Tuesday

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Tuesday, 25 February 2025 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Mark 9 : 30-37

At that time, after leaving the place where He cast out evil spirit from a deaf and dumb boy, Jesus and His disciples made their way through Galilee, but He did not want people to know where He was because He was teaching His disciples. And He told them, “The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill Him, but three days after He has been killed, He will rise.”

The disciples, however, did not understand these words and they were afraid to ask Him what He meant. They came to Capernaum and, once inside the house, Jesus asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they did not answer, because they had been arguing about who was the greatest.

Then He sat down, called the Twelve and said to them, “If someone wants to be first, let him be last of all and servant of all.” Then He took a little child, placed him in their midst, and putting His arms around him, He said to them, “Whoever welcomes a child such as this in My Name, welcomes Me; and whoever welcomes Me, welcomes not Me but the One Who sent Me.”

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Tuesday, 25 February 2025 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 36 : 3-4, 18-19, 27-28, 39-40

Trust in the Lord and do good, dwell in the land and live on it. Make the Lord your delight, and He will grant your heart’s desire.

The Lord watches over the lives of the upright; forever will their inheritance abide. They are not crushed in times of calamity; when famine strikes, they still are satisfied.

Do good and shun evil, so that you will live secure forever. For the Lord loves justice and right, and never forsakes His faithful ones. The wicked instead will perish and their breed will be cut off.

The Lord is the salvation of the righteous; in time of distress, He is their refuge. The Lord helps them, and rescues them from the oppressor; He saves them for they sought shelter in Him.

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Tuesday, 25 February 2025 : 7th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Sirach 2 : 1-11

My son, if you have decided to serve the Lord, prepare yourselves for trials. Keep your heart upright and remain resolute; do not be upset in the time of adversity. Hold fast to the Lord, do not separate yourself from Him so that you may be successful to the end of your days.

Accept all that happens to you, be patient when you are humbled, for as gold is tested in the fire, so those acceptable to God are tested in the crucible of humiliation. Have confidence in Him and He will take care of you; follow the right path and hope in Him.

You who fear the Lord, wait for His mercy and do not turn away lest you fall. You who fear the Lord, trust Him and you will not lose your reward. You who fear the Lord, hope for all good things; hope for eternal joy and mercy. Remember what happened to your ancestors. Who has ever trusted in the Lord and been confounded? Who has persevered in fear of the Lord and been abandoned? Who has called upon Him and not been heard?

For the Lord is compassion and loving kindness; He forgives our sins and saves us in time of distress.

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Tuesday, 18 February 2025 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we all listened to the words of the Sacred Scriptures, we are all reminded of the need for all of us as Christians to be virtuous and righteous, good and filled with the love of God in all things. We must not allow ourselves to be swayed and tempted by the many wickedness around us in this world which can lead us astray into the path of evil and damnation, or else, we will find it difficult to reject the allures and the strong pull of sin. If we are not careful, we may end up being distracted and pulled away from the path towards God’s grace and salvation, and falling into the eternal suffering and damnation, if we allow ourselves to be swayed by sin. 

In our first reading today, we heard of the words from the Book of Genesis when God proclaimed to Noah, His faithful servant about the coming calamity and destruction which He would bring upon the whole world because of the great wickedness and sin which mankind had committed in their lives. Their sins had become so great that while God loved each one of His children, but His displeasure at the sins which the people had committed eventually led to Him deciding to wipe away all the lives in the world with the sole exception of Noah and his immediate family, as well as those animals that had come into the Great Ark that God had commanded Noah to build before the time of the Great Flood. The Lord spared those who were in the Great Ark, and their descendants became the ancestors of all those who live in the world today.

From this story of the Great Flood and the salvation through the Noah’s Ark, we are all reminded that first of all, God loves us all and wants nothing less than to forgive us and to be reunited with us all, to free us from the bondage to our sins and wickedness, all the evils and other things that had kept us away from Him. But at the same time, we must not ignore the fact that God also despises our wickedness and evils, and none of those corruptions can or should be found in us or else we will be judged and condemned by those sins which we fail to repent from and continued to commit in our lives. We must always remind ourselves that while God is all merciful and generous with His love to us, but if we continue to harden our hearts and reject His generous offer of mercy and love, it is by our own conscious rejection and rebuff of God’s mercy and love that we shall be judged by.

Then, in our Gospel passage today, taken from the Gospel according to St. Mark the Evangelist in which the moment when the Lord told the disciples to be wary of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod, which they misunderstood as the Lord chiding them for having no bread with them during their trip on the boat. This ‘yeast’ of the Pharisees is a reference to the corruption of the sins of their hypocrisy and the pride, arrogance and the desires which many of them had in them, in desiring for the glory and greatness of the world, in taking pride and being arrogant over their supposed superiority in intellectual understanding, knowledge and observance of the Law of God. They, who were entrusted with the guardianship and enforcement of the Law of God became conceited, and were obsessed with the details and rituals of the Law instead of understanding their true meaning and purpose.

They became proud in putting themselves ahead of others, thinking that they could not be mistaken, and hence, refusing to believe in the Lord and His words, even though they themselves had frequently seen and witnessed many of the Lord’s works and ministries among the people of God, all the miracles that He had performed in their own midst, all the words, the Wisdom and truth, the Good News which He had spoken and proclaimed in their midst. They had witnessed all those things and yet, they still refused and failed to believe because they could not allow themselves to accept that what the Lord had brought unto them is the truth, and that their way of observing the Law and the commandments of God had been mistaken all those while.

Then, regarding the ‘yeast’ of Herod, it is likely a reference to the hedonistic and excessive extravagance which Herod and his fellow royals and nobles, the rulers of that time, and their courtiers and followers had carried out in their daily living. This also included his immoral behaviour and actions in marrying the wife of his own brother Philip, for which King Herod had been chided and rebuked by St. John the Baptist earlier on. All these immoral and improper behaviour were not good examples for the people who lived under his dominion and rule, and hence, the Lord also warned His disciples and followers, as well as all of us, to resist the temptations of these worldly pleasures, glory and ambitions, all of which could lead us to our downfall.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore do our part in whatever way we can so that we may distance ourselves from the path of wickedness and evil. We must not allow sin and corruption it causes to harm us any longer, and we should strive to resist the many temptations to disobey and sin against God. This is of course easier said than done, as many of our predecessors had failed to follow the path of the Lord faithfully and slipped into the path of disobedience, sin and darkness. Many times we may also be faced with great trials, challenges and obstacles, temptations, coercions and pressures, all of which may persuade or convince us to give up the struggle against sin and evil. But if we do not make the effort to resist sin, and depend and trust in the Lord, how can we be triumphant against sin then? Remember that only the Lord alone has the power over sin and death, and we should continue to put the Lord at the centre of our lives and existence.

May the Lord our most loving God continue to help and guide us in our journey, and may He empower each and every one of us so that in everything that we say and do, we will always be ready to face all the challenges and obstacles in our path towards Him. May He continue to bless our every good works, efforts and endeavours, so that we may be strengthened in all things and will be fruitful in our efforts and works, for His greater glory, now and always. Amen.

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Tuesday, 18 February 2025 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Mark 8 : 14-21

At that time, the disciples had forgotten to bring more bread, and had only one loaf with the in the boat. Then Jesus warned them, “Keep your eyes open, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” And they said of one another, “He saw that we have no bread.”

Aware of this, Jesus asked them, “Why are you talking about the loaves you are short of? Do you not see or understand? Are your minds closed? Have your eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear? And do you not remember when I broke the five loaves among five thousand? How many baskets full of letfovers did you collect?”

They answered, “Twelve.” “And having distributed seven loaves to the four thousand, how many wicker baskets of leftovers did you collect?” They answered, “Seven.” Then Jesus said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

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Tuesday, 18 February 2025 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 28 : 1a and 2, 3ac-4, 3b and 9b-10

Give the Lord, o sons of God, give the Lord the glory due His Name; worship the Lord in great liturgy.

The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the Lord thunders over vast waters. How powerful is the voice of the Lord, how splendorous is the voice of the Lord.

The God of glory thunders, the Lord strips the forests bare, and in His Temple all cry, “Glory!” Over the flood the Lord was sitting; the Lord is King and He reigns forever.

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Tuesday, 18 February 2025 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Genesis 6 : 5-8 and Genesis 7 : 1-5, 10

YHVH saw how great was the wickedness of man on the earth and that evil was always the only thought of his heart. YHVH regretted having created man on the earth and His heart grieved. He said, “I will destroy man whom I created and blot him out from the face of the earth, as well as the beasts, creeping creatures and birds, for I am sorry I made them.” But Noah was pleasing to God.

YHVH said to Noah, “Go into the Ark, you and all your household, for I see that you are just in this generation. Of all the clean animals, you are to take with you seven of each kind, male and female, and a pair of unclean animals, a male and a female. In the same way for the birds of the air, take seven and seven, male and female, to keep their kind alive over all the earth, for in seven days I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. I will blot out from the face of the earth all the living creatures I have created.”

Noah did all as YHVH had commanded. And after seven days the waters of the flood were over the earth.

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Tuesday, 11 February 2025 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as we heard from the Scripture passages today, all of us are reminded that God is our Lord and Master, and we have to keep in mind that we should not allow all sorts of worldly matters, desires and distractions to lead us away from the true path towards God and His grace. We must always put our faith and trust in God, and resist the many temptations present around us that may try to lead us astray down the wrong path, and we must also resist the pull of our pride, ego, ambition and desire in this life, and instead, strive to be humble and to be willing to listen to the Lord calling upon us and allow Him to patiently lead us down the path of righteousness and grace. We must always remember that God desires our salvation, and He has done everything He could to rescue us all and to bring us ever closer to Him.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Book of Genesis in which the account of the Creation of the world and the whole Universe continued to be told to us as initiated in yesterday’s first reading. Today, we heard the second half of this story of Creation, culminating in how God created us all mankind as the pinnacle of His Creation, creating us in His own image and likeness. It was a reminder for all of us how everything that exists around us, and including our own existence in this world, are all due to the works of the Lord, and without Him, we are nothing and we would not even have existed at all. And God created all of us in His likeness and image as ultimately, He sees us all as His own children, His adopted sons and daughters, and He intended for all of us to be the ones to enjoy everything that He has created, and to forever be in His grace and loving Presence.

However, as we all know it well, we have not been faithful and obedient to God. Instead, we chose to rebel against Him and follow the advice of the devil instead, listening to his lies and allowing his falsehoods to lead us into the wrong path, taking up the forbidden fruits of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and hence, in our desire to become like God, we ended up falling into this world of suffering and death. But God, in His most wonderful and patient love for each one of us did not give up on us. Instead, He continued to reach out to us and provided us with the help necessary for us to find our way back to Him, and He opened His arms, welcoming us back with His mercy and kindness, desiring to be reconciled and reunited with us.

And that was why He sent unto us all His own Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Divine Word of God Incarnate. It was through His Word that God has created this world and Universe, and the same Word of God, the Divine Logos has become incarnate in the flesh, becoming one of the Creation through the assumption of the flesh and our human existence, but without shedding His infinite and timeless existence from the beginning, co-Eternal and consubstantial with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Through this act of supreme love, God has made Himself tangible and approachable to all of us, to show us all His sincere desire in loving us all and in wanting to guide us and help us to return to the path of virtue and grace, so that more and more may come to be saved and be spared the fate of eternal damnation.

In our Gospel passage today, we heard the confrontation between the Lord Jesus, the same Son of God, with those Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who had been criticising Him and His disciples regarding their ways of observing the Law of God. According to those Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, who safeguarded and kept the Law and commandments of God passed down from the time of Moses, the Law and the precepts of the Law must be kept and observed very strictly, and not only that, but they had even added on many details and rituals that ended up deviating from the true purpose and intention of the Law and those precepts themselves. For example, the one that the Lord mentioned regarding the washing of the vessels and the hands before eating, which those Pharisees and teachers of the Law zealously guarded, requiring everyone to wash their hands following certain strict steps and practices, like washing all the way to the elbow, or otherwise they would be considered unclean.

The Lord was criticising and rebuking them over this obsession on the details and rules of the Law, which ended up distracting those Pharisees and the teachers of the Law from the true purpose and intention of those rules in the first place. They were meant to help the people of God lead a good, hygienic way of life, in the midst of the community of the people in the context of the Exodus, when many of them were living in close quarters, and diseases would easily spread without such good practices. However, those rules were never meant to become burden and obstacles for the people of God, or becoming tools of discrimination and differentiation, which those Pharisees and teachers of the Law often practiced. This is due to the pride and the importance that they attached to the ‘correct’ way of practicing the Law, and considering themselves better and more superior than others who did not follow the Law the same way they did.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is in fact an important reminder for us all not to be easily swayed by the temptations of worldly desires, which many of those Pharisees had succumbed to, and many of them refused to listen to the Lord and to reason because they allowed themselves to be deluded by their own pride and ego which caused them to close their minds and hearts to Him. They depended instead on their intellect, their knowledge and their sense of superiority, in thinking that they were better than others simply because they were more holy, more dedicated and more pious than those they deemed to be less than worthy because they did not observe the Law of God as stringently and piously as they had done. It was all these prideful attitudes which in fact led them astray and prevented them from coming closer to God, and we should avoid adopting the same attitude in our own lives.

Today, the Church also celebrates the occasion of the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, the famous apparition of the Blessed Mother of God, Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes at the site in southern France to St. Bernadette Soubirous, shortly after the declaration of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the then Pope Pius IX. Mary, the Mother of God appeared to the simple peasant girl, St. Bernadette in the grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes over a few occasions, in which she told to her many things about herself and the message that she wanted her to proclaim to the world, proving her authenticity and identity whenever she was asked of it. St. Bernadette initially faced a lot of hurdles and skepticism from her own parents and from the local bishop and clergy, but she insisted to continue meeting the apparation of Our Lady regardless.

After several rounds of investigations into the apparition and the growing popularity of the apparition and the devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes, after about two years, the Church finally gave its assent to the authenticity and support the apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes as legitimate and authentic, and from that point onwards, pilgrimages to the shrine of Lourdes became very popular among the faithful throughout the world. A great shrine, the Basilica of Our Lady of Lourdes now stands at the site where Our Lady once appeared to St. Bernadette almost two centuries ago, with the Grotto at Massabielle, at the heart of the shrine frequented by millions of pilgrims seeking for healing and help for their sickness, and the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes is well-known for its many miraculous healings, where many sick pilgrims had been healed from their ailments after visits to the shrine.

This devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes is yet another reminder for us of the greatness of God’s love for us, that He even also sent His mother to us, to help us all and to guide us all to Him. After all, it is the Lord Himself Who has entrusted His mother to us to be our own loving Mother from His Cross as He was hanging there at the moment of His Passion. Through His mother, the Lord wants us all to realise our shortcomings and flaws, our faults and weaknesses, and by coming towards Him through His mother, the Lord hopes that all of us may be healed by our faith and trust in Him, and also be inspired by the good examples and the faith which Mary herself has shown in her life. Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes is a great role model and example for us all to follow, and we should do our best to follow her examples in our own life and actions.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, therefore today let us all remind ourselves of God’s great and most generous love for us, all the things that He has done for our sake. Let us not take His love for granted and let us continue to thank Him for all that He has lovingly provided for us, and for the help He has shown us through His Blessed Mother, Our Lady of Lourdes, who is also our Mother. May the Lord also have mercy on the sick and those who are suffering from various diseases and ailments, and let us all continue to pray for them all, so that God may continue to journey with them all and show them all His mercy and compassion. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for all of us sinners, your sons and daughters, so that we may come to realise the depth of our sinfulness and evils, and that we may come to repent and turn away from those wickedness, and find our way to your beloved Son, Our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

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Tuesday, 11 February 2025 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Mark 7 : 1-13

One day the Pharisees gathered around Jesus, and with them were some teachers of the Law who had just come from Jerusalem. They noticed that some of His disciples were eating their meal with unclean hands, that is, without washing them.

Now the Pharisees, and in fact all the Jews never eat without washing their hands, for they follow the tradition received from their ancestors. Nor do they eat anything, when they come from the market, without first washing themselves. And there are many other traditions they observe; for example, the ritual washing of cups, pots and plates.

So the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law asked Him, “Why do Your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders, but eat with unclean hands?” Jesus answered, “You shallow people! How well Isaiah prophesied of you when he wrote : This people honours Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. The worship they offer Me is worthless, for what they teach are only human rules. You even put aside the commandment of God to hold fast to human tradition.”

And Jesus commented, “You have a fine way of disregarding the commandments of God in order to enforce your own traditions! For example, Moses said : Do your duty to your father and your mother, and : Whoever curses his father or his mother is to be put to death. But according to you, someone could say to his father or mother, ‘I already declared Corban (which means “offered to God”) what you could have expected from me.'”

“In this case you no longer require him to do anything for his father or mother, and so you nullify the word of God through the tradition you have handed on. And you do many other things like that.”

Alternative reading (Mass of Our Lady of Lourdes)

John 2 : 1-11

At that time, three days after Jesus called Nathanael, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus was also invited to the wedding with His disciples. When all the wine provided for the celebration had been served, and they had run out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”

Jesus replied, “Woman, what concern is that to you and Me? My hour has not yet come.” However His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.” Nearby were six stone water jars, set there for ritual washing as practiced by the Jews; each jar could hold twenty or thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them to the brim. Then Jesus said, “Now draw some out and take it to the steward.” So they did. The steward tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing from where it had come; for only the servants who had drawn the water knew. So, he called the bridegroom to tell him, “Everyone serves the best wine first, and when people have drunk enough, he serves that which is ordinary. Instead you have kept the best wine until the end.”

This miraculous sign was the first, and Jesus performed it at Cana in Galilee. In this way He let His glory appear, and His disciples believed in Him.

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Tuesday, 11 February 2025 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Psalm 8 : 4-5, 6-7, 8-9

When I observe the heavens, the work of Your hands, the moon and the stars You set in their place – what is man that You be mindful of him, the Son of Man that You should care for Him?

Yet You made Him a little lower than the Angels; You crowned Him with glory and honour and gave Him the works of Your hands; You have put all things under His feet.

Sheep and oxen without number and even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea and all that swim the paths of the ocean.

Alternative reading (Mass of Our Lady of Lourdes)

Judith 13 : 18bcde, 19

My daughter, may the Most High God bless you more than all women on earth. And blessed be the Lord God, the Creator of heaven and earth, Who has led you to behead the leader of our enemies.

Never will people forget the confidence you have shown; they will always remember the power of God.