Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday as we all listened to the words of the Lord in the Scriptures, we are all reminded that each and every one of us are the ones whom God had loved and shown His favour to, and all of us need to realise just how fortunate we all to have been beloved by the Lord in such a way. All of us has received from the Lord Himself the generous love and kindness, forgiveness and mercy for all of our wrongdoings and evil deeds, as long as we are willing to seek Him for forgiveness and mercy. Therefore each one of us as His disciples and followers, as Christians, are all called to do our best in our lives in each and every moments so that our lives may truly be a reflection of God’s love and truth, and that we may truly be His worthy disciples and followers.

In our first reading today, taken from the Second Book of Kings of Israel and Judah, we heard of the account of the miracle that happened during the time of the prophet Elisha and his ministry among the people of the northern kingdom of Israel. At that time, as we heard, there were a hundred men assembled in that place where Elisha was. Then while they were there, a man brought the products of the first harvest to Elisha, a total of twenty loaves of bread. If we assume that each of the hundred men eat one loaf of bread each, there were not nearly enough for a quarter of their number to eat, less still for all of them. In addition, there was also a famine raging at the timeline of this event in the land of Israel. As such, if we understand the context of these events, we can see just how significant this miracle from God truly was.

As we have also heard in our Gospel passage of a similar miracle by the Lord Jesus, the prophet Elisha miraculously made the loaves of bread to be sufficient for all the hundred men to share and eat, with leftovers, just as the Lord had said it. This was the proof of God’s love for His people, that He did not just care for them spiritually, but even also physically, and ensuring that they had enough for themselves in whatever they need in the physical sustenance and requirements in their lives. He did not abandon them all and still loved them all even though many of them at that time had disobeyed Him, disregarded His Law and commandments, persecuted His prophets and messengers, among the many other evil and wicked deeds which they had done. He has always loved them and His love for them endured through all that, and He wanted them all to repent from those sins and return to Him.

As mentioned, related to what we have just heard from the first reading passage, the Gospel passage this Sunday also spoke of a similar miracle that had happened, where in the Gospel of St. John we heard of the account of how the Lord Jesus performed the great miracle of the multiplication of the loaves of bread and the fishes, which the Lord made it such that all the five thousand men and many thousands more of women and children assembled there could have their fill and still there were so many bread leftover that twelve whole baskets of them were gathered in the end. Through this account of the Gospel, which is related to the first reading’s account of the miracle of the prophet Elisha, we are all shown how God would provide for all of His beloved and faithful people. He would not abandon those whom He loved and all of them would be shown kindness and providence in God’s own mysterious ways.

God did not spare us any effort to reach out to us and to gather us all back to Himself, calling on all of us to return to Him with a lot of patience and love. He sent them His prophets like Elisha and many others to remind them of this love and of all the kindness which He has generously given to them. And He promised to all of them the One Who would save them all, the Saviour, in the Person of none other than His own Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, the Son of God manifested in the flesh, that the same Christ is the One Who gave that miraculous feeding to all the thousands assembled there to listen to Him. He fed them with the bread and fishes until they were full, with leftovers like at the time of the prophet Elisha, and He also provided them spiritually through His teachings and words.

From our second reading passage taken from the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Church and the faithful in the city and region of Ephesus, the Apostle spoke about the calling and mission of all Christians, of God’s holy and beloved people to be truly faithful and worthy of the Lord in all the things that they do and carry out in their lives. He reminded all of us through this Epistle that all of us ought to always strive to do what God had taught us to do, to be righteous and faithful in all things, being committed to God and His ways, and to be loving and compassionate to one another, showing our generous love and kindness to everyone around us. As Christians, each and every one of us must always exude the love and grace of God in all of our lives, in each of our actions and at every moments.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, as we all have heard from the Scripture passages we received this Sunday, we are all reminded yet again as we have constantly been reminded, of God’s ever present and enduring love for us. We should no longer take God’s love and generosity for granted, and we should also share this same love in our own lives, by being generous and kind, what we give out of generosity from our hearts, we shall be blessed manyfold more by the Lord, just as we have seen how God multiplied the loaves of bread. It is also a lesson to remind us all not to worry about our lives and not to lose our trust and faith in God. We must always remember that in the Lord and with Him, all of us will eventually be triumphant with Him, and it is in Him alone that we can find true happiness and joy in life, and not in all the pleasures of the world, all of which are fleeting and illusory in nature.

May the Lord, our most loving and compassionate God, Who has always watched over us and remembered us even when we have sinned against Him, continue to love us ever more generously, and may He continue to shine His love, kindness and mercy on us, especially when we come to Him seeking for His mercy and forgiveness. Let us all continue to do our part in our respective lives so that by our renewed dedication and commitment to God, we may grow ever stronger in our relationship with Him, and we may continue to bear witness to His love and kindness at all times. May He bless us in all of our works and efforts, all of our deeds, now and always. Amen.

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday all of us are reminded that as His holy and beloved people, that is as those who profess our Christian faith and truth, our obedience and commitment to Him, each and every one of us must always live our lives worthily and commit ourselves to follow the Lord in all things, to do what He has taught us to do, to follow His own examples in everything we do. Each and every one of us as Christians are called to fulfil our respective missions in life, to do what the Lord has entrusted to us to do, He, Who is the Chief and Good Shepherd, so that in all the things that we say and do, we will help to ensure that we inspire and are good role models for our fellow brothers and sisters around us, thus helping and inspiring each other to come ever closer to God.

In our first reading this Sunday, we heard from the Book of the prophet Jeremiah in which the Lord first began by chiding His faithless and wicked people, especially all those who have misled them all into the wrong and wicked paths, namely the ‘shepherds’ and guides of the people, referring to the wicked and unfaithful kings of Judah who have disobeyed the Lord and established the worship of pagan gods and idols on the holy sites and places of worship of the Lord, as well as those false prophets who were aplenty, claiming to represent God’s will and speak His words, when they in fact advanced their own ideas, preferences and agenda, desiring to gain things and benefits for themselves rather than to do what is right to the people of God and to truly do God’s will.

The prophet Jeremiah had often spoken against those false prophets and all the wicked practices of the people of Judah and their kings, prophesying about the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem, which would indeed happen very soon at that time, when the Babylonians came to conquer the kingdom of Judah, destroying Jerusalem and its Temple. And everything that the prophet Jeremiah had said would indeed come to pass with the Babylonians bringing many of the people of Judah into exile in distant lands away from the lands that they and their ancestors had lived in, a consequence of the rebelliousness and wickedness of their lives and actions before God and men alike.

But at the same time, the Lord also reassured His people of His continued love and generous mercy and forgiveness, as He told them that He would gather them all back and then appoint over them shepherds and guides who would take good care of them all, referring first of all to how they would eventually return to their homeland after many years and decades in exile, and how the Lord would allow and help them to rebuild their lives once again, as they would reestablish their homes and cities, rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem which would once again be the centre of the proper and worthy worship of the Lord. All these things would indeed come to be just as the Lord had decreed and willed them all to be.

In our second reading this Sunday, we heard from the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Church and the faithful in the city of Ephesus in which the Apostle spoke of this great love and salvation which God had made available to all of us, His beloved ones, through His Son, Our Lord and Saviour, Who has come into our midst, to all of us, the beloved children of God, so that by His coming into this world, and by everything that He has willingly done for us, all of us may receive from Him the assurance of eternal life and true happiness with Him. And He did all these by the willing and most selfless sacrifice, all the sufferings that He endured from His Cross, which He brought and carried with Him all the way to Calvary.

Yes, indeed, God had saved us all and shown us all the most perfect and worthy example of His ever enduring love for us by His Son’s Passion, the suffering and all that He experienced, as He offered for us, on our behalf, the most worthy offering and sacrifice of His own Most Precious Body and Most Precious Blood, the Body and Blood of the Lamb of God, persecuted and slain at the Altar of the Cross at Calvary, on the day of our salvation, that is Good Friday, so that through His offering and sacrifice, all of us may receive the full assurance and guarantee of eternal life and salvation through Him. This is truly the perfect example of God’s ever enduring and generous love for us, which we ought to remember at each and every moments of our lives.

Then, in our Gospel passage today, taken from the Gospel according to St. Mark, we heard of the Lord Jesus Who continued to teach to the people and care for them despite Him and His disciples being physically tired from all the works and missions that they carried out among the people. The disciples had wanted to go off to a secluded place to avoid the crowd so that they all could have a rest after the continuous and ceaseless streams of people coming to the Lord to have Him heal their sick ones or to listen to His teachings and words. But the Lord had pity on the people, who were described in the Gospel as those who were without any shepherd and guidance.

This was in fact a fulfilment of what the Lord had proclaimed earlier on through the prophet Jeremiah and the other prophets, that God would indeed send to His beloved people a new Shepherd, the One Who would gather all of them and show them the path towards Himself, He Who is the Good Shepherd and the Lord of all, none other than Jesus Christ Himself, the Saviour. Through His Son, the Lord gathered everyone back to Himself, calling upon everyone to embrace once again His love and providence, and to follow the path that He Himself has shown us so that we may not be lost again to Him through our disobedience and sins. God wants each and every one of us to be fully reconciled and reunited with Him.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, as we all have heard from the Sacred Scriptures and as we have discussed and discerned them all earlier in their messages, we are all reminded that as God’s most beloved ones, we must always realise just how beloved and precious each and every one of us by God, Who has done everything for us so that we may have the path towards eternal life. Let us all therefore reject all sorts of wickedness and evils in our lives and strive from now on to be ever more committed to God, in all the things that we say and do, in our every interactions with one another. May the Lord be with us always and may He continue to empower and strengthen us all so that we will continue to follow Him and be faithful to Him, ever reminded of the great and ever enduring, most wonderful love that He has for each one of us, now and always. Amen.