Tuesday

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Tuesday, 29 October 2024 : 30th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Ephesians 5 : 21-33

Let all kinds of submission to one another become obedience to Christ. So wives to their husbands : as to the Lord. The husband is the head of his wife, as Christ is the Head of the Church, His Body, of Whom He is also the Saviour. And as the Church submits to Christ, so let a wife submit in everything to her husband.

As for you, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her. He washed her and made her holy by baptism in the Word. As He wanted a radiant Church without stain or wrinkle or any blemish, but holy and blameless, He Himself had to prepare and present her to Himself.

In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they love their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. And no one has ever hated his body; he feeds and takes care of it. This is just what Christ does for the Church, because we are members of His Body.

Scripture says : Because of this a man shall leave his father and mother to be united with his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a very great mystery, and I refer to Christ and the Church. As for you, let each one love his wife as himself, and let the wife respect her husband.

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Tuesday, 22 October 2024 : 29th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. John Paul II, Pope (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Popes)

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 to seek the Lord, His love and compassionate mercy, at all times, and for us all not to be afraid to come towards Him, as God is and has always been full of mercy and compassion, wanting each and every one of us to be reconciled and reunited with Him. We must never be afraid because through His Son, Our Lord has opened for us the path to eternal life and true happiness with Him, and what we all now need is for us to embrace this love and mercy, and we have to answer Him calling each and every one of us in the depths of our hearts. We must always be prepared for the Lord Who can come at any time on us, and we may have to reckon our lives and actions, and account for everything that we have done and whatever it is that we have failed to do.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians in which the Apostle spoke of how God has reconciled us all to Himself, through the actions of His Son, Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, through Whom God had embraced our human nature and existence, entering into our world to reach out to us and to show His love for us, which He has always generously provided for us, and which He has endeavoured to make tangible and approachable to us through His Son. God has always loved us, His beloved children, which He has kept on doing all throughout time despite our frequent and constant disobedience against Him. He has always kept on His promises and love, giving us assurances, one after another through His many prophets and messengers, and eventually, by the sending of His Son.

Through all that Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, had done, we have been called to reconciliation and reunion with our loving God and Father, as His most loving and selfless sacrifice, offering and gift for us from the Cross, at the moment of His Passion and death, has become for us the source of Hope and Joy, the assurance and promise of everlasting life and total liberation from the dominion and power of darkness, sin and all the evils which had ruled over us and dominated us all these while. As the Lord Himself has shown us His love so generously and so wonderfully through Christ, His Son, let us all therefore have truly firm faith and conviction to follow Him wholeheartedly and devoutly, not allowing ourselves to be swayed by temptations or fears in our path in life, in journeying towards Him and following Him.

Then, in our Gospel passage today, we heard from the Gospel according to St. Luke in which the Lord told His disciples and all the people to be always prepared and ever ready at all times, using the comparison to the return of a master to his household, property and servants right after a wedding or function that he was attending, which could not be predicted and anticipated precisely. The Lord used that example to compare to our own situation, representing the Lord our God as the Master, while all of us are the servants in this world, and as the Lord Himself has promised and assured us all, He will return once again in glory, as we all believe, to judge all the living and the dead, and to usher in the eternal kingdom of glory and happiness that He has brought into our midst. No one knows exactly when this will happen, other than the fact that it will certainly happen.

Therefore, it is a very important reminder for us all to live our lives with genuine faith in God and to continue to do our best to practice love in each and every actions of our daily living moments. We should always do our best to proclaim the Lord through our every actions, deeds and interactions in life, in our every words and dealings with those who are around us, and in how we live our lives embodying the faith we have in Christ. Each and every one of us should continue to walk in the path of God’s grace, and also follow the great examples set by our holy predecessors, all of whom have spent many times and moments in difficulties and tribulations, enduring various challenges for the Lord, but they remained truly faithful and committed to Him because they remember the great love and examples which He Himself has shown us through His Son.

Today, the Church celebrates the Feast of one of the great and holy pastors of the Church, the recent Pope, Pope St. John Paul II, the first Polish Pope and the first one who was not an Italian in over four hundred and fifty years. Pope St. John Paul II was born as Karol Jozef Wojytla in Wadowice in Poland during the time right after the First World War, also known as the Great War at that time. He was born in a devout family, but was faced with a lot of difficulties from early on in his life. He encountered many personal tragedies when he was young, as his mother passed away early, and so was his elder brother due to sickness. His father cared for him well, and the young Karol grew up into a fine young man. However, circumstances would again cause him great tribulations and sufferings, as merely twenty years after the First World War, the Second World War erupted in Europe with the invasion of Poland by the NAZI German state.

This would begin the many years and decades of sufferings and persecutions for the Polish people, first of all by the NAZI Germans who invaded Poland and persecuted not just the Jewish people they then targetted, but many of the non-Jewish Poles as well. The years of war were difficult, and the young Karol also had to contend with losing his beloved father during those years, and it was at that time, that he joined the seminary, preparing for his priestly formation clandestinely and quietly amidst all the conflicts and destruction happening all around due to the NAZI atrocities and the war. Even the young Karol almost lost his life in one occasion, but God’s grace was with him, and he survived through all the challenges, and was eventually ordained as a priest of the Lord after the war. But that was not the end of his challenges and difficulties.

For then the Soviets and the Communists took over control over the country and subjugated many Polish Catholics and its leadership to a lot of challenges and persecutions, both officially and unofficially. Father Karol Wojtyla remained rather unassuming and quiet in his ministry among the faithful people of God, and he was particularly popular among the youths and students, a ministry which he continue to carry out faithfully until he was appointed as the Auxiliary Bishop of Krakow by the Pope, and then eventually succeeding as the Metropolitan Archbishop of Krakow. For many years after, the then Archbishop and afterwards Cardinal Wojtyla gradually became the centre of the faithful resistance against the atheist Communist government of Poland, such as a well-known moment when he stood up courageously against the efforts of the Communists to establish a new city, Nowa Huta, without a church, unlike others in Poland. Then Cardinal Wojtyla spent efforts to establish a church there, with the foundation stone blessed by the Pope himself, then Pope St. Paul VI.

Cardinal Wojtyla would then unexpectedly be elected as Pope, succeeding his predecessor, Blessed Pope John Paul I who had just reigned for thirty-three days. His Pontificate was one of the longest in the recent centuries, spanning over twenty-seven years, and during those periods, he continue to dedicate himself faithfully in the Lord, becoming an instrumental figure in the downfall of Communism in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe and also elsewhere around the world, becoming a great world figure and peacemaker in many occasions. In his numerous trips all around the world, visiting many countries and places where no Pope has ever set foot before, even in those places where there were only few Catholics, Pope St. John Paul II showed the great love of God manifested through Christ and His Church to countless people around the world.

Pope St. John Paul II also faced an assassination attempt early in his Pontificate, but he survived, and was well-known for his visit to his would-be assassin, and how he forgave his assailant, praying for him and his conversion. Pope St. John Paul II continued to do many other great things for the good of the Church and the faithful all throughout the world, and even in his final years, when he was faced with a lot of personal sufferings and hardships from his Parkinson’s disease and other complications, he continued to serve the Lord faithfully, becoming the face of God’s love and persistent compassion and mercy to many who were also suffering in this world. To the very end of his life, Pope St. John Paul II continued to remain firm in his conviction and dedication in serving God, and this should be an inspiration to many of us as well.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, from the life of Pope St. John Paul II, and also from what we have discussed earlier on from the Sacred Scriptures, let us all therefore ponder upon the great love of God which all of us have had the privilege of receiving so that we may continue to live our lives faithfully in God’s Presence. Let us all continue to dedicate ourselves and our every moments in life with great faith and strive to glorify the Lord ever more by our exemplary lives and actions, following in the good examples that Christ Himself has shown us, and as His saints, like Pope St. John Paul II had done. May the Lord be with us and bless us all in our every good efforts and endeavours, now and always. Amen.

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Tuesday, 22 October 2024 : 29th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. John Paul II, Pope (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Popes)

Luke 12 : 35-38

At that time, Jesus said to the people, “Be ready, dressed for service, and keep your lamps lit, like people waiting for their master to return from the wedding. As soon as he comes and knocks, they will open the door to him. Happy are those servants whom the master finds wide-awake when he comes.”

“Truly, I tell you, he will put an apron, and have them sit at table, and he will wait on them. Happy are those servants, if he finds them awake when he comes at midnight or daybreak!”

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Tuesday, 22 October 2024 : 29th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. John Paul II, Pope (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Popes)

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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Tuesday, 22 October 2024 : 29th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. John Paul II, Pope (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Popes)

Ephesians 2 : 12-22

At that time, you were without Christ, you did not belong to the community of Israel; the Covenants of God, and His promises, were not for you; you had no hope, and were without God in this world.

But now, in Christ Jesus, and by His Blood, you, who were once far off, have come near. For Christ is our peace; He, Who has made the two people, one; destroying, in His own flesh, the wall – the hatred – which separated us. He abolished the Law, with its commandments and precepts. He made peace, in uniting the two people, in Him; creating, out of the two, one New Man.

He destroyed hatred and reconciled us both to God, through the cross, making the two, one body. He came to proclaim peace; peace to you who were far off, peace to the Jews who were near. Through Him, we – the two people – approach the Father, in one Spirit.

Now, you are no longer strangers or guests, but fellow citizens of the holy people : you are of the household of God. You are the house, whose foundations are the Apostles and prophets, and whose cornerstone is Christ Jesus.

In Him, the whole structure is joined together, and rises, to be a holy Temple, in the Lord. In Him, you, too, are being built, to become the spiritual Sanctuary of God.

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Tuesday, 15 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we all listened from the passages of the Sacred Scriptures in which we are reminded again that we should be truly faithful to the Lord in all things, and we should not be easily be swayed by the temptations and pressures of the world around us, all the temptations that may end up leading us astray and further away from God and His salvation. God has revealed the truth about His love, His teachings and Good News to us all through His Son, Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and through His Son, God has taught us what we all truly need to do in order to follow and obey Him faithfully, and not to fall into the thinking that our knowledge, wisdom and intellect are better than the Wisdom of God, as the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law had once done.

In our first reading today, we heard from the continuation of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Church and the faithful people of God in Galatia, where the Apostle spoke of the matter of the Law and how the people of God there should truly follow and obey the Lord wholeheartedly and truthfully. For the context, we must understand that there were quite a few Jewish people living in Galatia and other regions and cities that St. Paul had been visiting, and as he addressed the faithful through his Epistles, there was the clear intention of him addressing the turmoil and disagreements that existed between the believers and converts that came from both the Jewish and non-Jewish background. Even among the Jewish people themselves, there were different ideas and disagreements on their beliefs, and they were bitterly divided on those matters at times.

As such, St. Paul wanted to highlight particularly the matter of the obligation of having to follow, obey and fulfil the Law of God, and how the faithful should not follow the ways of the Pharisees, the teachers of the Law and all those who have strictly and rigidly interpreted the Law of God, emphasizing excessively on the details and the intricacies of the rules and rites that needed to be done, and in the process, they ended up falling into the trap of scrupulousness, focusing a lot more on the manner how the Law was to be obeyed and followed rather than on why they need to be obeyed and followed. Their preoccupation on the very extensive, strict and demanding set of the rules, Law and regulations prevented so many people from coming closer to God, and worse still, the prejudices they had against those they deemed to be less worthy than them became a major stumbling block as well. This is what St. Paul was speaking up against, in reminding the faithful that they ought to follow Christ and not man-made rules and regulations.

Then, in our Gospel passage today, we heard from the Gospel of St. Luke the Evangelist in which the account of the Lord confronting a Pharisee who invited Him to have a meal at his place, for his preoccupation and obsession with the obedience and fulfilment of the rituals and details of the customs and practices of the Law of God, which had prevented him and many others among the Pharisees from being able to embrace the truth and the way which the Lord Jesus had brought into the world. This is in accordance to what St. Paul had also told the faithful in the Epistle earlier on, as we are reminded of the need to adhere faithfully to what the Lord Himself has shown and taught us, and not to fall into the trap of pride, ego and desire, ambition and scrupulousness which had befallen those Pharisees and teachers of the Law.

What the Lord criticised those Pharisees for were their scrupulousness and the excessive attention to details as mentioned, as they focused so much on the details and the extensive rules involved that they tend to overlook why those laws and rules were instated in the first place. Such as the matter mentioned in our Gospel passage today, where the Law of Moses dictated the washing of hands and bowls, which were in fact rules meant to help the people maintain a hygienic life and practices especially in the context of the time of the Exodus and the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan, when the people lived with each other in very close proximity, due to the relatively large number of people travelling in the camps of the Israelites. Such a law and rule was necessary at that time to prevent the spread of plagues and diseases among the people which could be fatal for many of them.

However, the Pharisees and the others who interpreted these rules and laws very strictly and on a very literal level, putting very big emphasis on the details of what ought to be followed. They spent so much focus on how far the washing and cleaning ought to be, right up to the elbows and then how many times the hands and the bowls ought to be washed and cleaned. This was just one among many other rules and regulations that those Pharisees and teachers of the Law fussed excessively about, and hence, this was what the Lord Jesus was criticising and rebuking the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law against so that they would realise the folly and error of their ways, and not to mislead the people of God any further with their unhealthy and incorrection attention and focus on the letter of the Law and the details rather than the true meaning and purpose of the Law.

Ultimately, the Law of God was meant to help and direct God’s people towards Him, and this Law is the Law of love meant to teach and show them all how to truly love the Lord their God wholeheartedly and fully. The Law was never meant to restrain or put heavy burdens on the people of God. Rather, it was given and taught to us to ensure that we may know that we ought to exist for the Lord and we should put Him at the very centre of our lives and existence, and we should do our best so that our lives may truly proclaim His glory and that we will always be ever more faithful to His cause, learning how to love Him and to love our fellow brothers and sisters, as that Law has always been intended to be. The Law of God is the Law of Love, meant to show us how we all ought to love God and one another.djer

Today, the Church celebrates the Feast of a great saint and holy woman of the Church, one of the esteemed and honoured Doctors of the Church, namely St. Teresa of Jesus, also known as St. Teresa of Avila. St. Teresa of Avila was one of the founders of the Discalced Carmelites Order, which was born out of the extensive reform of the original Carmelite Order during the time of the Counter-Reformation. St. Teresa of Avila was born during the time when there were great changes and turmoils in Christendom, and she was brought up as a devout Christian by her mother and family, and after losing her mother at a rather early age of eleven, this experience further brought St. Teresa of Avila closer to the Lord, eventually desiring to join religious life and to commit herself to the Lord.

St. Teresa of Avila eventually joined the Carmelites and lived with great piety and dedication to God, committing herself to a life of prayer and self-mortification, resisting the temptations of the world and while experiencing many spiritual ecstasy and mystical visions that eventually led her even closer to God. She was known for her many other spiritual experiences and sufferings, which she endured patiently with faith, and her piety and examples became great inspiration for everyone both during her time and afterwards. Then, as mentioned, she became a great reformer of the Carmelite Order that she belonged to, seeing the laxity and worldly corruption that had crept up into her religious order and community, that many of the religious no longer committed themselves faithfully to the Lord in the manner that the founder of the Order intended to.

To this extent, together with several others, including St. John of the Cross and all those who shared her vision, St. Teresa of Avila resolved to establish the reformed Carmelite order, which would henceforth be known as the Discalced Carmelites, for their willingness and commitment to adhere more faithfully to the tenets and the practices of the original founders and intentions of the Carmelites, which is kind of similar to what we have been hearing in our Scripture passages earlier and discussed today. The Lord also intended to return everyone to the true intention and practice of the Law that God had granted and given to them, purifying the Law that had been misinterpreted and wrongly practiced in the past centuries by the people of God and their leaders, which had led them to the wrong path. In the similar way therefore, St. Teresa of Avila and the other reformers did the same, as they courageously went through the challenges and trials that they had to face amidst their attempts and efforts to establish the reformed Carmelite order.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we have heard from the Scripture readings today and from the life and examples of St. Teresa of Jesus or St. Teresa of Avila, let us all therefore strive as Christians, as God’s holy and beloved people to follow Him ever more wholeheartedly and worthily in all things. Let us all continue to do our best so that our whole lives, our every actions and deeds, our words and interactions with one another will continue to proclaim the glory of God. May God bless each and every one of us, and may He continue to guide us in our journey through life and strengthen us in our every efforts and endeavours to glorify Him like His holy saints had done before us, now and always. Amen.

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Tuesday, 15 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Luke 11 : 37-41

At that time, as Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked Him to have a meal with him. So He went and sat at table. The Pharisee then wondered why Jesus did not wash His hands before the dinner.

But the Lord said to him, “So then, you Pharisees, you clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside yourselves you are full of greed and evil. Fools! He Who made the outside, also made the inside. But according to you, by the mere giving of alms everything is made clean.”

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Tuesday, 15 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 118 : 41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48

Give me Your unfailing love, o YHVH; Your salvation, as You have promised.

Take not the word of truth from my mouth, for I would also lose my hope in Your word.

May I always keep Your word, for ever and ever.

I shall walk in freedom, having sought out Your laws.

For I delight in Your word, which I fear.

I will lift up my hands to You, and meditate on Your commandments.

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Tuesday, 15 October 2024 : 28th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Galatians 5 : 1-6

Christ freed us, to make us really free. So remain firm, and do not submit, again, to the yoke of slavery. I, Paul, say this to you : if you receive circumcision, Christ can no longer help you. Once more, I say, to whoever receives circumcision : you are now bound to keep the whole Law. All you, who pretend to become righteous through the observance of the Law, have separated yourselves from Christ, and have fallen away from grace.

As for us, through the Spirit and faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. In Christ Jesus, it is irrelevant, whether we be circumcised or not; what matters is, faith, working through love.

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Tuesday, 8 October 2024 : 27th 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 reminded that we are all called to follow the Lord and to put our focus and attention towards Him, and we should not allow ourselves to be easily tempted and swayed by the many temptations present all around us, be it things that may tempt us through worldly glory, fame, pleasures and all the attachments to worldly matters and comforts, as well as our own pride, ego, desires and all the other obstacles that may manifest themselves in the path that we are all taking in our journey towards the Lord our God and His salvation. All of us as Christians are reminded of this fact as we continue to live our lives faithfully in the Lord’s Presence in each and every days of our lives.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Church and the faithful people of God in the region of Galatia in what is now part of Turkey, where the Apostle spoke of the history of how he was called by God to be His Apostle, his experiences and journey of faith as one of the missionaries and disciples of the Lord. St. Paul spoke openly to the faithful in Galatia about his calling by the Lord, on how earlier on he was a notable and rather infamous enemy of the Lord and the Church because of his misguided zeal and efforts as a young Pharisee to oppose the Lord and His works, persecuting and oppressing the early Christians at that time.

St. Paul shared that to the faithful in Galatia to warn them against being swayed by the false guidance and leads in life, to focus themselves and their attention towards the Lord and to His teachings and words as delivered to them by the Apostles and disciples of the Lord, and not to be tempted by the many falsehoods and false guidance in life, or be swayed by the worldly ambitions, desires and all the false paths that the evil ones have always been tempting us with, trying to lead us into our downfall and destruction. They kept on tempting and swaying us through the many methods and means by trying to cause us to lose our focus and attention on the Lord, and instead we end up falling into the slippery slope towards sin and darkness.

Then, in our Gospel passage today, we heard from the Gospel according to St. Luke in which the story of the Lord’s visit to the house of His friends, Mary and Martha, who were the brothers of Lazarus. The Lord was welcomed by both of the sisters in different manner. Mary was attending to the Lord and was listening intently to Him speaking to her and teaching her with His wisdom and words while Martha was busy with the preparations and the works to welcome the Lord, which was presumably including things like preparing meals for the Lord and also cleaning the place and the house, which preoccupied her throughout the time when her sister was attending to the Lord and listening to Him. And as we heard, Martha got fed up and told the Lord to ask her sister to help her in her chores and work.

The Lord then as we heard reminded Martha that what Mary had done was right, that while Martha’s intentions might have been good and she wanted genuinely to welcome and impress the Lord with her hospitality, but in her great efforts and preoccupation with trying to impress the Lord, she had become distracted and tempted away from her right focus on the Lord upon her activities and works instead. In a sense this was also similar with what St. Paul had done earlier in his life as Saul when he persecuted the Church and the early Christians, in his misguided zeal as mentioned earlier on. St. Paul might have good intentions, but he got swayed by the false fanaticism and overzealous attitude with the wrong guidance and path, ending up with him committing great atrocities against the Lord and His people instead.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have been reminded that we must always focus our lives and direct our attention towards the Lord, our God and Saviour. Otherwise, if we allow ourselves to be distracted and swayed through the many temptations and pressures all around us, we may end up falling into the trap of the evil ones who are always ever ready in trying to lead astray from our path towards God and His salvation. God has reminded us to stay vigilant against all those who sought to bring us into the path of sin and disobedience against God, to be careful lest we allow ourselves to be misguided by those who claim to represent the truth and way of the Lord. We must always remain firm in our faith and trust in Him so that in everything that we say and do, we will always proclaim the Lord and His Good News at all times.

As Christians we must always keep in mind that the focus of our lives and existence should always be in the Lord our God, and we should always strive to live our lives worthily of Him, and at the same time cultivating good and genuine relationship with Him so that we may continue to walk ever more faithfully and courageously in His Presence, embracing His love and kindness, His generosity and mercy, as He has called on each one of us to come back to Him and to listen to Him speaking to us once again, just as He has taught and spoken to Mary. How we are to respond to His call and His words being spoken to us is entirely up to us. Are we going to be like Martha who was so busy and preoccupied with her activities and preparations she ended up neglecting her time and relationship with God? Or are we going to be like Mary and strive to centre our lives and activities upon the Lord at all times?

Let us all therefore carefully ponder on all these and consider how we all can live our lives as better Christians from now on, so that as better and more committed people of God, as His beloved ones and holy people, we may continue to grow ever more in faith and love for His ways, for His teachings, His Law and commandments, while resisting the many temptations and all the worldly attachments and desires around us which may distract us from being able to truly commit ourselves to His cause and following Him with all of our hearts and might. May the Lord continue to strengthen our faith in Him and may He continue to empower each and every one of us so that by our exemplary faith we may inspire many others to follow in our footsteps and draw ever closer to the Lord, and distancing ourselves from all the temptations and obstacles that had prevented us from coming close to Him. May God bless us always in everything we do, in our every good endeavours and works, now and forevermore. Amen.