Tuesday

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Tuesday, 7 September 2021 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 6 : 12-19

At that time, Jesus went out into the hills to pray, spending the whole night in prayer with God. When day came, He called His disciples to Him, and chose Twelve of them, whom He called ‘Apostles’ : Simon, whom He named Peter, and his brother Andrew; James and John; Philip and Bartholomew; Matthew and Thomas; James son of Alpheus and Simon called the Zealot; Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who would be the traitor.

Coming down the hill with them, Jesus stood in an open plain. Many of His disciples were there, and a large crowd of people, who had come from all parts of Judea and Jerusalem, and from the coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon. They gathered to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases. And the people troubled by unclean spirits were cured.

The entire crowd tried to touch Him, because of the power that went out from Him and healed them all.

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Tuesday, 7 September 2021 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 144 : 1-2, 8-9, 10-11

I will extol You, my God and King; I will praise Your Name forever. I will praise You, day after day; and exalt Your Name forever.

Compassionate and gracious is YHVH, slow to anger and abounding in love. YHVH is good to everyone; His mercy embraces all His creation.

All Your works will give You thanks; all Your saints, o YHVH, will praise You. They will tell of the glory of Your kingdom; and speak of Your power.

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Tuesday, 7 September 2021 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Colossians 2 : 6-15

If you have accepted Christ Jesus as Lord, let Him be your doctrine. Be rooted and built up in Him; let faith be your principle, as you were taught, and your thanksgiving, overflowing.

See that no one deceives you with philosophy or any hollow discourse; these are merely human doctrines, not inspired by Christ, but by the wisdom of this world. For in Him, dwells the fullness of God, in bodily form. He is the Head of all cosmic power and authority, and, in Him, you have everything.

In Christ Jesus, you were given a circumcision, but not by human hands, which removed completely from you the carnal body : I refer to baptism. On receiving it, you were buried with Christ; and you also rose with Him, for having believed in the power of God, Who raised Him from the dead.

You were dead. You were in sin and uncircumcised at the same time. But God gave you life with Christ. He forgave all our sins. He cancelled the record of our debts, those regulations which accused us. He did away with all that, and nailed it to the cross. Victorious through the cross, He stripped the rulers and authorities of their power, humbled them before the eyes of the whole world, and dragged them behind Him, as prisoners.

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Tuesday, 31 August 2021 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we listened to the words of the Scripture, all of us are called to trust in the Lord, to follow Him wholeheartedly and listen to Him, as we should. As Christians, all of us believe in the Lord and His truth, and we should trust that He will take good care of us and provide for our needs. He shall not abandon us to the wicked, and He shall deliver us from our troubles in the end, and we shall find eternal rest and true joy in Him.

In our first reading today, St. Paul the Apostle in his Epistle to the Church and the faithful in Thessalonica mentioned about the Lord’s providence for His people, how He would care for them as His beloved ones, and they would receive from Him great grace and blessings, as they are the people of the Light, God’s own children. Yet, they also have to be vigilant and alert, lest they may be tempted by the various temptations of the world. They have to place their trust in the Lord and be faithful to His Law and commandments.

In that, through what St. Paul said in the latter part of today’s first reading and our Gospel passage today, we heard how God has sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to be Our Lord and Saviour. He is the One promised by the Lord, through His many prophets and messengers, and He has proved it all by His coming into the world. God has not held back even giving us His Son, to be born into our midst and to grace us with His presence, suffering and dying for us, for the salvation of our souls.

And in the Gospel passage today we heard of the miraculous deeds that the Lord had performed before all the people in Capernaum, just as He had impressed them with the wisdom of His words and the authority by which He had delivered His truth before everyone. He taught in the synagogue and then confronted the evil spirits that possessed a man. The evil spirits told the Lord that he knew Who He really was, and told everyone that the One before them was truly the Holy One of God, the One promised by the Lord through His prophets.

And if we recall the Gospel passage from yesterday, which told us about how the Lord was rejected and cast out by His own townspeople in Nazareth, and their lack of faith and refusal to trust Him, we can see the irony in that it was the evil spirits which were rebels against God that acknowledged Him and spoke the truth about Who He truly was. And this is because although they might have rebelled against God and were still defying Him, but they too were the subjects of the Lord and could not deny the truth before Him, of what they had already known.

Those evil spirits also likely hoped to undermine the Lord’s works of saving His people, by speaking the truth about Jesus’ true identity, which as we had seen from the reactions of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law could have caused further frictions and obstacles. But the Lord decisively acted and commanded those evil spirits to leave the man, and those spirits obeyed and had to leave the man, who was then thereafter healed from all of his afflictions and was fully restored.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today all of us are called to reflect on what we have just heard in today’s Scripture readings. God has shown His love so evidently and so frequently for us, and yet many of us are still in denial of His love, and refused to believe in Him despite everything that we had seen Him doing, all the things that He had proven to us, and for all the blessings and wonders that He had provided for us. Many of us still lived in the state of sin, which is truly unbecoming of our identity as Christians.

Let us all therefore discern our path, that our lives may be more faithful and our actions, words and deeds be more aligned with God and His will. Let us all trust in the Lord and follow Him wholeheartedly, and believe in Him and His loving providence all the time. Let us no longer doubt Him or ignore His love, and embrace Him and His love with all of our hearts, with all of our strength. May the Lord be with us always, and may He bless us all in our every endeavours and good works. Amen.

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Tuesday, 31 August 2021 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 4 : 31-37

At that time, Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee, and began teaching the people at the Sabbath meetings. They were astonished at the way He taught them, for His word was spoken with authority.

In the synagogue, there was a man possessed by an evil spirit, who shouted in a loud voice, “What do You want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I recognise You : You are the Holy One of God.”

Then Jesus said to him sharply, “Be silent and leave this man!” The evil spirit then threw the man down in front of them, and came out of him without doing him harm. Amazement seized all these people, and they said to one another, “What does this mean? He commands the evil spirits with authority and power. He orders, and you see how they come out!”

And news about Jesus spread throughout the surrounding area.

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Tuesday, 31 August 2021 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 26 : 1, 4, 13-14

YHVH is my light and my salvation – whom shall I fear? YHVH is the rampart of my life; I will not be afraid.

One thing I ask of YHVH, one thing I seek – that I may dwell in His house all the days of my life, to gaze at His jewel and to visit His Sanctuary.

I hope, I am sure, that I will see the goodness of YHVH in the land of the living. Trust in YHVH, be strong and courageous. Yes, put your hope in YHVH!

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Tuesday, 31 August 2021 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

1 Thessalonians 5 : 1-6, 9-11

You do not need anyone to write to you about the delay, and the appointed time for these events. You know, that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When people feel secure, and at peace, the disaster will suddenly come upon them, as the birth pangs of a woman in labour, and they will not escape.

But you, beloved, are not in darkness; so that day will not surprise you like a thief. All of you are citizens of the light and the day; we do not belong to night and darkness. Let us not, therefore, sleep as others do, but remain alert and sober.

For God has not willed us to be condemned, but to win salvation, through Christ Jesus, our Lord. He died for us, so that, we might enter into life, with Him, whether we are still awake or already asleep. Therefore, encourage one another and build up one another, as you are doing now.

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Tuesday, 24 August 2021 : Feast of St. Bartholomew, Apostle (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we mark the feast of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, one of the Twelve great Apostles of the Lord, and therefore we remember the memory of his great dedication and life, the time he has spent in following the Lord and carrying out His will, in the evangelisation of the world and the spreading of the truth and the Good News of the Gospels.

St. Bartholomew was, according to the Apostolic tradition, also known as Nathanael, whose story we heard in our Gospel passage today. We heard how Nathanael was called by the Lord to follow Him and become His disciples, and how he was initially skeptical of the Lord, when he heard that the Lord had come from the land of Galilee. He was one of the most qualified and educated among the disciples, an intellectual and knew the Law of God and the prophets well, and thus he knew that no prophet or Saviour would come from Galilee.

Yet, his doubts and hesitation were immediately dispelled when the Lord miraculously told him about himself and how He knew about him, where he was and the things that He would show him. Nathanael put behind his doubts and hesitation, embracing the Lord Jesus wholeheartedly as his Lord and Master, following Him for His ministry from then henceforth, being chosen as one of the Twelve, and becoming an Apostle later on, at the forefront of the early Church’s ministry and evangelisation.

It was told that St. Bartholomew went to various parts of the world, including India, Parthia and Mesopotamia, and parts of Asia Minor and Armenia, focusing on the eastern parts of the known world at the time, spending much time in spreading the word of God to the many people who have not yet heard or known about Him. He helped the other disciples and Apostles to establish firm foundations of Christian communities in various places, and instilled the truth of God among many others, leading to many embracing the call to God’s grace and salvation.

His mission brought him to Armenia where together with St. Jude Thaddeus, the other one of the Twelve Apostles, he helped to establish the Christian faith in Armenia, which would eventually become the first nation in the world to officially adapt Christianity as their state faith. It was there that St. Bartholomew was martyred, in the city of Albanopolis, due to him having successfully converted the local king into the Christian faith, which was then opposed by the king’s brother and the other nobles, who then arrested, tortured and executed St. Bartholomew by flaying.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we recall the great passion and dedication by which St. Bartholomew had given his life in dedication to the Lord, and as we seek to emulate his examples and be inspired by his deeds, we are all called to discern carefully on our own path in life. Are we capable of devoting ourselves to the Lord in the same manner, brothers and sisters in Christ? And are we willing to commit our time, effort, resources and attention to glorify the Lord daily and at all times, in our own words, actions and every deeds?

Today as we remember the courage and the faith of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, we are reminded that for all the great deeds he had done, it was all possible because the faithful Apostle entrusted himself completely to the Lord and gave himself completely to His cause, and allowed Him to lead him down the path of great virtue and succour for many others. We may be ordinary ourselves, but God called on the ordinary ones to follow Him, and made them worthy, and bestowed on them the strength and courage, the wisdom and intellect, and the power required for them to fulfil their calling.

Now it is really up to us all, brothers and sisters in Christ, whether we are willing to embrace the Lord wholeheartedly as St. Bartholomew and the other Apostles and disciples of the Lord had done. The Lord has called us all to follow Him and to walk in the path that He has shown us. It is up to us now to follow Him and to remain true to our faith, not by mere formality alone, but rather also through genuine actions and efforts, through our every contributions, no matter how small or insignificant they may seem to be.

Let us all therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, be the bearers of the truth of God, His faithful witnesses in our world today. Let us all be faithful to the Lord and walk in His path always, and be inspiration to one another, helping and supporting each other in our efforts and endeavours. May the Lord be with us all, and may He bless us in our every efforts and endeavours, now and always, forevermore. Amen.

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Tuesday, 24 August 2021 : Feast of St. Bartholomew, Apostle (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Red

John 1 : 45-51

At that time, Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found the One Moses wrote about in the Law, and the prophets : He is Jesus, Son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”

Nathanael replied, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming, He said of him, “Here comes an Israelite, a true one; there is nothing false in him.” Nathanael asked Him, “How do You know me?” And Jesus said to him, “Before Philip called you, you were under the fig tree, and I saw you.”

Nathanael answered, “Master, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” But Jesus replied, “You believe because I said, ‘I saw you under the fig tree.’ But you will see greater things than that. Truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened, and the Angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

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Tuesday, 24 August 2021 : Feast of St. Bartholomew, Apostle (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Red

Psalm 144 : 10-11, 12-13ab, 17-18

All Your works will give You thanks; all Your saints, o Lord, will praise You. They will tell of the glory of Your kingdom and speak of Your power.

That all may know of Your mighty deeds, Your reign and its glorious splendour. Your reign is from age to age; Your dominion endures from generation to generation.

Righteous is YHVH in all His ways, His mercy shows in all His deeds. He is near those who call on Him, who call trustfully upon His Name.