Thursday

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Thursday, 25 May 2017 : Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we commemorate the great Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, remembering the moment when our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, ascended into His heavenly glory, and was taken up physically away from us, so that none of us can see Him any longer, and this was the ending of the earthly ministry of our Lord which began from the moment He was conceived in the womb of His mother Mary, through His birth, His youth and growing years, His work among the people of God, and finally His Passion, suffering, death and resurrection.

On this day we remember the moment when the Lord ascended into heaven, not so that He left us behind or abandoned us, but rather because as He had mentioned to His disciples, that He went ahead in order to prepare the places He had destined for us all. It was in the Ascension that we truly know that the Lord was indeed Who He had claimed to be, as the One Who had come down from heaven, and not merely just a Man.

On several occasions, Jesus had said that no one had known or can know the Father, the Creator God, save for the One Who came from heaven itself. And He was indeed referring to Himself when He said such words, revealing His unearthly origin, as the One Who had come down from heaven, and taking up the flesh of humanity, becoming like one of us in appearance and in physical body, but in reality, is also the Divine Son of God.

Jesus our Lord was the Word of God made Flesh, as the Divine Word Incarnate. He was the Word with which the Father willed to create all things found in creation. Through Him all things were made and all existences were willed to be. And through Him also, all of us have seen God, He Who was once invisible and beyond human comprehension and understanding, have revealed Himself to all mankind.

He is the Love of God made incarnate into flesh, God Who is Love, Who descended into this world out of His great and everlasting love for us all, His beloved and yet unworthy children. We have sinned because of our disobedience against God’s will, and yet, He Who loves us beyond everything else still loves each one of us, despite of our shortcomings and wickedness.

And to that extent, He had come to save us from certain destruction, by readily bearing up our sins and wickedness upon Himself, all the punishments and consequences for those sins we committed. He bore on the cross all those punishments, so that by His wounds all of us may receive liberation from the tyranny of sin and evil. He has freed us all by His love and sacrifice.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, what the Lord had promised us all has been reaffirmed to us. The Lord ascended into glory is a premonition and a preview to our own glorious ascension into an eternity of glory and grace, when we come to our final victory against evil and death. When the Lord comes again to claim all of us His faithful ones, He will separate us from the wicked, and bring us all together into His loving embrace.

But we must not just care only for our own personal safety and well-being. For indeed, many of us have been saved because we believe in the Lord, and we obey Him in all that He had commanded us to do, and we act in ways that are worthy of the Lord and His love. However, we must keep in mind what the Lord Jesus had commanded His Apostles and disciples, just before He was about to ascend from them into heaven, His last and most important command to them.

He commanded all of them to go forth to all the nations, to all the peoples, so that they might bring the truth and revelations which they have received, and bring them to the people of God who still lived in the darkness, those who still refused to welcome Him, those who rejected Him and His truth, all those who continued to live in a state of sin, and all who were still ignorant of His truth and salvation.

That was what the Lord had told His followers to do, for a simple reason. If we do nothing for the sake of these people, then we are truly condemning them to fall into eternal damnation, for if we do not act in order to bring the truth of God to them, then who will do so? We cannot assume that there will be someone out there who will do the work for our sake. No, brethren, we have to step up to the challenge given to us by the Lord, and do as what He had commanded us.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, how should we then act? We do not need to do marvellous or great things. What we all need is really for us to start from small and little things which we can do, beginning from ourselves and from our own families and relatives. We should spend our time to do as the Lord had taught us, that is to show love in all of our actions, showing concern and care for our fellow brethren, for all those who we see as those who are in need, even for strangers.

Once we have begun doing what is right and just in the sight of the Lord, our actions themselves will speak louder than words, and they will become a source of inspiration for many others, who hopefully will be touched by what we have done, and therefore, through us, they may find out the love of the Lord. This is what we all should do, that we live our faith truly through our actions and deeds.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us therefore today, as we commemorate our Lord’s glorious Ascension into heaven, seek to deepen our relationship with Him, and devote ourselves anew to love and care for our brethren, especially those who are in need, and all those who have yet to come to understand the love and truth of God, and all those who have been blinded by the darkness of sin, and therefore remain separated from the love and salvation in God.

May the Lord help us all that we may be ever more courageous and be filled with faith, so that in all things we do in this life, we will grow ever more and more committed to the Lord and to our fellow men and women, calling to salvation all those whom the Lord had called to receive His grace and love. May the Lord bless us all. Amen.

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Thursday, 25 May 2017 : Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Matthew 28 : 16-20

At that time, as for the eleven disciples, they went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw Jesus, they bowed before Him, although some doubted.

Then Jesus approached them and said, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples from all nations. Baptise them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all that I have commanded you. I am with you always even to the end of the world.”

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Thursday, 25 May 2017 : Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Ephesians 1 : 17-23

May the God of Christ Jesus our Lord, the Father of Glory, reveal Himself to you and give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation, that you may know Him. May He enlighten your inner vision, that you may appreciate the things we hope for, since we were called by God.

May you know how great is the inheritance, the glory, God sets apart for His saints; may you understand with what extraordinary power He acts in favour of us who believe. He revealed His Almighty power in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and had Him sit at His right hand in heaven, far above all rule, power, authority, dominion, or any other supernatural force that could be named, not only in this world but in the world to come as well.

Thus has God put all things under the feet of Christ and set Him above all things, as Head of the Church which is His Body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all.

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Thursday, 25 May 2017 : Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 46 : 2-3, 6-7, 8-9

Clap your hands, all you peoples; acclaim God with shouts of joy. For the Lord, the Most High, is to be feared; He is a great King all over the earth.

God ascends amid joyful shouts, the Lord amid trumpet blasts. Sing praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises!

God is King of all the earth; sing to Him a hymn of praise. For God now rules over the nations, God reigns from His holy throne.

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Thursday, 25 May 2017 : Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Acts 1 : 1-11

In the first part of my work, Theophilus, I wrote of all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when He ascended to heaven. But first He had instructed through the Holy Spirit, the Apostles He had chosen. After His passion, He presented Himself to them, giving many signs that He was alive, over a period of forty days He appeared to them and taught them concerning the kingdom of God.

Once when He had been eating with them, He told them, “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the fulfilment of the Father’s promise about which I have spoken to you : John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit within a few days.”

When they had come together, they asked Him, “Is it now that You will restore the Kingdom of Israel?” And He answered, “It is not for you to know the time and the steps that the Father has fixed by His own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the earth.”

After Jesus said this, He was taken up before their eyes and a cloud hid Him from their sight. While they were still looking up to heaven where He went, suddenly, two men dressed in white stood beside them, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking up at the sky? This Jesus Who has been taken from you into heaven, will return in the same way as you have seen Him go there.”

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Thursday, 18 May 2017 : 5th Week of Easter, Memorial of Pope St. John I, Pope and Martyr (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we are reminded yet again that as Christians, our principal and main responsibility lies in the need to love and serve the Lord with all of our heart, mind, body and soul. This is the essence of us being Christians, not in all other things, which all truly have their roots in the love which we ought to show the Lord our God.

And why is this so? That is because, without love, we are not Christians, and without the love which we ought to serve the Lord with, then we truly have not known love. Because if we have remembered and known just how much God has loved us, then we should also show the same love for Him, first of all, and then show the same love to our fellow brethren.

Yet, many of us mankind have forgotten this fact, and we have rejected God and His love, for the love of other things, all the distractions out there which have turned us and our attentions away from God. We have become detached from Him, and ended up being concerned only about ourselves, only about our needs and desires, and not about what truly matters, that is serving the Lord with all of our heart.

This was what happened, at the time of the early Church, as recounted to us through our first reading today taken from the Acts of the Apostles. At that time, the tension between the two factions in the Church had reached a breaking point, between the faction of the Pharisees and the faction of the Hellenists. The Pharisees were those who were similar with the Pharisees at the time of Jesus, being composed of the Pharisees who came to believe in Jesus, who wanted to keep the purity of the Jewish faith and traditions, wishing to impose on all the believers the rigour of the entire Jewish laws according to the laws of Moses.

Meanwhile, the Hellenists were those who favoured relaxing and bypassing the requirements of the Jewish laws and customs, in order to make the faith more practical and favourable to the non-Jewish people, the Greeks and the Romans, all of whom found that certain practices of the Jewish tradition such as circumcision and food prohibition to be repulsive and difficult to be followed, as these came into direct conflict with their own customs and cultural traditions.

As such, such a division in the Church was truly a tragic event, at the time when the Church should have been united against all those who sought to destroy it in its infancy. But the Church fathers and the Apostles ruled against those who would distract the Church from its primary mission, that is the salvation of souls and the repentance of all sinners.

To that extent, they agreed and ruled that all Christians should henceforth be freed from the obligation to obey the entirety of the Jewish laws and customs, most of which were in fact human creation and not originating from God, as means and historical practices meant to preserve the Jewish customs and culture. And they ruled that as long as all the Christians lived in accordance to what the Lord Jesus had taught them, that should be sufficient.

That is because as Christians, all of us truly have to remember that our primary and indeed sole obligation is to love the Lord our God, with all of our might, and with all of our strength. And when we love Him and obey Him, we will definitely also love our brethren, just as we have been loved by God and loving Him back. We will show the same love that we showed Him to our fellow men.

We should follow the example of our holy predecessors, the holy saints and martyrs, in how they devoted their whole lives to the Lord and to their fellow men. Pope St. John I, the holy Bishop of Rome and leader of the Universal Church during its early years is one of such examples. He was a devoted man, a pious and holy servant of God, dedicated to his calling and vocation as the leader of the Church.

He lived during a difficult time, as political and worldly conflict threatened the Church in Rome, due to the conflict between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ostrogothic Kingdom, who then ruled over Rome. The Ostrogoths were Arians, heretical followers of Christianity, while the Empire was following the Orthodox and true Christian faith. Pope St. John I lived and reigned through the turbulent times, and tried his best to bridge the differences between the two powers.

However, he was caught in the entanglement of the conflict, and was imprisoned by the Ostrogoths, under the false charges of sedition and supposed plotting with the enemy against the king. He was arrested, incarcerated and made to suffer, but yet he never gave up the faith. He continued to persevere through the challenges, and even unto martyrdom, as he met his end in prison, he kept the faith.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all from now on strive to serve the Lord with greater zeal and conviction, and devote ourselves to Him ever more willingly. Let us all love one another as well, just as we have been loved by God, and just as we have loved Him with all of our hearts. Let us all be true Christians inspired by the examples of our brethren who have preceded us. Pope St. John I, holy Pope and martyr, pray for us sinners. Amen.

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Thursday, 18 May 2017 : 5th Week of Easter, Memorial of Pope St. John I, Pope and Martyr (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)
John 15 : 9-11

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “As the Father has loved Me, so I have loved you. Remain in My love! You will remain in My love if you keep My commandments, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love.

I have told you all this, that My own joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete.”

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Thursday, 18 May 2017 : 5th Week of Easter, Memorial of Pope St. John I, Pope and Martyr (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)
Psalm 95 : 1-2a, 2b-3, 10

Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth! Sing to the Lord, bless His Name.

Proclaim His salvation day after day. Recall His glory among the nations, tell all the peoples His wonderful deeds.

Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!” He will judge the peoples with justice.

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Thursday, 18 May 2017 : 5th Week of Easter, Memorial of Pope St. John I, Pope and Martyr (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White or Red (Martyrs)
Acts 15 : 7-21

As the discussions became heated, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that from the beginning God chose me among you so that non-Jews could hear the Good News from me and believe. God, Who can read hearts, put Himself on their side by giving the Holy Spirit to them just as He did to us. He made no distinction between us and them and cleansed their hearts through faith.”

“So why do you want to put God to the test? Why do you lay on the disciples a burden that neither our ancestors nor we ourselves were able to carry? We believe, indeed, that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they are.”

The whole assembly kept silent as they listened to Paul and Barnabas tell of all the miraculous signs and wonders that God had done through them among the non-Jews. After they had finished, James spoke up, “Listen to me, brothers. Symeon has just explained how God first showed His care by taking a people for Himself from non-Jewish nations.”

“And the words of the prophets agree with this, for Scripture says, ‘After this I will return and rebuild the booth of David which has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins and set it up again. Then the rest of humanity will look for the Lord, and all the nations will be consecrated to My Name. So says the Lord, Who does today what He decided from the beginning.'”

“Because of this, I think that we should not make difficulties for those non-Jews who are turning to God. Let us just tell them not to eat food that is unclean from having been offered to idols; to keep themselves from prohibited marriages; and not to eat the flesh of animals that have been strangled, or any blood. For from the earliest times Moses has been taught in every place, and every Sabbath his laws are recalled.”

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Thursday, 11 May 2017 : 4th Week of Easter (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, through the Scripture passages which had been chosen for us today, we are reminded by what St. Paul told the Jews at the synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia, on the history of the salvation of all mankind by God. The people of God whom He had chosen, He had led and guided through the many tribulations and difficulties, and He had given them the way to follow through by the means of His servants and messengers.

They all had spoken about Him, about the love He had for them, and which He Himself had proven time and time again, by liberating His people from their oppressors, bringing them to the land He had promised them. And when they erred, He sent messengers and prophets to them in order to guide them, through advice and through hard work, to wake the people up from their sinfulness and to stir them from their darkness, that they might turn back on the darkness and return to the light.

And we ourselves, have received the same revelation of truth through the Church, by the hands and the works of the people who have laboured tirelessly for the sake of God’s people, especially our bishops and priests, and also many other countless people involved in the good works of Christ’s Church on earth, all the volunteers and laymen who volunteered and made use of their time and efforts, talents and abilities to advance the good cause of the Lord.

We have heard about the faith from them, from our priests, from our catechists and teachers in the faith, and also from our relatives and friends, those who have kept the faith, and themselves received the faith from their predecessors. This is how they came to believe in God, and how we ourselves, in turn, come to believe in God, in His teachings and in His ways.

Yet, we also have to realise that there are still many people out there who have not yet known God’s light, or that the Lord’s light had come to them, and yet they rejected it out of various reasons, be it ignorance, or be it the lack of faith, or be it because the temptations and falsehoods that were spread by the devil that prevented the faith from taking up roots in them.

It is therefore now up to us all, to continue the good works that the Lord and His faithful servants had begun in this world, beginning from the messengers and the prophets, from Moses to king David, and to all the other prophets sent to lead the people of God to Him. They have done much work, and the same responsibilities now pass down to us, to share the Good News we have received, and the joy we have had in the Lord, with all those who have not yet witnessed it.

And how do we do this, brothers and sisters in Christ? It is not by great deeds or miraculous works that we perform all of these, but rather through simple and yet regular and necessary deeds in our lives, by our interactions with those whom we meet and interact with in our regular lives. This is where it is important that all of us Christians must act in accordance with what we believed in, and in what we have been taught through faith.

Otherwise, how would others then come to believe in us? And instead of bringing the people closer to God, we will keep them away instead, as our actions that are not in accordance with the ways of the Lord bring about scandal to Him and to our faith. If we do this, we would have sinned against God, and against our fellow brethren, and that is clearly what we should not have done.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore commit ourselves to serve the Lord with a renewed zeal, so that through us the will of God and the good works of God may be made a reality among us all, and more and more people will come to know of the Lord’s truth and salvation, and therefore, seek to find the Lord and repent from their sins, so that their souls will no longer be lost in the darkness, but instead come to the light of Christ.

May the Lord empower us all to live with faith in His presence, so that we shall no longer commit deeds that are sinful and disobedient against Him, but instead seek to be ever more committed and faithful to Him, and thus, leading others with our good examples, that all of us may be saved together through Jesus Christ, our Lord. May God bless us all, now and forevermore. Amen.