Sundays after Pentecost

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Wednesday, 16 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Hedwig, Religious, and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, Virgin (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Religious or Holy Virgins)

Psalm 1 : 1-2, 3, 4 and 6

Blessed is the one who does not go where the wicked gather, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit where the scoffers sit! Instead, he finds delight in the law of the Lord and meditates day and night on His commandments.

He is like a tree beside a brook producing its fruit in due season, its leaves never withering. Everything he does is a success.

But it is different with the wicked. They are like chaff driven away by the wind. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous but cuts off the way of the wicked.

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Wednesday, 16 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Hedwig, Religious, and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, Virgin (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Religious or Holy Virgins)

Galatians 5 : 18-25

But when you are led by the Spirit you are not under the Law. You know what comes from the flesh : fornication, impurity and shamelessness, idol worship and sorcery, hatred, jealousy and violence, anger, ambition, division, factions, and envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like. I again say to you what I have already said : those who do these things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy and peace, patience, understanding of others, kindness and fidelity, gentleness and self-control. For such things there is no Law or punishment. Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its vices and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us live in a spiritual way.

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Tuesday, 15 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we all listened from the passages of the Sacred Scriptures in which we are reminded again that we should be truly faithful to the Lord in all things, and we should not be easily be swayed by the temptations and pressures of the world around us, all the temptations that may end up leading us astray and further away from God and His salvation. God has revealed the truth about His love, His teachings and Good News to us all through His Son, Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and through His Son, God has taught us what we all truly need to do in order to follow and obey Him faithfully, and not to fall into the thinking that our knowledge, wisdom and intellect are better than the Wisdom of God, as the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law had once done.

In our first reading today, we heard from the continuation of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Church and the faithful people of God in Galatia, where the Apostle spoke of the matter of the Law and how the people of God there should truly follow and obey the Lord wholeheartedly and truthfully. For the context, we must understand that there were quite a few Jewish people living in Galatia and other regions and cities that St. Paul had been visiting, and as he addressed the faithful through his Epistles, there was the clear intention of him addressing the turmoil and disagreements that existed between the believers and converts that came from both the Jewish and non-Jewish background. Even among the Jewish people themselves, there were different ideas and disagreements on their beliefs, and they were bitterly divided on those matters at times.

As such, St. Paul wanted to highlight particularly the matter of the obligation of having to follow, obey and fulfil the Law of God, and how the faithful should not follow the ways of the Pharisees, the teachers of the Law and all those who have strictly and rigidly interpreted the Law of God, emphasizing excessively on the details and the intricacies of the rules and rites that needed to be done, and in the process, they ended up falling into the trap of scrupulousness, focusing a lot more on the manner how the Law was to be obeyed and followed rather than on why they need to be obeyed and followed. Their preoccupation on the very extensive, strict and demanding set of the rules, Law and regulations prevented so many people from coming closer to God, and worse still, the prejudices they had against those they deemed to be less worthy than them became a major stumbling block as well. This is what St. Paul was speaking up against, in reminding the faithful that they ought to follow Christ and not man-made rules and regulations.

Then, in our Gospel passage today, we heard from the Gospel of St. Luke the Evangelist in which the account of the Lord confronting a Pharisee who invited Him to have a meal at his place, for his preoccupation and obsession with the obedience and fulfilment of the rituals and details of the customs and practices of the Law of God, which had prevented him and many others among the Pharisees from being able to embrace the truth and the way which the Lord Jesus had brought into the world. This is in accordance to what St. Paul had also told the faithful in the Epistle earlier on, as we are reminded of the need to adhere faithfully to what the Lord Himself has shown and taught us, and not to fall into the trap of pride, ego and desire, ambition and scrupulousness which had befallen those Pharisees and teachers of the Law.

What the Lord criticised those Pharisees for were their scrupulousness and the excessive attention to details as mentioned, as they focused so much on the details and the extensive rules involved that they tend to overlook why those laws and rules were instated in the first place. Such as the matter mentioned in our Gospel passage today, where the Law of Moses dictated the washing of hands and bowls, which were in fact rules meant to help the people maintain a hygienic life and practices especially in the context of the time of the Exodus and the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan, when the people lived with each other in very close proximity, due to the relatively large number of people travelling in the camps of the Israelites. Such a law and rule was necessary at that time to prevent the spread of plagues and diseases among the people which could be fatal for many of them.

However, the Pharisees and the others who interpreted these rules and laws very strictly and on a very literal level, putting very big emphasis on the details of what ought to be followed. They spent so much focus on how far the washing and cleaning ought to be, right up to the elbows and then how many times the hands and the bowls ought to be washed and cleaned. This was just one among many other rules and regulations that those Pharisees and teachers of the Law fussed excessively about, and hence, this was what the Lord Jesus was criticising and rebuking the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law against so that they would realise the folly and error of their ways, and not to mislead the people of God any further with their unhealthy and incorrection attention and focus on the letter of the Law and the details rather than the true meaning and purpose of the Law.

Ultimately, the Law of God was meant to help and direct God’s people towards Him, and this Law is the Law of love meant to teach and show them all how to truly love the Lord their God wholeheartedly and fully. The Law was never meant to restrain or put heavy burdens on the people of God. Rather, it was given and taught to us to ensure that we may know that we ought to exist for the Lord and we should put Him at the very centre of our lives and existence, and we should do our best so that our lives may truly proclaim His glory and that we will always be ever more faithful to His cause, learning how to love Him and to love our fellow brothers and sisters, as that Law has always been intended to be. The Law of God is the Law of Love, meant to show us how we all ought to love God and one another.djer

Today, the Church celebrates the Feast of a great saint and holy woman of the Church, one of the esteemed and honoured Doctors of the Church, namely St. Teresa of Jesus, also known as St. Teresa of Avila. St. Teresa of Avila was one of the founders of the Discalced Carmelites Order, which was born out of the extensive reform of the original Carmelite Order during the time of the Counter-Reformation. St. Teresa of Avila was born during the time when there were great changes and turmoils in Christendom, and she was brought up as a devout Christian by her mother and family, and after losing her mother at a rather early age of eleven, this experience further brought St. Teresa of Avila closer to the Lord, eventually desiring to join religious life and to commit herself to the Lord.

St. Teresa of Avila eventually joined the Carmelites and lived with great piety and dedication to God, committing herself to a life of prayer and self-mortification, resisting the temptations of the world and while experiencing many spiritual ecstasy and mystical visions that eventually led her even closer to God. She was known for her many other spiritual experiences and sufferings, which she endured patiently with faith, and her piety and examples became great inspiration for everyone both during her time and afterwards. Then, as mentioned, she became a great reformer of the Carmelite Order that she belonged to, seeing the laxity and worldly corruption that had crept up into her religious order and community, that many of the religious no longer committed themselves faithfully to the Lord in the manner that the founder of the Order intended to.

To this extent, together with several others, including St. John of the Cross and all those who shared her vision, St. Teresa of Avila resolved to establish the reformed Carmelite order, which would henceforth be known as the Discalced Carmelites, for their willingness and commitment to adhere more faithfully to the tenets and the practices of the original founders and intentions of the Carmelites, which is kind of similar to what we have been hearing in our Scripture passages earlier and discussed today. The Lord also intended to return everyone to the true intention and practice of the Law that God had granted and given to them, purifying the Law that had been misinterpreted and wrongly practiced in the past centuries by the people of God and their leaders, which had led them to the wrong path. In the similar way therefore, St. Teresa of Avila and the other reformers did the same, as they courageously went through the challenges and trials that they had to face amidst their attempts and efforts to establish the reformed Carmelite order.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we have heard from the Scripture readings today and from the life and examples of St. Teresa of Jesus or St. Teresa of Avila, let us all therefore strive as Christians, as God’s holy and beloved people to follow Him ever more wholeheartedly and worthily in all things. Let us all continue to do our best so that our whole lives, our every actions and deeds, our words and interactions with one another will continue to proclaim the glory of God. May God bless each and every one of us, and may He continue to guide us in our journey through life and strengthen us in our every efforts and endeavours to glorify Him like His holy saints had done before us, now and always. Amen.

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Tuesday, 15 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Luke 11 : 37-41

At that time, as Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked Him to have a meal with him. So He went and sat at table. The Pharisee then wondered why Jesus did not wash His hands before the dinner.

But the Lord said to him, “So then, you Pharisees, you clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside yourselves you are full of greed and evil. Fools! He Who made the outside, also made the inside. But according to you, by the mere giving of alms everything is made clean.”

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Tuesday, 15 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 118 : 41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48

Give me Your unfailing love, o YHVH; Your salvation, as You have promised.

Take not the word of truth from my mouth, for I would also lose my hope in Your word.

May I always keep Your word, for ever and ever.

I shall walk in freedom, having sought out Your laws.

For I delight in Your word, which I fear.

I will lift up my hands to You, and meditate on Your commandments.

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Tuesday, 15 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Galatians 5 : 1-6

Christ freed us, to make us really free. So remain firm, and do not submit, again, to the yoke of slavery. I, Paul, say this to you : if you receive circumcision, Christ can no longer help you. Once more, I say, to whoever receives circumcision : you are now bound to keep the whole Law. All you, who pretend to become righteous through the observance of the Law, have separated yourselves from Christ, and have fallen away from grace.

As for us, through the Spirit and faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. In Christ Jesus, it is irrelevant, whether we be circumcised or not; what matters is, faith, working through love.

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Monday, 14 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Callixtus I, Pope and Martyr (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we all heard from the readings of the Sacred Scriptures, we are called to heed the words of the Lord calling on each and every one of us to put our faith and trust in the Lord, keeping ourselves away from the temptations of worldly desires and pleasures, all of which had kept us away from truly being able to follow the Lord faithfully and wholeheartedly. We should always strive to resist those temptations, pressures and coercions, all the things that have often become difficult and challenging stumbling blocks for many of us because they had played upon our desires and ambitions, touching upon the greed and ego in us, and threatening to keep us away from the Lord and His salvation, if we are not vigilant against them.

In our first reading today, we heard from the beginning of the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Church and the faithful in the city and region of Ephesus, one of the great cities of Antiquity and an important early centre of Christian missions and evangelisation. There in that Epistle, St. Paul spoke of the story of Abraham and his two sons, which were born to him through two different women to highlight what he wanted to convey to them regarding the Christian faith which they had received and come to believe in. First was Ishmael, the son born to Abraham through Hagar, the slave owned by his wife, Sarah, which according to the rules and customs of his time, any children born to the slave of a woman, was considered to belong to the woman and was legally a son of Abraham. Then there was also Isaac, born from Sarah herself, who was at the time was already very old and long past childbearing age.

This story from the Book of Genesis highlighted to us the importance of trusting in God and obeying His will and commandments, and not to believe or trust in worldly ways and methods. It was Sarah who suggested to Abraham that he should lay with her slave Hagar, that she would bear a son for him, despite the Lord having assured and then repeatedly reassured Abraham that he would be the father and progenitor of many nations and people through his wife Sarah. The impatience of Sarah and the lack of faith that happened at the time eventually led to the complications that came about because of the presence of both Ishmael and Isaac, both according to rules and customs, were legally sons and heirs of Abraham. Nonetheless, God told Abraham that He would still bless Ishmael as he was Abraham’s son, but reiterated that His blessings and grace would fully be with Isaac and his descendants, the ones whom God had intended them for.

St. Paul spoke of how the sons and descendants of Ishmael were born out of slavery and hence were bound to the enslavement and were not free, while the sons and descendants of Isaac were born of their free woman, Sarah, and thus was not subject to enslavement anymore, and they were truly free. St. Paul was in fact not comparing about the status of whether the descendants of Ishmael or Isaac were free or enslaved, as the Israelites, the descendants of Isaac, were themselves enslaved in Egypt for some period of time. Rather, the Apostle was using the comparison to highlight, as mentioned, the difference between obeying the old, human-based and flawed laws and rules, customs and practices of the Jewish people as especially carried out and enforced by the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, associated with this ‘enslavement’ to the worldly rules and ways, versus the true Law of God as revealed to them and all of us through Christ and His Church.

Then, in our Gospel passage today, we heard from the Gospel according to St. Luke the Evangelist in which the Lord spoke to all the people and all those gathered including His disciples, many of whom were asking for Him to show them a sign, and how He told them that they had seen many things and wonders, which they themselves had witnessed all throughout the Lord’s journeys and ministry, and yet they did not believe. He was rebuking them for their lack of faith and trust in God, and in the One Whom God had sent into their midst, Christ Himself, Who has shown the fulfilment of everything that the Lord has promised and proclaimed through His many prophets. Those who failed to believe likely belonged to the group of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who saw and considered themselves to be spiritually superior and better because of their adherence and obedience to God through their interpretation of the Law.

The Lord also spoke of how the only sign that they would see would be the sign of Jonah, which was in fact a veiled revelation of what He would Himself face at the time of His Passion, His suffering and death on the Cross, and also His Resurrection from the dead. This is because of the prophet Jonah having been swallowed by a great whale and stayed in the belly of that whale for three days before he was then cast back out to the land. This was a prefigurement of the Lord’s suffering and death, as He Himself would spend a period of three days in the ‘belly’ of the earth after His death, being buried in the tomb, and then on the third day rose in glory, triumphant against all the powers of sin, evil and darkness, as a great Sign for all of us.

All these again pointed out to us the need to distance ourselves from the many temptations often present in our lives and around us, for us to be truly faithful and committed to God, trusting in Him and obeying His words instead of trusting and putting our faith in our own flawed judgments and abilities alone. We must always live our lives and carry out our daily actions and living in tandem with God’s guidance and providence, allowing Him to help and lead us all down the righteous and correct path, away from the path of darkness and sin, all of which can bring us to our downfall and destruction. We should always trust in God to help us to discern the right path, and we must always strive to move forward in life with the help and guidance of God at all times.

Today the Church also celebrates the Feast of Pope St. Callixtus I, one of the early Church and fathers and as Pope, was one of the successors of St. Peter the Apostle as the leader of the whole Universal Church. His examples and faith should serve as good example and inspiration for all of us to follow in our own lives, doing whatever we can so that we may truly follow the Lord faithfully and wholeheartedly and do not end up following the false path in life. Pope St. Callixtus I according to tradition was once a slave in his youth during the height of the power of the Roman Empire, and he had a rather difficult life working in the Sardinian mines before he was released and afterwards came to the service of the Church as a deacon ordained by Pope St. Zephyrinus.

Pope St. Zephyrinus was then succeeded by Pope St. Callixtus I himself, who reached out to all those who have come from various sects and schismatic Christian bodies, and also allowed the absolution of more serious sins such as murder for those who were genuinely repentant and regretful over their sins and mistakes. This was opposed by a group of the faithful and the clergy who disagreed with the Pope’s approach, preferring a strict exclusion of those who were deemed to be unworthy of God’s salvation because of their sinful ways and them having fallen into the path of sin. Those people elected a popular priest, later known and venerated as St. Hippolytus of Rome, as an Antipope or rival Pope to Pope St. Callixtus I. But regardless of this division and difficulties faced by the faithful, Pope St. Callixtus I continued to labour hard for the people of God, until he himself was arrested and martyred during the severe persecution of Christians, and eventually his successor, Pope St. Pontian managed to be reconciled with St. Hippolytus and returned unity back to the Church.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, therefore, as we have listened from the examples of Pope St. Callixtus I, and inspired by the examples and lives of the other holy saints, holy men and women of God, let us all continue to put our faith and trust in the Lord rather than in the human wisdom and intellect, or be enslaved and be narrow-minded because of our attachments to the rules, regulations and customs of the world. May the Lord continue to help and guide us in our journey of faith, so that in everything that we do in each and every moments of our lives, we will continue to commit ourselves wholly and focus our every attention and efforts to walk in God’s path rather than to follow the whim of our own desires and ambitions in life. Let us all not harden our hearts and minds, and turn away from the darkness of this world, and instead, embrace wholeheartedly God’s path and ways, following in the examples of our holy predecessors, now and always. Amen.

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Monday, 14 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Callixtus I, Pope and Martyr (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs)

Luke 11 : 29-32

At that time, as the crowd increased, Jesus spoke the following words : “People of the present time are troubled people. They ask for a sign, but no sign will be given to them except the sign of Jonah. As Jonah became a sign for the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be a sign for this generation.”

“The Queen of the South will rise up on Judgment Day with the people of these times and accuse them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and here, there is greater than Solomon. The people of Nineveh will rise up on Judgment Day with the people of these times and accuse them, for Jonah’s preaching made them turn from their sins, and here, there is greater than Jonah.”

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Monday, 14 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Callixtus I, Pope and Martyr (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs)

Psalm 112 : 1-2, 3-4, 5a and 6-7

Alleluia! Praise, o servants of YHVH, praise the Name of YHVH! Blessed be the Name of YHVH now and forever!

From eastern lands to the western islands, may the Name of YHVH be praised! YHVH is exalted over the nations; His glory above the heavens.

Who is like YHVH our God, Who also bends down to see on earth as in heaven? He lifts up the poor from the dust and the needy from the ash heap.

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Monday, 14 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Callixtus I, Pope and Martyr (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or Red (Martyrs)

Galatians 4 : 22-24, 26-27, 31 – Galatians 5 : 1

It says, that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman, the other by the free woman, his wife. The son of the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but the son of the free woman was born in fulfilment of God’s promise.

Here we have an allegory and the figures of two Covenants. The first is the one from Mount Sinai, represented through Hagar : her children have slavery for their lot. But the Jerusalem above, who is our mother, is free. And Scripture says of her : Rejoice, barren woman without children, break forth in shouts of joy, you who do not know the pains of childbirth, for many shall be the children of the forsaken mother, more than of the married woman.

Brethren, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman. Christ freed us, to make us really free. So remain firm, and do not submit, again, to the yoke of slavery.