Thursday

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Thursday, 15 June 2017 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
John 6 : 51-58

Jesus said to His disciples and to the people, “I am the Living Bread from heaven; whoever eats of this Bread will live forever. The Bread I shall give is My Flesh, and I will give it for the life of the world.”

The Jews were arguing among themselves, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?” So Jesus replied, “Truly, I say to you, if you do not eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you have no life in you. The one who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood lives eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

“My Flesh is really food, and My Blood is truly drink. Those who eat My Flesh and drink My Blood, live in Me, and I in them. Just as the Father, Who is Life, sent Me, and I have life from the Father, so whoever eats Me will have life from Me. This is the Bread from heaven; not like that of your ancestors, who ate and later died. Those who eat this Bread will live forever.”

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Thursday, 15 June 2017 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
1 Corinthians 10 : 16-17

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a communion with the Blood of Christ? And the bread that we break, is it not a communion with the Body of Christ?

The bread is one, and so we, though many, form one body, sharing the one bread.

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Thursday, 15 June 2017 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White
Psalm 147 : 12-13, 14-15, 19-20

Exalt YHVH, o Jerusalem; praise your God, o Zion! For He strengthens the bars of your gates and blesses your children within you.

He grants peace on your borders and feeds you with the finest grain. He sends His command to the earth and swiftly runs His word.

It is He, Who tells Jacob His words; His laws and decrees, to Israel. This, He has not done for other nations, so His laws remain unknown to them. Alleluia!

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Thursday, 15 June 2017 : Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Deuteronomy 8 : 2-3, 14b-16a

Remember how YHVH, your God, brought you through the desert for forty years. He humbled you, to test you and know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. He made you experience want, He made you experience hunger, but He gave you manna to eat which neither you nor your fathers had known, to show you that one does not live on bread alone, but also by everything that comes from the mouth of God.

Do not forget YHVH, your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of slavery. It is He Who has led you across this great and terrible desert, full of fiery serpents and scorpions, an arid land where there is no water. But for you He made water gush forth from the hardest rock. And He fed you in the desert with manna which your fathers did not know.

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Thursday, 15 June 2017 : 10th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day through the readings from the Sacred Scriptures, we are reminded that as Christians, all of us have to be truly devoted to the ways shown to us by our Lord Jesus, as He had taught us through His disciples. We cannot be Christians and yet in our words, in our actions and in our deeds, we show things that are contrary to what we believe in.

Our faith in the Lord must be sincere, deep and genuine, and based on our heartfelt desire to love Him and to serve Him all of our days. We must truly love one another and seek peace and harmony in all things. We must follow the examples of the Lord our God in all that He had done, in all that He had shown us how to do. He has taught us to love Him and if we love Him, we will also love one another in the same manner.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, through the exhortation He had made in our Gospel passage today, Jesus our Lord is challenging us to go beyond what has been expected of us in accordance with the Law. We cannot just obey the laws and commandments of God without understanding them, or else we will end up being just like the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, who obeyed the laws to the letter, but on their true heart’s intentions and purpose, their hypocrisy was evident.

Let us ask ourselves, brothers and sisters in Christ. How often is it that in our own daily lives, we have been angry at our brethren, at another person, just because we are jealous at what they have, which we do not have? The Lord said that even the intention is enough for us to drive ourselves towards committing the crime of sin, so if we do not restrain ourselves and those negativities, such as anger, jealousy, desire and all, we will end up leading ourselves into sin.

Therefore, as Christians, all of us need to have that zeal in us, that commitment and devotion, which we must have to be true disciples and followers of our Lord Jesus, or else we will be easily swayed by the temptations of this world, by all the pressures for us to do otherwise, to do differently from what the Lord had taught us and shown us, because these were things that are easier to be done than to be faithful to God.

Why is that so? It is easier for us to hate someone and be angry at someone for a misstep or wrongdoing or pain that has been inflicted upon us by that someone. It is in our human nature and habit for us to do so, by our instincts and experiences. However, it is far more difficult for us to forgive and let go of our anger, allowing us to think rationally and not be carried away by our anger and emotions.

Similarly, it is easier for us to do what is evil and wicked, as because of sin, we have been made vulnerable to those desires that led us to sin. It is easier for us to seek the desires for the pleasures of the flesh, for other forms of worldly desires, for recognition, for power and all the things which inevitably lead us into conflict with one another, as we mankind are by our nature selfish and stubborn, not wanting to give in or to let go.

No, brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us as Christians cannot be like this. We must seek to be humble, to be peacemakers, and let us put our attention especially on the sermon which Jesus made on the mountain, the Beatitudes, in which He spelled out clearly, how Christians, all of us who believe in the Lord and follow Him ought to live.

We must be sincere in our faith to the Lord, and through our action we must bring peace and harmony with one another, for all of us are brothers and sisters in the same Lord. Whatever actions that others had done that caused us to be angry, let us not be quick to be angry, for remember that perhaps in our own actions and words, we might have made someone else unhappy and angry too.

Let us all rather seek to love one another, and therefore also love the Lord our God with sincerity and tenderness. Let us all renew our commitment to Him, and devote ourselves to a holy and loving life from now on, as the true and beloved children of God. May God bless us all. Amen.

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Thursday, 15 June 2017 : 10th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Matthew 5 : 20-26

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples, “I tell you, if your sense of right and wrong is not keener than that of the Lawyers and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

“You have heard, that it was said to our people in the past : Do not commit murder; anyone who murders will have to face trial. But now I tell you : whoever gets angry with a brother or sister will have to face trial. Whoever insults a brother or sister is liable, to be brought before the council. Whoever calls a brother or sister ‘Fool!’ is liable, of being thrown into the fire of hell.”

“So, if you are about to offer your gift at the altar, and you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there, in front of the altar; go at once, and make peace with your brother, and then come back and offer your gift to God.”

“Do not forget this : be reconciled with your opponent quickly when you are together on the way to court. Otherwise he will turn you over to the judge, who will hand you over to the police, who will put you in jail. There, you will stay, until you have paid the last penny.”

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Thursday, 15 June 2017 : 10th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 84 : 9ab and 10, 11-12, 13-14

Would, that I hear God’s proclamation, that He promise peace to His people, His saints. Yet, His salvation is near to those who fear Him, and His glory will dwell in our land.

Love and faithfulness have met; righteousness and peace have embraced. Faithfulness will reach up from the earth while justice bends down from heaven.

YHVH will give what is good, and our land will yield its fruit. Justice will go before Him, and peace will follow along His path.

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Thursday, 15 June 2017 : 10th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
2 Corinthians 3 : 15 – 2 Corinthians 4 : 1, 3-6

Up to this very day, whenever they read Moses, the veil remains over their understanding but, for whoever turns to the Lord, the veil shall be removed. The Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

So, with unveiled faces, we all reflect the glory of the Lord, while we are transformed into His likeness, and experience His glory, more and more by the action of the Lord, Who is Spirit.

Since this is our ministry, mercifully given to us, we do not weaken. In fact, if the Gospel we proclaim remains obscure, it is obscure only for those who go to their own destruction. The God of this world has blinded the minds of these unbelievers, lest they see the radiance of the glorious Gospel of Christ, Who is God’s Image.

It is not ourselves we preach, but Christ Jesus, as Lord; and, for Jesus’ sake, we are your servants. God, Who said, ‘Let the light shine out of darkness’, has also made the light shine in our hearts, to radiate, and to make known the glory of God, as it shines in the face of Christ.

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Thursday, 8 June 2017 : 9th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day all of us heard from the Scripture readings about that one thing which all of us Christians must have in our lives, and yet which in reality, many of us are still lacking them, or are not able to fully appreciate its importance for us. And what is that, brothers and sisters in Christ? What is it that is so important that all of us must have it in us?

It is love, brothers and sisters in Christ, but not the love which we often know it as, or the love which the world promotes to us. We often know love as the romance between man and woman, between a man and someone he loves and wants to have a family with, and vice versa. Alternatively, we know love as the happiness and joy between two people who are deeply attracted to each other. But these kind of love are not the most important, and is merely one form of love.

Instead, love is the giving of oneself to another person, and true love in essence is unconditional and pure in nature, not saddled down by lust, worldly desires or the pleasures of the flesh. All of these distract us from the true nature of love, and it is true love which all of us need to show one another, as Christians, as those who have believed in our Lord Jesus Christ, followed Him and knew His example of love, the perfect love He had shown us from the cross.

Yes, brothers and sisters in Christ, for all of us, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is the ultimate symbol and reality of love, the remembrance of the ultimate sacrifice which He had made for all of us, for each and every one of us because of one singular reason, that He loves each of us very much that He was willing to give up His life for us, and suffer grievously for our sake. There is no greater love than this, as He Himself had said.

It is this kind of love that each and every one of us as Christians must have in us, and which we must profess and practice from time to time, throughout our entire lives. We cannot call ourselves as Christians if we do not love or do not show love through our actions. It is even worse when we who are Christians act in ways that are contrary to our faith. It is a scandal to our faith and to the Holy Name of our Lord if we do so.

What do I mean, brothers and sisters in Christ? Whenever we cause pain, hurt and suffering on others by our actions, when we are thinking selfishly of our own wants and desires, we end up not doing what the Lord had asked us to do, that is to love tenderly and graciously, following what our Lord Himself had shown us by His selfless and loving sacrifice on the cross.

There are many troubles and evils in this world which is caused either by our selfish acts and works, which cause pain and suffering for others. Otherwise, it is our silence and lack of action, when we see our brothers and sisters who are suffering, walking past them and ignoring them, just as the Levite and the priest ignoring the man who was attacked on his way to Jericho, in the story Jesus told His disciples.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us must realise that sin is not just caused by our actions that are wicked, unjust and evil, but also caused by our failure to act when there is perfect opportunities for us to act, to do something in order to protect the innocent, the weak and the oppressed, and yet we turn a blind eye on what is happening and moved on with life.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, from now on, let us all commit ourselves ever more faithfully to the Lord, by practicing our faith in our lives, and by committing ourselves wholeheartedly to Him and to His cause, by loving one another and showing that love wherever and whenever we are able to do so. Let us seek to do what He has taught us to do, and remember always how His love for us has allowed us all to live with peace knowing that He has delivered us from our fated destruction, and thus, show the same love to each other. May God bless us all, always. Amen.

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Thursday, 8 June 2017 : 9th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Mark 12 : 28b-34

At that time, a teacher of the Law came up and asked Jesus, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is : Hear, Israel! The Lord, our God, is One Lord; and you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. And after this comes a second commandment : You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these two.”

The teacher of the Law said to Him, “Well spoken, Master; You are right when You say that He is One, and there is no other besides Him. To love Him with all our heart, with all our understanding and with all our strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves is more important than any burnt offering or sacrifice.”

Jesus approved of this answer and said, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that, no one dared to ask Him any more questions.