of the shepherd, and we desire to gain these things and go to them, without realising that in doing so, we expose ourselves to danger.

But our Lord, our loving Shepherd does not want us to end up in harm and in danger. And that was why He personally intervened by Himself, so that through His works and His actions, we all may be saved and brought back to His care and His embrace. And the Good Shepherd even laid down His own life for His sheep, as all good shepherds would. He allowed Himself to suffer and to be persecuted for our sake, and bearing our faults and sins, He carried that heavy cross and burden up the mountain to Calvary, where He offered Himself on the cross for our sake, to liberate us from the burden of sin and from the shackles of death.

And brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us who are now members of the Church, who have been baptised in the Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are those who have been found amidst the darkness and distractions of this world, and who God had assembled to be His flock, to receive His love and grace forevermore. But we also have to realise that not all have been saved yet.

For salvation is only found, and can only be found in the Church. And this is the second meaning and message of today’s Scripture. Jesus had Himself said that He is the Gate, and all the sheep pass through the gate, and good shepherds pass through that gate, while crooks and thieves tried to find other means to enter the place where the flock is being kept.

If we are outside the safety of the flock, then we are in great danger of being harmed by those who seek our downfall, and these are none other than the devil, his allies and all the forces of wickedness and evil scattered all over the world. They are hungry, awaiting for us to fall into the darkness, and so that they may consume us and bring us into eternal damnation with them.

Thus, the third important message and meaning of today’s Scripture is related to this Sunday being the Vocation Sunday as well. God may have ascended back into heaven and left us His people still living on earth. But He did not leave us behind all alone, for He has appointed shepherds in His stead, to be those who care for His sheep, to protect them and guide them to Him, the Good Shepherd of all His creations.

And these shepherds are our priests, those who dedicated themselves to the service of the Lord and His people in His Church. The vocation to the priesthood and the flock of people joining the priestly life is what we are concerned about today, since we all well know, how with the changing times, it is getting ever more and more difficult for us to have those who are willing to commit themselves to the Lord as His servants.

There are fewer and fewer young men who are willing to join the priesthood and enter the seminaries. Seminaries are getting emptier and smaller, and many even had to shut down because they no longer have anyone passing through their gates to prepare themselves for a life of service to God. Too many have been lured in by the temptations of the world, for the life of the world today is so much more exciting and pleasurable to us mankind, rather than the hard and tough life of a priest.

But without good and faithful shepherds like our priests, then who will bring the flock of the Lord to Him? Who will bring the countless lost sheep of the Lord back to His love? It is why today, all of us, brothers and sisters in Christ, we are all called to reflect on this dire state of our Church and our faith, in how we have that great need for many labourers of God’s love. God Himself had said it in another occasion, that while the harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few.

Therefore, let us all pray together, brethren, that God will open the eyes, the hearts and the minds of those whom He has chosen to be His servants, and that they would not resist nor refuse the calling, but instead discern on them carefully, and hopefully that they will eventually decide to walk the path of priesthood, becoming shepherds to us, God’s beloved creation, and help to bring many lost souls to the salvation of God in the Church.

May God bless our priests, and also bless our young men, that many more people will embrace the call to service, and accept the vocation to priesthood, so that by their good works, they may bring many more people closer to God, and prevent many from being lost to hell and eternal damnation. May the Lord, our Good Shepherd, bless us all, now and forever. Amen.

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Sunday, 17 April 2016 : Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, Vocation Sunday (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 10 : 27-30

At that time, Jesus said to the Jews, “My sheep hear My voice and I know them; they follow Me and I give them eternal life. They shall never perish, and no one will ever steal them from Me. What the Father has given Me is above everything else, and no one can snatch it from out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are One.”

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Sunday, 17 April 2016 : Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, Vocation Sunday (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Revelations 7 : 9, 14b-17

After this I saw a great crowd, impossible to count, from every nation, race, people and tongue, standing before the Throne and the Lamb, clothed in white, with palm branches in their hands.

The elder replied, “They are those who have come out of the great persecution; they have washed and made their clothes white in the blood of the Lamb. This is why they stand before the Throne of God and serve Him day and night in His sanctuary. He Who sits on the Throne will spread His tent over them.”

“Never again will they suffer hunger or thirst or be burnt by the sun or any scorching wind. For the Lamb near the Throne will be their Shepherd, and He will bring them to springs of life-giving water, and God will wipe away their tears.”

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Sunday, 17 April 2016 : Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, Vocation Sunday (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 99 : 2, 3, 5

Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful songs.

Know that the Lord is God; He created us and we are His people, the sheep of His fold.

For the Lord is good; His love lasts forever and His faithfulness through all generations.

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Sunday, 17 April 2016 : Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, Vocation Sunday (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Acts 13 : 14, 43-52

Paul and his companions went on from Perga and came to Antioch in Pisidia. On the Sabbath day they entered the synagogue and sat down.

After that, when the assembly broke up, many Jews and devout God-fearing people followed them and to these they spoke, urging them to hold fast to the grace of God.

The following Sabbath almost the entire city gathered to listen to Paul, who spoke a fairly long time about the Lord. But the presence of such a crowd made the Jews jealous. So they began to oppose with insults whatever Paul said.

Then Paul and Barnabas spoke out firmly, saying, “It was necessary that God’s word be first proclaimed to you, but since you now reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we turn to non-Jewish people. For thus we were commanded by the Lord : I have set you as a light to the pagan nations, so that you may bring My salvation to the ends of the earth.”

Those who were not Jews rejoiced when they heard this and praised the message of the Lord, and all those destined for everlasting life believed in it. Thus the Word spread throughout the whole region.

Some of the Jews, however, incited God-fearing women of the upper class and the leading men of the city, as well, and stirred up an intense persecution against Paul and Barnabas. Finally they had them expelled from their region. The Apostles shook the dust from their feet in protest against this people and went to Iconium, leaving the disciples filled with joy and Holy Spirit.

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Sunday, 10 April 2016 : Third Sunday of Easter (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, we heard about the works of the Apostles in preaching about Jesus our Lord and Saviour, and how the Pharisees and the elders were unhappy about that, and attempted to stop the Apostles from teaching the truth to the people in the Name of Jesus. But the Apostles were not at the least daunted or threatened.

They were in fact encouraged and heartened by the fact that they were able to endure the same suffering that their Lord had suffered at the hands of those who rejected Him. And they became ever more dedicated in carrying out the work entrusted to them. And because of their hard work, and the commitment of all those who came after them, countless souls had been saved, including us all, from the threat of eternal damnation and death.

And this is related to what we have heard in the Gospel today. The Gospel from the Gospel according to St. John told us about what happened in the days after Jesus had risen from the dead. On that occasion, at the shore of the Lake of Tiberias, while the disciples of Christ spent their time doing about what they have used to do before following Jesus, that is fishing, Jesus appeared to them.

And while they had spent the whole night trying to catch fish and yet caught nothing, He told them to follow His instruction, and spread the net on the side of the boat. Immediately they caught so many fishes, that the net almost broke, and the ship almost sank under the weight of the catch. And yet the two of them held on, and the Lord showed His Apostles the way through this yet another miracle He had performed.

In that reading, we should notice that there are many symbolisms related to our faith and our Church, as well as the mission which Jesus was giving His Apostles, and through them to all of us living even today, for us to undertake and to be responsible for. Therefore, let us now go through them one by one as we reflect on the words of our Lord today.

The fishermen, the Apostles represent all of us, God’s chosen people, including His chosen priests and all those who have given themselves to the service of the Lord and to His people, and the boat represents the Church, in which all the faithful are part of, and where all the faithful ones should be contained in. It is the vessel of salvation through which we find our liberation from sin and death, and find our path to eternal life.

Just as in another occasion when Jesus walked on the water approaching the disciples who were on a boat in the middle of a storm, the same symbolism is applied, where the Church is the boat, rocked by the waves and the winds from the terrible storm, representing the opposition of the world and the difficulties it is facing, as shown in our first reading today by the opposition of the elders and the chief priests.

But the Lord shows us that He stands by His Church and His faithful ones, and knowing this very well, the Apostles knew that the Lord was with them, and that was why they did not give up, even though they faced great persecution, scrutiny and pressure from the authorities to give up their work of evangelisation among the people. They continued their hard work regardless, and most of them indeed were martyred defending their faith.

And what is the hard work that they have done? It is the hard work of bringing the truth of God, the words of our Lord Jesus as He had spoken it, and delivering these to the people who have yet to hear of them. This is the command that our Lord had given to His disciples just before He ascended into heaven, and the command which is still relevant and in force even unto this very day, and likely into the future as well.

Why is this so? That is because we have to realise that, even though our Church today has grown to the point that it is definitely irrecognisable to the Apostles in the past, but the same conditions still apply. There are still many people who are outside the bounds of the Church, who are still outside the relative safety of the vessel of salvation, who have yet to hear the words of our God’s salvation and truth.

There are also many, even within the Church itself, and who called themselves as Christians, and yet, they hang dangerously at the edge of the precipice to damnation, as their actions showed contrary to their faith. And these are in danger of falling outside of the Church and the guarantee of salvation, as by their own actions they had made themselves unworthy of God’s promise.

The Apostles had been called to become fishers of men, leaving behind their old job behind, and instead of looking for fishes to be eaten and sold, they have been called to a higher purpose. They were to call upon men and get them to listen to the salvation which God has offered through His Church. And when they caught those so many fishes inside the net, this was in fact a representation of what they were to do, that is to gather many people from many nations, to be included as part of the Church and thus sharers in God’s salvation.

The same task is now awaiting us as well. There are so many of our brethren out there who need our help, our guidance and our assistance in leading them to God. If we do not do our part, then who else will? Let us therefore learn from the example of the Apostles, in their courage and commitment to God, and in their faith, in how they followed the Lord, knowing that doing so would earn them hatred, persecution and condemnation by the world, but eternal life and glory from God.

May God help us and may He awaken in each one of us the desire to love Him and to love our fellow men, so that we may be stirred in our hearts and encouraged in our limbs and bodies, that our mouths may speak the truth of God, our eyes may see the plight of our brethren still living in sin and darkness, our ears may hear their pleas, and our arms and legs may be moved to touch them and to help bring them closer to God and to His salvation. May God strengthen us and our faith, and keep us always in His love. Amen.

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Sunday, 10 April 2016 : Third Sunday of Easter (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 21 : 1-19

At that time, after Jesus appeared to His disciples, He revealed Himself to the disciples by the Lake of Tiberias. He appeared to them in this way. Simon Peter, Thomas who was called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee and two other disciples were together; and Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They replied, “We will come with you.” And they went out and got into the boat, but they caught nothing that night.

When day had already broken, Jesus was standing on the shore, but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus called them, “Friends, have you anything to eat?” They answered, “Nothing.” Then He said to them, “Throw the net on the right side of the boat and you will find something.” When they had lowered the net, they were not able to pull it in because of the great number of fish.

Then the disciple Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” At these words, “It is the Lord!” Simon Peter put on his clothes, for he was stripped for work, and jumped into the water. The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish; they were not far from land, about a hundred metres.

When they landed, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it, and some bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” So Simon Peter climbed into the boat and pulled the net to shore. It was full of big fish – one hundred and fifty-three – but, in spite of this, the net was not torn.

Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” And not one of the disciples dared to ask Him, “Who are You?” for they knew it was the Lord. Jesus then came and took the bread and gave it to them, and He did the same with the fish. This was the third time that Jesus revealed Himself to His disciples after rising from the dead.

After they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.” And Jesus said, “Feed My lambs.”

A second time Jesus said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?” And Peter answered, “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.” Jesus said to him, “Look after My sheep.” And a third time He said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?”

Peter was saddened because Jesus asked him a third time, “Do you love Me?” and he said, “Lord, You know everything; You know that I love You.” Jesus then said, “Feed My sheep! Truly, I say to you, when you were young, you put on your belt and walked where you liked. 

Alternative reading (shorter version)

John 21 : 1-14

At that time, after Jesus appeared to His disciples, He revealed Himself to the disciples by the Lake of Tiberias. He appeared to them in this way. Simon Peter, Thomas who was called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee and two other disciples were together; and Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They replied, “We will come with you.” And they went out and got into the boat, but they caught nothing that night.

When day had already broken, Jesus was standing on the shore, but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus called them, “Friends, have you anything to eat?” They answered, “Nothing.” Then He said to them, “Throw the net on the right side of the boat and you will find something.” When they had lowered the net, they were not able to pull it in because of the great number of fish.

Then the disciple Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” At these words, “It is the Lord!” Simon Peter put on his clothes, for he was stripped for work, and jumped into the water. The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish; they were not far from land, about a hundred metres.

When they landed, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it, and some bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” So Simon Peter climbed into the boat and pulled the net to shore. It was full of big fish – one hundred and fifty-three – but, in spite of this, the net was not torn.

Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” And not one of the disciples dared to ask Him, “Who are You?” for they knew it was the Lord. Jesus then came and took the bread and gave it to them, and He did the same with the fish. This was the third time that Jesus revealed Himself to His disciples after rising from the dead.

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Sunday, 10 April 2016 : Third Sunday of Easter (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Revelations 5 : 11-14

I went on looking : I heard the noise of a multitude of Angels gathered around the Throne, the living creatures and the elders, numbering millions of millions, crying out with a loud voice : Worthy is the Lamb Who was slain to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength, honour, glory and praise.

Then I heard the voice of the whole universe, heaven, earth, sea and the place of the dead; every creature cried out : To Him Who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be praise, honour, glory and power forever and ever.

And the four living creatures said, “Amen”, while the elders bowed down and worshipped.