Thursday

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Thursday, 21 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the words of God in the Scriptures speaking to us regarding the salvation which God has given to all of His people, the Covenant which He has made with all of us mankind, through which He restored us all from the state of disgrace and sin, into a renewed existence in grace and beloved by God.

God has brought Noah and his family, who alone were faithful among the many wicked and unrepentant sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, safely through the Great Flood that destroyed everything in the world, and through the Ark, brought them all into a new life on a renewed earth. And God made a new Covenant with Noah and his family, with him and all of his descendants, that include all of us living here today.

The Covenant that God has made is a Covenant of love, the promise of love between God and His beloved people, in which the two parties involved entered into a most solemn and honourable agreement and binding decision, to be committed to each other, to be devoted and to love each other with sincerity and genuine desire. And God loved His people as He has always done, not desiring their destruction but salvation and liberation from sin.

And because a Covenant is contracted between two parties and is binding between them, therefore, if God Himself has entered into the agreement with us all, and willingly committed Himself to us, then we mankind, who are also part of this same Covenant, must therefore also love God in the same manner, and commit ourselves to a loving relationship with Him. If we love God, then we must be willing to walk in His ways, and change our way of life to do what He has taught and shown us to do.

And God renewed His Covenant as we have heard in our Gospel passage today, through none other than Jesus Christ, His own beloved Son, sent into the world for this very purpose, that is to renew the Covenant He had once made with His people, with a new and everlasting Covenant that surpasses every previous Covenants, sealed with nothing less than the pure sacrifice and the Most Precious Blood of Christ, flowing down from the cross.

Yet, are we able to love Him as He has loved us so dearly? Many of us have not been able to commit ourselves in the same manner as our Lord as loved and devoted Himself to us. He has loved us so totally, so as to give everything for our sake. Many of us love instead the many tempting things in the world, not even giving our attention and time for God. We look for things such as worldly glory, fame, prestige, wealth and power.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as long as we are distracted by all of these temptations, we will not be able to give ourselves totally and wholly to God, and we will always end up failing and falling into sin again and again. We need to make the conscious effort to resist those temptations to sin. Otherwise, we will easily be swayed by the devil and all those who have always been trying to tempt us, day after day, at every moments.

Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Peter Damian, a holy and devout servant of God who should become our inspiration in life. St. Peter Damian was a renowned Benedictine monk who eventually rose to the rank of Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, as one of the closest confidants of the Pope, for his vigorous reforms and commitment to the renewal of the Church at the time, in which corrupt practices were rampant.

St. Peter Damian dedicated much of his life to the eradication of the wicked practices and sins present within the Church, both among the clergy and the laity at the time, when the Church members and officials were deeply embroiled in scandals pertaining their worldly ambitions and ways. St. Peter Damian led the effort to eradicate all of these excesses and wicked practices, helping the Pope at the time to steer the Church through the difficult times.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are called to follow the examples and the commitment shown by St. Peter Damian in living an upright life dedicated to God. We are called to abandon our past attachments to sin, and repent from our past disobediences. Indeed, this is not something that can be easily done, but unless we make the conscious effort to do so, we can see how the devil’s wickedness have once again struck at our Church, both among the clergy and the laity alike.

We have seen all sorts of scandals involving the clergy as well as those counted among the laity, and how all of these are causing hurts and difficulties to the efforts of the Church to bring more souls to the salvation in God. Let us therefore begin from ourselves, the effort to purify our lives and to bring about a renewal of the Covenant of love that God has made with us, through Christ, His Son, our Lord and Saviour.

Let us all turn once again wholeheartedly towards the Lord, loving Him and placing Him at the very centre of our lives. Let us all seek to walk faithfully in His ways, and do our best to obey Him from now on. May the Lord our loving God continue to love us and bless us, each and every days of our lives. Amen.

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Thursday, 21 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Mark 8 : 27-33

At that time, Jesus set out with His disciples for the villages around Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He asked them, “Who do people say I am?” And they told Him, “Some say You are John the Baptist; others say You are Elijah or one of the prophets.”

Then Jesus asked them, “But you, who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” And He ordered them not to tell anyone about Him. Jesus then began to teach them that the Son of Man had to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the Law. He would be killed, and after three days rise again.

Jesus said all this quite openly, so that Peter took Him aside and began to protest strongly. But Jesus turning around, and looking at His disciples, rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are thinking not as God does, but as people do.”

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Thursday, 21 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Psalm 101 : 16-18, 19-21, 29 and 22-23

O Lord, the nations will revere Your Name, and the kings of the earth Your glory, when the Lord will rebuild Zion and appear in all His splendour. For He will answer the prayer of the needy and will not despise their plea.

Let this be written for future ages, “The Lord will be praised by a people He will form.” From His holy height in heaven, the Lord has looked on the earth to hear the groaning of the prisoners, and free those condemned to death.”

Your servants’ children will dwell secure; their posterity will endure without fail. Then the Name of the Lord will be declared in Zion, and His praise in Jerusalem, when the peoples and the kingdoms assemble to worship Him.

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Thursday, 21 February 2019 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Bishops)

Genesis 9 : 1-13

God blessed Noah and his sons and he said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. Fear and dread of you will be in all the animals of the earth and in all the birds of the air, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. They are given to you. Everything that moves and lives shall be food for you; as I gave you the green plants, I have now given you everything. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is its blood.”

“But I will also demand a reckoning for your lifeblood. I will demand it from every animal; and from man, too, I will demand a reckoning for the life of his fellow man. He who sheds the blood of man shall have his blood shed by man; for in the image of God has God made man. As for you, be fruitful and increase. Abound on the earth and be master of it.”

God spoke to Noah and his son, “See I am making a covenant with you and with your descendants after you; also with every living animal with you : birds, cattle, that is, with every living creature of the earth that came out of the Ark. I establish My covenant with you. Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I make between Me and you, and every animal living with you for all future generations. I set My bow in the clouds and it will be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.”

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Thursday, 14 February 2019 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cyril, Monk and St. Methodius, Bishop, Patron Saints of Europe (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we listened to the story of the creation of man and woman, whom God had created in His own image, and how He has given everything that He has created to each and every one of them, to be the caretakers, owners and stewards of His creation, for mankind are His most beloved creations, the ones closest to His own image and His own heart and mind.

He made all of them because of His love for them, that He wanted to share with them the love that He has in Him, bursting out of the perfect love of the Trinity, and which then came upon us. And He saw how man was lonely without company of an equal, reflecting on the nature of His very own Trinity. The Most Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is perfect, but each part of the Trinity cannot be separated from each other without destroying this perfection and balance present among the unity of the Trinity.

And as the Father loved the Son and the Holy Spirit, and as the Son loved the Father and the Holy Spirit, and as the Holy Spirit loved the Father and the Son, therefore, God created us man to be creatures of love as well, to be filled with love and to be made all good and perfect, first and foremost in union with God, and then in union with one another. That was why God created us man and woman, as we heard in our first reading passage taken from the Book of Genesis.

God created us man and woman to be part of the one body, one flesh and one existence. Just as the rib bone and the flesh were symbolically taken from man to create woman, as an equal partner to man, thus man and woman are destined to be together, to be united in a holy union that reflects upon the perfect unity and love found in the Most Holy Trinity. Through this union, the fruits of God’s love came forth, that is the fruits of life, in the children born of the union of man and woman.

Unfortunately, at the time of the Lord Jesus, just as it frequently happened throughout history, man and woman had not treated each other with respect or regards to their equality with one another. Instead, women were often put in disadvantage and treated unequally or in a biased way, where many of these women had to endure injustice and often even intrusion to their basic human right, to live as a person with dignity.

That was what the Lord tried to bring forth to our attention through His interaction with the Syro-Phoenician woman in our Gospel passage today. In that passage, we heard how a Syro-Phoenician woman asked the Lord Jesus to come and heal her afflicted daughter, who was troubled by sickness and by the attacks from evil spirits and demons. Yet, the Lord seemed to be unfazed and unaffected by her pleas, and in fact, seemed to be kind of rude when He was making an indirect comparison between her and that of a dog.

This was in fact the Lord’s way of putting forth all the accumulated prejudices and terrible biases present within the community of the people of God during that time, when so many people looked down on the non-Jewish people, those of pagan origins and were not therefore counted among the people of Israel. And in particular, all the more because the Syro-Phoenician was a woman, that the ridicule, bias and prejudice against her were even more rampant and terrible.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, many of us living in this world today surely have heard how women have often been marginalised, being prejudiced against, and even been exploited for the benefit of those who were greedy and wicked in hearts and minds. Yet, this is not what the Lord wants from us when He created each and every one of us. As mentioned, He made us all, man and woman, to be co-equal partners in the holy union He Himself will bless, where both man and woman make each other perfect by that unity in love.

Many of the current challenges, difficulties and marginalisation due to gender, are caused by our own limited ability to look beyond the flesh and the appearances, which have unfortunately caused many to go down the path of sin, when we are tempted by the temptations of the flesh. We seek what is on the external, and seek for the beauty of the exterior, while failing to recognise the presence of the great love within.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today, we celebrate in the secular world, the celebration of Valentine’s day, which came about because this day, the fourteenth day of February, used to be the Feast day of St. Valentine, who inspired many by his loving care for others, even for those who persecuted and imprisoned him. Over time, this celebration became corrupted and changed, misguided and done wrongly because of the secularisation of its meaning.

We see how Valentine’s day became one of the worst outlets and reminders for us, of our ugly human nature, filled with lust and desire for the pleasures of the flesh, and of materialistic excesses, which are often associated with the celebration of the Valentine’s day. But, in truth, as Christians, all of us are called to go out of this problem, and overcome it through our understanding and participation in God’s real work of love among us.

God sowed within us, the seeds of His wonderful love, giving us the same love that He has between Himself, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is love that is not corrupted nor made impure by the desires of our flesh, but one that is selfless and self-giving, sacrificial and committed at the same time. For God so loved the world, that He gave us all His only beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Saviour, that through Him we may have life and be saved.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we should imitate the perfect love shown by the Lord, and which His holy saints had emulated in their own lives. St. Valentine acted with love even towards his enemies and those who persecuted him, while St. Cyril and St. Methodius, the two saints highly venerated especially among our brethren in the Eastern Churches, devoted their whole lives in the service of the people of God, in bringing the truth of the Gospels and the Words of God to those people who have yet to receive the light of God’s truth.

Are we able to overcome the temptations of our flesh, and resist those wicked desires present in us to act without genuine love, and instead cause pain and suffering on others? Are we able to do our best in order to love one another equally just as God has intended us to do? Let us all reflect on today’s Scripture readings again, and think well in our minds as well as feel with our hearts, how we should be treating one another from now on, that is with love, compassion and fairness.

May the Lord continue to guide us with His love, that we too may grow ever stronger in our faith in Him, and that we may love Him with all of our hearts, and with all of our capabilities and strengths. Let us draw closer to Him, and draw ever closer to His love, with each and every single words and actions we take. May God bless us all, always, now and forevermore. Amen.

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Thursday, 14 February 2019 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cyril, Monk and St. Methodius, Bishop, Patron Saints of Europe (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Mark 7 : 24-30

At that time, when Jesus left the place where He rebuked the Pharisees, He went to the border of the Tyrian country. There He entered a house, and did not want anyone to know He was there, but He could not remain hidden. A woman, whose small daughter had an evil spirit, heard of Him, and came and fell at His feet. Now this woman was a pagan, a Syro-Phoenician by birth, and she begged Him to drive the demon out of her daughter.

Jesus told her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to puppies.” But she replied, “Sir, even the puppies under the table eat the crumbs from the children’s bread.” Then Jesus said to her, “You may go your way; because of such a response, the demon has gone out of your daughter.”

And when the woman went home, she found her child lying in bed, and the demon gone.

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Thursday, 14 February 2019 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cyril, Monk and St. Methodius, Bishop, Patron Saints of Europe (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 127 : 1-2, 3, 4-5

Blessed are you who fear the Lord and walk in His ways. You will ear the fruit of your toil; you will be blessed and favoured.

Your wife, like a vine, will bear fruits in your home; your children, like olive shoots will stand around your table.

Such are the blessings bestowed upon the man who fears the Lord. May the Lord bless you from Zion. May you see Jerusalem prosperous all the days of your life.

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Thursday, 14 February 2019 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Cyril, Monk and St. Methodius, Bishop, Patron Saints of Europe (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Genesis 2 : 18-25

YHVH God said, “It is not good for Man to be alone; I will give him a helper who will be like him.” Then YHVH God formed from the earth all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air and brought them to Man to see what he would call them; and whatever Man called every living creature, that was its name.

So Man gave names to all the cattle, the birds of the air and to every beast of the field. But he did not find among them a helper like himself. Then YHVH God caused a deep sleep to come over Man and he fell asleep. He took one of his ribs and filled its place with flesh. The rib which YHVH God had taken from Man He formed into a woman and brought her to the man.

The man then said, “Now this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken from man.” That is why man leaves his father and mother and is attached to his wife, and with her becomes one flesh. Both the man and his wife were naked and were not ashamed.

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Thursday, 7 February 2019 : 4th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we listened to the word of God in the Scriptures reminding each and every one of us of the mission which we have been given by the Lord, as mentioned in the first reading and the Gospel passage today. We heard of the moment when the Lord sent His disciples, seventy-two of them in total, ahead of Him on the journey to prepare the way for His coming and for His teaching among the people.

Those disciples were sent to reach out to the people to whom the Lord Himself was about to minister, to prepare the hearts and minds of the people that they may be receptive to God’s truth and salvation that were about to come into their midst. They were like the farmers who tilled the land and prepared it, softening it with the hoe, in order to increase the fertility of the soil, that when the seeds are sown, they will grow far better and produce much more crops.

Through all that we have heard especially in our Gospel passage today, we are reminded of the role which the Church is taking upon in our world today, that is to be the medium by which God exercised His power in this world, delivering His truth and love to all mankind, to bring the truth of God’s salvation and love especially to all those who have yet to hear and know of what God has made available to all.

Yet, this task that the Lord has entrusted upon His Church and commanded His disciples and followers to do, is not an easy one, for there are plenty of challenges and difficulties that are present in our journey, as the Lord Himself has warned His disciples, that they would encounter many challenges and opposition, and there would be instances when the people and the communities they were sent to, would reject them and refuse to listen to the message that they brought with them.

This is not surprising because some of the people have closed their hearts and minds, their senses to the truth of God, for various reasons. Some of them were proud and filled with ego, and thus refused to listen to the truth of God because they thought that there was no way that they could have been mistaken in their way of thinking and in their action. Thus they turned against the Lord and His teachings, even persecuting Him and His disciples.

That is the reality of the challenges and difficulties that we may encounter if we choose to follow the Lord and walk in His path. But should these challenges then deter us from following Him and having faith in Him? They should not. God gives us His reassurance, that whoever has dedicated themselves to Him and does his or her best to serve and love Him, those shall not be disappointed, for God always fulfils His words and promises.

Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, the question that awaits us is that, are we willing to dedicate ourselves to walk down the path that the Apostles and the disciples of the Lord had walked, looking at the examples of all those holy men and women who had gone before us. Many of them were persecuted and had to endure all sorts of troubles and challenges, but because of their determination and commitment, many souls of the faithful had been saved from certain damnation.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we as the members of the Church must play our part to obey God’s will and to listen to His commandments. And we must also have within each one of us, the desire to love God and to serve Him, by the selfless giving of ourselves, just as Christ Himself has shown us, and not be swayed by worldly temptations of power, ambition, greed, selfishness, material well-being and excesses and more.

Let us all renew our faith and commitment to God, from now on, that we may be worthy and be willing to follow the calling that the Lord has given to us, and walk down the same path on which the holy Apostles and disciples of the Lord had walked before. Let us all be exemplary in how we live our faith, and devote ourselves ever more to the Lord with each and every passing days. May God be with us always, and may He bless us all, now and forevermore. Amen.

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Thursday, 7 February 2019 : 4th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Mark 6 : 7-13

At that time, Jesus called the Twelve to Him, and began to send them out two by two, giving them authority over evil spirits, and He ordered them to take nothing for the journey, except a staff : no food, no bag, no money on their belts. They were to wear sandals and were not to take an extra tunic.

And He added, “In whatever house you are welcomed, stay there until you leave the place. If any place does not receive you, and the people refuse to listen to you, leave after shaking the dust off your feet. It will be a testimony against them.”

So they set out to proclaim that this was the time to repent. They drove out many demons and healed many sick people by anointing them.