Tempus post Epiphania

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Wednesday, 20 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of the Scripture speaking to us about the wonders of God’s love for us all, His beloved people. God has blessed all those who are faithful to Him, and provided for the needs of those who trusted Him and placed their focus on Him. The Lord saved Noah and his family through the great Ark and He also saved the blind man from His predicament, by restoring the sight which that man had lost earlier.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, first of all we heard from the Book of Genesis, the account of how the Great Flood wiped all lives from the whole earth, except for all those that Noah and his family gathered in the great Ark. The Lord kept them safe from harm and protected them from danger. The Ark floated through the storm and the flood until the flood started to recede, and all of the survivors went on to repopulate the earth. This was God’s promise of love and salvation to all those who have been faithful to Him.

God then promised His people that He will never destroy them with flood again, and showed His promise with the rainbow, that appeared every time a great rain falls on the earth. Ultimately, this reminds us of the fact that God loves each and every one of us, and He does not wish or desire for our destruction and suffering. All those who have perished during the Great Flood was caused by their own disobedience against God, their wickedness and sins.

God did not condemn the people to hell and destruction, but instead, the people of God themselves have consciously rejected God’s love and His generous offer of mercy and forgiveness. God has given all of them many opportunities, chances after chances for them to repent from their sins and to turn away from their disobedience. However, they still chose to be tempted and to disobey God regardless of the consequences of their sinful ways.

Yet, even with all of those attitudes, God still wants to help us all, out of His ever great love for each and every one of us. He extends His mercy and love, and He wants to touch us and heal us, in body, mind and soul, just as He stretched out His hands in order to heal the blind man. The blind man, who must have suffered from his blindness, was completely cured from his condition, and he could see once again.

We can only imagine just how joyful the man must have been, at the very moment when he was able to see light once again, in a world once filled with darkness and despair, that light piercing through his vision, allowing him to see clearly once again must have been such an unimaginably joyful experience for the blind man. That is exactly what each and every one of us experience when we are freed from sin, and receive from God the gift of faith and everlasting life.

Once, we have been sinners and we have disobeyed God, but God in His rich and wondrous mercy gave us a new lease of life, and a new hope when we were in the depth of darkness. He has blessed us with all these things because He loves each one of us very tenderly and greatly, that He has given us His only begotten Son, as Our Saviour, and Christ has suffered and died for us all on the cross, for the sake of our salvation.

Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, the question for us is that, are we able to love God and dedicate ourselves in the same manner as God has done for us all these while? Are we able to commit ourselves to love God with all of our hearts, minds and with all of our strength just as He has done, in His great patience and compassion, although we have constantly sinned against Him? We are called to love God and to serve Him, from now on. Let us all turn towards Him, and devote ourselves to Him with all of our abilities from now on, and always. Amen.

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Wednesday, 20 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Mark 8 : 22-26

At that time, when Jesus and His disciples came to Bethsaida, He was asked to touch a blind man who was brought to Him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When He had put spittle on his eyes and laid His hands upon him, He asked, “Can you see anything?”

The man, who was beginning to see, replied, “I see people! They look like trees, but they move around.” Then Jesus laid His hands on his eyes again and the man could see perfectly. His sight was restored and he could see everything clearly. Then Jesus sent him home, saying, “Do not return to the village.”

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Wednesday, 20 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 115 : 12-13, 14-15, 18-19

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.

I will fulfil my vows to the Lord in the presence of all His people. It is painful to the Lord to see the death of His faithful.

I will carry out my vows to the Lord in the presence of His people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, o Jerusalem.

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Wednesday, 20 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Genesis 8 : 6-13, 20-22

At the end of the forty days Noah opened the window of the Ark that he had built and let the raven out. This went off and kept flying to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth.

Then Noah let out the dove to see if the waters were receding from the earth. But the dove could not find a place to set its foot and flew back to him in the Ark for the waters still covered the surface of the whole earth. So Noah stretched out his hand, took hold of it and brought it back to himself in the Ark.

He waited some more days and again sent the dove out from the Ark. This time the dove came back to him in the evening with a fresh olive branch in its beak. Then Noah knew the waters had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and let the dove loose, but it did not return to him any more.

In the year six hundred and one, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the Ark and looked out and saw that the surface of the earth was dry. Noah built an altar to YHVH and, taking some of all the clean animals and all the clean birds, he offered burnt offerings on it.

YHVH smelled the pleasing aroma and said to Himself : “Never again will I curse the earth because of man, even though his heart is set on evil from childhood; never again will I strike down every living creature as I have done. As long as the earth lasts, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease to be.”

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Tuesday, 19 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of the Scriptures speaking to us about the faith which we ought to have in God, for all the wonders that He has done for our sake, from the very beginning of time. God has blessed us all His people since the beginning, even when we have disobeyed Him and sinned against Him, by not following what He has commanded us to do, and His love for us still prevailed against His anger at our sinful actions and deeds.

In today’s first reading, we heard the account of the building of the Ark of Noah, the great Ark that God commanded Noah and his family to build, in order to rescue themselves from the wicked generation of the people of his time. At that time, out of all the descendants of men, Noah and his family alone were still righteous and obedient before God, while all other people followed the path of sin, wicked and deviant before God.

But God, despite of the anger He has towards us mankind because of our sins, ultimately, He still loved us even more than He was angry at our sins. He created us out of His immense and boundless love, and as a result, He wanted to save us all from our predicament. Yet, it was us mankind who have often erred and refused to follow and obey Him, again and again, many times, despite His constant and thorough reminders towards us.

Noah spent over a century building up the Ark upon God’s instructions given to him, but during all those years, none of the people, except those within Noah’s own family, believed in the Lord and the message of His upcoming wrath, the Great Flood which He would send into the world, to wash it all away from the great wickedness and sins that the sons and daughters of men had committed. None of them believed and repented, and as a result, when the Flood began, and the Ark sailed away safely, all the rest of humanity perished.

In the Gospel passage today, the Lord was also doing the same among His people, as He taught the disciples and all those who have seen Him performing many miracles and healing among them. He saw the doubts and the lack of faith which were still in their hearts and minds, that has become a barrier for them from truly being able to understand and appreciate the love and the truth which He was bringing unto them.

They saw His miracles and marvellous deeds, but their hearts and minds were still burdened by doubt, and by the sins in their flesh. They were after all, mortal beings, corrupted and dirtied by sin, much as their ancestors had been, like all those who at the days of Noah, refused to believe in God and continued to live in the state of ignorance, both of their wickedness and sin, as well as their impending doom.

That is why God rebuked His disciples and chastised them for their lack of faith in Him, as they still put their trust in worldly matters such as food and provisions, rather than to put their complete trust in God. They are still creatures of the flesh, easily swayed by the demands and the desires of their bodies. God’s words and truth have not yet been planted and taken root deep within them yet. But God did not give up on them, and continued to teach them and guide them to the right path.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today many of us have not obeyed the Lord in the way that we should have done it. And many of us are still easily swayed by worldly desires and thoughts, and thus were distracted in our journey of faith towards God. But God has always been kind and loving towards us, and He is always ready to extend His merciful love towards us. Now, what matters is for us to accept His generous offer of mercy and love.

Are we willing to be forgiven by God? Are we willing to attune ourselves once again to His will and to His ways? Then we need to have a profound change of heart and attitude in life, that we should no longer be self-centred or be egoistic in life, but instead, learning to put our trust in God, in He Who alone is able to give us true joy and happiness in Him. Let us all grow ever more in our faith in God, and take up the chances that God has given us, to be forgiven from our sins, and to receive from Him the promise of eternal glory and life. Amen.

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Tuesday, 19 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Mark 8 : 14-21

At that time, the disciples had forgotten to bring more bread, and had only one loaf with the in the boat. Then Jesus warned them, “Keep your eyes open, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” And they said of one another, “He saw that we have no bread.”

Aware of this, Jesus asked them, “Why are you talking about the loaves you are short of? Do you not see or understand? Are your minds closed? Have your eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear? And do you not remember when I broke the five loaves among five thousand? How many baskets full of letfovers did you collect?”

They answered, “Twelve.” “And having distributed seven loaves to the four thousand, how many wicker baskets of leftovers did you collect?” They answered, “Seven.” Then Jesus said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

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Tuesday, 19 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 28 : 1a and 2, 3ac-4, 3b and 9b-10

Give the Lord, o sons of God, give the Lord the glory due His Name; worship the Lord in great liturgy.

The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the Lord thunders over vast waters. How powerful is the voice of the Lord, how splendorous is the voice of the Lord.

The God of glory thunders, the Lord strips the forests bare, and in His Temple all cry, “Glory!” Over the flood the Lord was sitting; the Lord is King and He reigns forever.

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Tuesday, 19 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Genesis 6 : 5-8 and Genesis 7 : 1-5, 10

YHVH saw how great was the wickedness of man on the earth and that evil was always the only thought of his heart. YHVH regretted having created man on the earth and His heart grieved. He said, “I will destroy man whom I created and blot him out from the face of the earth, as well as the beasts, creeping creatures and birds, for I am sorry I made them.” But Noah was pleasing to God.

YHVH said to Noah, “Go into the Ark, you and all your household, for I see that you are just in this generation. Of all the clean animals, you are to take with you seven of each kind, male and female, and a pair of unclean animals, a male and a female. In the same way for the birds of the air, take seven and seven, male and female, to keep their kind alive over all the earth, for in seven days I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. I will blot out from the face of the earth all the living creatures I have created.”

Noah did all as YHVH had commanded. And after seven days the waters of the flood were over the earth.

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Monday, 18 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the story from the Scriptures beginning with the tale of Cain and Abel, the firstborn children of men, of the first family, Adam and Eve. We heard how Cain and Abel grew up in this world, tilling its earth and shepherding the animals of the field. And as they grew up, we heard of the sad and unfortunate tale of how Abel killed his own brother, of his own flesh and blood, because of jealousy and anger.

We see in this unfortunate occasion, the greed and desire, the ego, pride and ambition that are present within us, that when we do not restrain ourselves, it can cause us to do things that can lead us into sin, as what Cain’s actions had shown us. Cain desired acceptance, acknowledgement and honour, and when his offerings to God were not accepted while his younger brother’s offering was accepted, he became angry and jealous at his brother.

And such feelings of anger and jealousy became source of temptation for Cain, and Satan made use of the opportunity to pull the strings at his desire and his ego, and as a result, without thinking further of the grave consequences, he killed Abel, his own younger brother, just so that he might be able to satisfy his jealousy and justify his anger and ego. In that action, he has committed a great sin of murder, and worse still, as he murdered his own brother.

In the Gospel reading today, we heard of another story, in which the people asking the Lord Jesus to perform signs and miracles before them. And especially, it was the Pharisees who asked the Lord to perform those miracles with the malicious intent of hoping to embarrass Him, despite themselves having seen how the Lord Jesus could perform all those wonders and powers which no one, except those sent by God, could have performed.

Yet they still asked the Lord to perform the miracles, with the intention to harm His reputation and to embarrass Him. This came about because of the jealousy that they had against the Lord Jesus, as they saw Him as a rival to their own teaching authority, power and prestige within the community of the people of Israel. They saw His courageous and authoritative teachings as threats to their influence and privileges, especially because large crowds always followed the Lord wherever He went.

Just as Cain felt angry and jealous because his ego and pride was seemingly slighted by the acceptance of Abel’s sacrifice over his, the Pharisees were also affected by the same anger and jealousy, when they saw that the people were no longer solely depending on them as the sole source of knowledge and authority, but instead turning towards the truth that Christ has brought into the midst of His people.

This shows each one of us how dangerous our ego and pride can be. History has shown that when we allow pride and ego to guide our way and our thoughts, our choice of actions and decisions in life, we can end up committing even heinous and wicked crimes and deeds, that can cause the sufferings of others, pain and hurt in those whose livelihood may be affected negatively by our own desires and ego.

Cain killed Abel over this matter, and the Pharisees joined all those who sought the death of the Lord Jesus, and condemned Him to die on the cross at the hands of the Romans, all because of their ego and pride. They allowed all these things to become obstacles in their way of faith, and in the end, sin entered into their hearts and minds, corrupting their whole beings. This is what we can also suffer from, unless we realise how dangerous our pride and ego is, and restrain them.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we should temper our pride and our ego within us. These are things that are always within us, and we will always be tempted to be proud and to be selfish, to be seeking for our own glory and comfort, even at the expense of others. However, as Christians, we have all been called to overcome all of these, and resist the temptation to sin by this manner. Thus, instead of being filled with jealousy and pride, let us instead turn towards God and learn to love Him with all of our hearts.

May the Lord sow within us all the seeds of His love, that we may grow ever stronger in love, and remove from our hearts and minds all pride, egoistic and selfish attitudes, wicked thoughts and desires, and jealousy against others. Let us all love our brothers and sisters from now on, just as much as we love ourselves and love God in the same way as well. Amen.

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Monday, 18 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Mark 8 : 11-13

At that time, the Pharisees came and started to argue with Jesus. Hoping to embarrass Him, they asked for some heavenly sign. Then His Spirit was moved. He gave a deep sigh and said, “Why do the people of this present time ask for a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign shall be given to this people.”

Then He left them, got into the boat again and went to the other side of the lake.