Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today’s readings have a theme that many of us might not be able to discern from them. This theme is that mankind need to be able to put their trust in God, and trust in what God had planned for them, obeying and listening to His will even as we proceed with our daily life. This is what we can imply from today’s readings, as evidenced from the reading on the tale between Abraham and Ishmael in the first reading, and from the parable on the building of a house in the Gospel.

In the first reading, we heard about how Abraham, then named Abram, who was in a way desperate to have the heir which God had promised him and who was yet to come through his wife, Sarah, then named Sarai. Therefore they devised a shortcut to that matter, by the giving of Sarah’s slave named Hagar to Abraham as a wife, so that she might bore for the sake of Sarah and Abraham a son.

In order to understand this practice, we must understand the customs at that time. It was commonplace at that time for a man to take more than one wife, and it was also common that a woman gave her slave to her husband so that her slave might act as a proxy to produce a child for her, if she was childless or unable to provide a son and heir. The son or child born to the slave would then be legally the son or child of the woman and not that of the slave.

This is the way of the world designed to solve the problem of inheritance and other things, but certainly as we can see, what Abraham and Sarah had done, was because they did not completely trust in the promises of God, which He would do through Sarah, when she was already old and beyond child-bearing age, she would bear a child, the promised son, whom we later know to be Isaac.

We may think that Abraham and Sarah were being disobedient and sinful by doing what they have done, in the matter of Hagar and Ishmael, but in fact, they were after all still human beings and not superhumans, and therefore they were still prone to making mistakes and sin. And God did not punish them, nor did He punish Hagar and Ishmael for what had happened, but instead, He showed forth His mercy and let the son to live and blessed him.

In the Gospel today, all these can be linked clearly to what Jesus had told His disciples and the people, using His parable on a man building his house on a firm rock foundations, and another who builds his house on a shaky foundation of sand. If we truly hear the word of God, believe in it and place it firmly in our hearts and minds, fully believing in Him and trusting in Him, then certainly we will not be shaken.

Those who trust in God are like those whose house are built on firm foundation of rock, unshakeable and firm even in the midst of the greatest challenge and disaster. God will not abandon them, and He will remain ever faithful. We can indeed trust in the love and protection of God, and God will never fail us. On the other hand, those who trust in men are like those who built their houses on shaky foundation of sand.

If we look at the case of Abraham and his sons, we would know that after Ishmael was born through Hagar by the shortcut which he took, Isaac the promised son would be born through Sarah, which was the concrete sign of God’s everlasting faithfulness and His firm steadfastness to His promises. And conflict soon arose between the two sons, and the conflicting parties, and ended up with the exile of both Hagar and Ishmael.

This conflict is a reminder that human affairs and depending on human power is not something that will bring about true stability and firmness, and as we know by human nature, it is inevitable for mankind to turn against one another in such situations, bringing much sorrow and divisions. Is this the path that we want? Certainly not.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, what today’s readings teach us is that, all of us ought to heed what Jesus had said to us, and whatever He had taught us through His disciples and through what we have received through the Gospels and the teachings of the Church. Let us all put our trust in God and not in the feeble power of men. For God’s strength is everlasting while the power of man is just temporary.

May Almighty God bless all of us, strengthen our faith in Him and give us all the courage to trust in Him and therefore receive from Him the gift of everlasting life. Amen.

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, we heard about how we ought to pray to the Lord. We heard how Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, through the teaching of the perfect prayer, which we now know as the Lord’s Prayer, or Pater Noster (our Father), as it is a prayer which signifies the relationship which exists between us and God who is our Father.

Why is it such a good and perfect prayer? That is because firstly, as Jesus had pointed out that when the pagans and the Pharisees pray, they like to pray with lots of words and loudly, and the louder and the more dedicated is the prayer, the more they believed that their prayers would be heard and fulfilled. And they liked to make the prayer in the public places, to show the people how pious they were.

Instead, Jesus formulated the perfect prayer that is not just succinct and to the point, capturing all the essences of a prayer, but it is also demonstrating what a prayer truly should be, that is for us all to communicate with the Lord our God, through the opening of our hearts, and the exposure of our hearts, minds, body and soul to the holy presence of God.

Truly, a prayer is like how a child talks to his father, as a communication between them, building up from their relationship. A prayer should not be a one-sided communication where we are the only ones speaking and talking, and yet we ignore the Lord who is speaking deep in our hearts. Sadly however, this is mostly the case when we talk about prayers.

More often than not, when we look at how we pray, it is a litany of demands, of wants, and of accusations, on how God had not done enough for us or that He had not listened to what we wanted. We also often pray to God only when we remember Him, that is when we are in difficult times, and need urgent and immediate help, as if God is a sort of last resort help we can always depend on for free and take it for granted.

And when we are in good times and times of plenty, more often than not, we forget entirely about God and ignore His presence around us. God is always with us, regardless whether it is during time of plenty or time of suffering, but we often do not see that it is God who has blessed us with such great graces, all the blessings and good things we enjoy in life, and most importantly, our very lives are gifts from God indeed.

When we pray, it is often that we focus on ourselves, on our needs, on our wants, on our desires, on our greed and on our own selfishness, as it is in our nature to put such an emphasis on ourselves. But this is why many of us do not have a good and fruitful prayer life, as our prayers are often empty and meaningless, if not improper and downright offensive to God.

Jesus taught us how to pray, that when we pray, we ought to open ourselves to God and allow Him to speak in us, and we also recognise Him as the Lord and Master of all things, and thus all that we are and all that we do are subject to His will and authority. Thus, this is why we said the first half of the Lord’s Prayer, glorifying the Lord our God and humbly submitting ourselves to His will.

And then, we must also give thanks to God for all of His grace. We know that God will bless us with all that we need, our daily bread, and He will also definitely forgive us our sins if we have also forgiven others who sinned against us. We do not need to doubt this, as the Lord Himself had affirmed this many times, by His words and actions. The Lord is ever faithful, ever loving and ever merciful, if we ourselves are willing to change.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, let us all pray for great grace from God, that all of us may realise how much more we need to do, and how much more genuine we need to be in our prayers. Let our prayers not be expressions of our ego or greed, but let it be a genuine expression of love and the desire for us to speak with our Father who created us and loved us all.

May Almighty God be with us always, and may He continue to lead us and guide us, to enable us to focus our attention to Him, giving Him thanks for all that He has done for us, by cultivating a good and disciplined prayer life. Let us all mean every words we say when we say our Lord’s Prayer, filled with renewed vigour and strength of our faith. God bless us all. Amen.