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.

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.