true commitment

by

Thursday, 17 April 2014 : Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper, Easter Triduum (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the first Mass ever celebrated, that is when Jesus gave Himself in the form of His own Precious Body and Blood in the bread and wine to His disciples during the last supper He had with them before His Passion and death.

Today we celebrate that moment when Christ laid bare the love He has for all of us, and gave Himself completely for us through the gift of Himself. This gift He made freely to all of us providing we accept this gift and therefore accept the Lord as our God and Saviour. This Holy or Maundy Thursday is the birth of the Mass and the Church, because it is at this moment we celebrate that Jesus instituted the centre of our faith, the Real Presence in the Eucharist.

Today’s celebration centres on the loving nature of our God, in how great is His love and dedication for us, that He is willing to come down and stoop to be our servant, giving His all to liberate us from the snare of death and return us to the embrace of the Father. That was why He also showed His loving nature, by showing it through real action and service.

He lowered Himself to take the role of a servant, and even like that of a slave, by washing the feet of His own disciples and dry them with a towel wrapped about His waist. This is a job only done by servants and slaves, the lowest and the meanest job in the society, and one that is looked down upon by the people. He did this to show that, while He is the all-powerful Lord and Master of all, but He also cared for all of us so much, that He showed the love not by mere words, but also through action.

And how is the action of the washing of the feet significant in this? That is because, mankind had long been swallowed by their sins and lived in great darkness. Mankind had forgotten what is meant by love, not just any love, but the great love of God. That is why men end up being individualistic and grew to care only about themselves and whatever it is that benefits them.

And as you all know, brethren, the greatest of sins is pride, the same that had brought down Lucifer, now known as the devil into sin and rebellion against God. Mankind had grow to love themselves and care only for their well-being, that the self, the ego is growing greater and greater. As a result, mankind also grew less and less capable to love and care for one another and this results in mankind progressing deeper and deeper in their sinfulness.

The Lord Jesus showed by example, that power and greatness do not have to come together with greed, self-centredness and ego. Indeed, He showed that the greater a person is, the more humble he or she should become. And that the essence of leadership is service, that service is when someone uses His abilities and powers to help others to achieve the same thing as that someone could achieve on his own.

On this moment that we commemorate, the Last Supper, Jesus showed His disciples how they should treat one another, by sharing with each other the love God had given them, and hence by doing so, they themselves will grow greater and greater in love and in the grace of God, while being examples for others to follow.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, today is truly a great day for all of us, because not only just that the Lord gave concrete proofs of His love for us by giving us none other than His own Precious Body and Blood to have, so that we may have life in Him, but He also showed us through His disciples, how to live our lives that it will be meaningful and filled with grace.

As Christians we have to live up to the examples of Christ, and indeed listen to what Jesus told His disciples, that they ought to do what He had done to one another. We cannot be apathetic as Christians, for the moment that we fail to show care and love for one another, we should indeed no longer be referred to as Christians or as the followers of Christ.

On this day, Jesus gave Himself completely to us, and He surrendered even His life so that we may live. This is the essence and the heart of Christian love and Christian life. Therefore, as we keep vigil tonight with the Lord, let us be reminded of God’s gift to us and also His call for us that we may be true Christians, putting into practice our faith and what Christ had taught us.

May the Lord continue to bless us, and through the Real Presence in the Most Holy Eucharist, may the Lord continue to nourish us with His own flesh and blood that we may always be strong, always be faithful and always be true to our Lord and His words. God be with us all and His blessing be with us all. Amen.

by

Friday, 14 March 2014 : 1st Week of Lent (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

In our faith, brothers and sisters, we must always be genuine. We cannot take our faith for granted, and neither can we only keep an outward profession for faith, but inside we truly lack the faith and do not believe in God. True faith in God requires us to devote ourselves to Him and be committed in our actions and deeds to show our true faith to God.

We must heed what the Lord wants from us, in our actions and deeds, in every single aspects of our lives. We often end up doing lip-service to the Lord and following superficially the laws and rules He had given us, instead of truly devoting ourselves to His cause. This we cannot do, brothers and sisters in Christ.

And we certainly will have to do and act in the way that we preach. We cannot say one thing and yet do another, different thing from what we had said. If we do so then our faith is shallow and not genuine, and can be easily swayed by the wickedness that is in this world.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, our Lord loves us, and I have to repeat it again and again, that God loves us, very much, that He gave us Jesus His Son to be our helper, and to show us the way, how to devote ourselves entirely to Him, by teaching us and showing us the examples of being a good and faithful servant of God.

The key thing of all these is that we have to love, and we have to base all our actions on love, and in all of our actions and dealings, we have to always align ourselves with the ways of the Lord, that is righteousness. We have to adhere to the principles that God had established, in His laws and tenets that we ought to know, understand, and obey.

God wants all of us to love, and to love tenderly, and to forgive when someone slighted us or made mistakes to us. He wants us to do the same too, when we have slighted someone else. He wants us to be reconciled with one another, and forgoing all the hatred and differences that kept us apart, that we all may once again serve Him together as one, united people, united in love.

And He wants to show us that faith in Him cannot be just limited to observations of rituals and obligations according to the law. We cannot be just bystanders and followers, following the instructions of our faith to the letter, without understanding it. What I mean is that, we have to truly understand what we are doing, and in doing so we will make our faith much more meaningful.

And that is why God wants us to forgive one another first and be reconciled before we make our offerings to Him. What He wants from us is a heart of love, untainted by hatred, jealousy and all the other negative feelings that mar the perfection of our hearts. Let this be a lesson to all of us, that we may take note of it, whenever we do something, and whenever we say something, that we truly reflect that we belong to God.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, today let us make a resolution before the Lord, that we will be ever better servants of His will, that we will forsake the way of hatred, jealousy and other negative ill-feelings, and change them for the way of love, practicing what we have believed in, that is our faith in the One and only True God, Jesus Christ, who came to us in love to save us. Amen.

by

Thursday, 5 December 2013 : 1st Week of Advent (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/ Violet

Brethren, those who trust in the Lord shall not fail, but those who trust only in themselves, and in their own feeble human power, shall fail. Those who places their trust in the Lord shall not be disappointed. After all, have God ever disappointed us thus far? If we think that God did disappoint us at some point of time in the past, let us take some time and reflect.

We often say or think that the Lord does nothing for us, or that we became angry when we asked God for something, and yet we did not get it. We became disappointed in God and no longer put our trust in Him. Many in our world today certainly think so. That is why they prefer their own intellect and reason to the trust and faith in the Lord.

They prefer to believe in their own achievements and glories, shutting themselves from the Lord. This is just as how many people in our world becoming proud of their life achievements. I am sure you have met in your lives, people who boast of their wealth, the number of cars and credit cards that they possess, and the countless amenities they have in their homes, the comfortable lifestyle that they lead in life.

And they do not give thanks to the Lord who had blessed them with these kindness and graces. Thus, the Lord forsakes them and they have no part in the salvation that the Lord grants to all who believe in Him. If we want to be part of the Lord’s glory at the end of time, then we ought to follow Him, obey Him, and show Him our love and dedication, just as He had loved us and dedicated Himself to us.

But this is not all that is there to it. Even among us who believe and trust in the Lord, we cannot just be idle and be ignorant of the laws and precepts of the Lord. We cannot proclaim that we are the disciples and children of the Lord and yet our actions show otherwise. We cannot be hypocrites who only keep our faith in words and yet no concrete actions to support our faith.

Yes, brethren, for a faith made only with the profession of the mouth is like that of a house without firm foundations, built on the shaky sand. Once a storm and flood comes by, the weakly built home will fall down and stumble. Such are also the things that happened to many people in the world today. Their faith in God is not supported by firm and concrete actions. Their faith can even be said as to be only on paper.

That is why, many of our brethren in faith, while they confess the Lord as their God, they do not practice their faith in their daily actions. They believe in things contrary to the faith and to the laws of God. I can give you many examples of such hypocrisy. There are many who belong to the Church, and do things such as abortion, murder, lies, and many other things against the teachings of the Lord.

They are those who built their house on unstable and shaky grounds, those who are heading towards doom instead of salvation in the Lord. That is because their faith is essentially dead. We have to truly believe in what we believe, that we have a truly living and concrete faith. In that way, our house will be built on secure ground, strong and secure against any kind of obstructions or distractions.

Today, I also would like to recall something which had happened two years ago. A fellow schoolmate from my Alma Mater passed away today, exactly two years ago, at a young age of a teenager. He was a victim of violent acts, which rightly still ravage many parts of our world today. He was a good and loving person, a child of God no less. That he was taken from us because of unfortunate occurrence, served as a reminder, how, even though we have our faith in God, there are still so many things that we can do, and we need to do.

Taking the example of violence, which took away this young person’s life prematurely, we have to see that violence is a failure to achieve peace, and hatred is likewise a failure to love. We may think that, oh, that is another’s actions, why should I be bothered? And why should it have any impact on me? No, brethren, this is not the way we should think or act. That is because, any act of violence or hatred means that we have partially failed in acting and living out our faith.

I would also like to relate this to the story of Nelson Mandela, the great fighter for human rights in South Africa, who passed away just today at the age of 95. Nelson Mandela is an inspiration for all of us, brothers and sisters, because he did not condone violence and hatred, even in order to achieve his agenda, to bring equality to the African people in South Africa. He preferred ways of peace and love, that is the way of the Lord, and even though he languished for more than two decades in prison, he did not give up his ways.

Had Nelson Mandela resorted to violence and hatred, the South Africa as we know today may have been very different. Civil war, killing fields, and all others, which we saw too commonly happening in many countries, which history had been marred by violence and hatred. Instead, Nelson Mandela was respected, firstly because of his stand against the discriminatory and racist policy of Apartheid, but also because he championed the way of peace and love, exactly how we should do as well, if we are truly faithful in God. Our faith cannot remain as mere words, but have to be translated into our actions as well.

Hence, brothers and sisters in Christ, as we pray for the souls of these departed ones, and remembering how many people in the past had faithfully been following the ways of the Lord, not only in words but also in concrete actions, let us today heed from the warnings of the Lord, on the need for us to re-orientate our lives, so that we will conform more to the teachings of the Lord. We cannot be half-hearted in our faith in God. We have to dedicate ourselves, through none other than exercising love, both for God and for our fellow mankind, in all of our actions, words, and deeds.

Profess our faith in the Lord, and show it with real action. Be wise like those who built their house on solid ground. Yes, build our house with the foundation of strong faith in God. With God as our base and foundation, we shall never falter. God is always with us. May God shine His graces upon us, bless us, and make us prosper beyond our imagination, and strengthen our faith in Him, now and forever. Amen.