Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

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Saturday, 22 August 2015 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Luke 1 : 26-38

In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth. He was sent to a young virgin, who was betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the family of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.

The angel came to her and said, “Rejoice, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” Mary was troubled at these words, wondering what this greeting could mean. But the angel said, “Do not fear, Mary, for God has looked kindly on you. You shall conceive and bear a Son, and you shall call Him Jesus.”

“He will be great, and shall rightly be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the kingdom of David, His ancestor; He will rule over the people of Jacob forever, and His reign shall have no end.”

Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the Holy Child to be born of you shall be called Son of God.”

“Even your relative Elizabeth is expecting a son in her old age, although she was unable to have a child; and she is now in her sixth month. With God nothing is impossible.” Then Mary said, “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me as you have said.” And the angel left her.

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Saturday, 22 August 2015 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 112 : 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8

Alleluia! Praise, o servants of the Lord, praise the Name of the Lord! Blessed be the Name of the Lord now and forever!

From eastern lands to the western islands, may the Name of the Lord be praised! The Lord is exalted over the nations, His glory above the heavens.

Who is like the Lord our God, who sits enthroned on high, but also bends down to see on earth as in heaven?

He lifts up the poor from the dust and the needy from the ash heap. He makes them sit with princes, with rulers of His people.

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Saturday, 22 August 2015 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Isaiah 9 : 1-6

The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. A light has dawned on those who live in the land of the shadow of death. You have enlarged the nation; You have increased their joy. They rejoice before You, as people rejoice at harvest time, as they rejoice in dividing the spoil.

For the yoke of their burden, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressors, You have broken it as on the day of Midian. Every warrior’s boot that tramped in war, every cloak rolled in blood, will be thrown out for burning, will serve as fuel for the fire.

For a Child is born to us, a Son is given us; the royal ornament is laid upon His shoulder, and His Name is proclaimed : “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” To the increase of His powerful rule in peace, there will be no end. Vast will be His dominion, He will reign on David’s throne and over all His kingdom, to establish and uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time onward and forever.

The zealous love of YHVH Sabaoth will do this.

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Friday, 21 August 2015 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Pius X, Pope (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about how a woman of Israel, Naomi, was left all alone after her husband and two sons passed away, leaving her with her daughters-in-law who followed her. One of the two daughters-in-law, Ruth, a Moabite woman, a foreigner in the eyes of the Israelites, refused to leave when Naomi decided to return to her homeland and asked them to go.

This same Ruth would eventually be the ancestor of David, the king of Israel, through whom God renewed His covenant with His people and with all of us. Ruth would go on to meet Boaz, her future husband, and by God’s will, and through Naomi’s faith and perseverance, the foundation of the family of David would be born. And through David, God made secure his kingdom and his family, and through him, the salvation of all mankind was made secure, through Jesus, Son of God, Son of David.

And Ruth as we heard in today’s reading, made the great profession of faith before Naomi, as even though she was a foreigner, a Moabite, usually looked with suspicion and often treated badly and with prejudice by the people of Israel, but her faith shone forth and true, for she proclaimed that Naomi’s God would be her God, and Israel would be her people, counting herself among them. This surrendering of oneself to the will of God is a great example for all of us to follow.

In the Gospel today, we heard about how Jesus explained to the teacher of the Law, who asked Him what the most important commandment in the Law is. Out of the Ten Commandments, and the numerous rules and regulations of the laws as revealed to Moses, the most important Law is indeed about love. It is for love of us mankind that God had revealed His Law, so that all of us may find our way to Him and keep ourselves steady amidst the temptations and challenges of the world.

Indeed, the essence of the Law is to love the Lord with all of our might, with all of our strength, with all of our minds and intellect, and with all of our very beings, that in everything we say, in everything we act and do, we do them for the love of God, for the sake of the Lord, and for the sake of everything that God had made, which includes all creation, and also all of us, mankind, loving one another, our own brothers and sisters in the Lord.

It is the same kind of faith and devotion which Ruth had shown us in the first reading today, the total commitment and devotion which all of us ought to have as well. We have to have this kind of faith if we are to call ourselves true disciples of the Lord. If we truly follow the Lord, then all of us should love Him, and give Him all the best things we have, the best of our attention and focus, our best devotion and commitment.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate a great feast day of the Church, when we celebrate the feast of one of its greatest saints and holy servants of God, namely that of Pope St. Pius X, the Pope of the Holy Eucharist, defender of the True Faith and defender against the evils and wickedness of Modernism. He is one of the greatest Popes of the modern era, who helped the Church to withstand the forces of darkness gathering and pushing against the Church.

Pope St. Pius X was born a humble and poor boy, by the name of Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, at a time when uncertainties and darkness started to cloud the judgments of mankind and nations. He rose through the occasion by his tireless dedication and strong stance against the sins and wickedness that were eating away at mankind’s heart and soul.

In his position, firstly as a lay person, then a priest, then a bishop, a Cardinal and Patriarch of Venice, and then as the Successor of St. Peter and Vicar of Christ, he remained as a beacon of faith and truth, and an inviolable and steadfast anchor of the faith, condemning sins whenever he found it, and helping and showing mercy to sinners whenever and wherever he could.

He helped to reform the Church and made it stronger by codifying a new set of the Canon Law which were crucial to help the Church to withstand the forces of change and corruption that were threatening many of the faithful. He showed by example in many situations, with his great piety and dedication to the Lord. He also tried to bring the faithful closer to God, by championing and pushing for frequent reception of the Holy Communion, which up to then was only done very irregularly.

Through his hard work, he was known to be a saintly Pope even before he passed away, and the push for his beatification and sainthood came immediately after his death. He became an inspiration to many of the faithful, and I hope that through his intercession, he will also become an inspiration to many of us. May all of us show the great faith and devotion to the Lord, as Ruth and as Pope St. Pius X had done. May God be with us in all of our good endeavour. God bless us all. Amen.

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Friday, 21 August 2015 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Pius X, Pope (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Matthew 22 : 34-40

At that time, when the Pharisees heard how Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. One of them, a teacher of the Law, tried to test Him with this question, “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the Law?”

Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and the most important of the commandments. But after this there is another one very similar to it : You shall love your neighbour as yourself. The whole Law and the Prophets are founded on these two commandments.”

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Friday, 21 August 2015 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Pius X, Pope (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 145 : 5-6ab, 6c-7, 8-9a, 9bc-10

Blessed are they whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, Maker of heaven and earth, the sea and all they contain.

The Lord is forever faithful; He gives justice to the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free.

The Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord straightens the bent. The Lord protects the stranger.

He sustains the widow and the orphan. The Lord loves the virtuous, but He brings to ruin the way of the wicked. The Lord will reign forever, your God, o Zion, from generation to generation. Alleluia!

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Friday, 21 August 2015 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of Pope St. Pius X, Pope (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Ruth 1 : 1, 3-6, 14b-16, 22

There was a famine in the land during the time of the Judges, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah departed with his wife and two sons to sojourn in the country of Moab.

Naomi’s husband Elimelech died. She was left with her two sons, who married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After living in Moab for about ten years, her sons, Mahlon and Chilion also died and Naomi was left bereft of husband and two sons. Having heard that YHVH had come to help His people by giving them food, Naomi prepared to return home.

Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law returns to her people and her gods. You too must return. Go after her.” Ruth replied, “Do not ask me to leave you. For I will go where you go and stay where you stay. Your people will be my people and your God, my God.”

Thus it was that Naomi returned from Moab with her Moabite daughter-in-law and arrived in Bethlehem as the barley harvest began.

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Thursday, 20 August 2015 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about how God yet called another, and chose him to be judge over His people Israel, Jephthah, to liberate the people of God from oppression and tyranny of the Ammonites. He called Jephthah and made him the tool of victory against the Ammonites, crushing them and freeing the Israelites after many years of suffering.

But Jephthah made a vow before God, which certainly made him to regret having made such a vow. He vowed that whatever came out of his house, he would sacrifice it to God, and his own daughter became a victim of his own lack of faith and impulsiveness. He made a vow to the Lord, likely because there remained doubt in his heart that he could have done what he was called to do.

Remember that Jesus told His disciples and the people not to swear or make a vow in the Name of God? That is because when one makes a vow, that means actually that the person is not entirely sure or committed to the cause for which he was making a vow for. If one is sure about making a commitment or a decision, and if one is able to make a stand, then surely, a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would suffice.

In the Gospel today, Jesus told His disciples and the people of God the parable of the wedding garment, which is related to what we have heard in the first reading. In that parable we heard how the king held a wedding feast where he invited many of his invited guests, to come and join in the celebration, and yet those invited guests refused to come and continued with their own lives as if ignoring the king and his wedding feast.

The king represents the Lord, and the wedding feast represents the gathering of the people of God who had been invited to the feast, where the King, our Lord, had given us His blessings, to share in the food and drink which He blesses us with. And in this, we see yet another connection with what we have witnessed in the first reading today.

And what is this connection? Jephthah indeed had made such a great vow, and on one side, we can see how he should not have done that. However, the connection that we should see is how Jephthah fulfilled the vow which he had made to the Lord, and gave even his only daughter to God, as a sacrifice according to his vow, and how this is in perfect parallel and harmony to the example of Jesus, the Son of God.

For God Himself had been perfectly faithful to His promise and vow to us, to the covenants which He had established and renewed again and again with us mankind, since the days of Adam, to the days of Abraham and then David, and until the time of Jesus, and until this very day and on the days that are to come. God showed His perfect faithfulness and love, by giving us and not holding back from us, His only Son, whom He sent into the world to be our Redeemer.

And through this God had also invited all of us, His beloved people, to the banquet which He had prepared for all of us. He had prepared for us the banquet, the wedding feast, in which God and mankind are to be reunited again, because the shackles and obstacles of sin had been removed from all of us who heeded His call and join in the feast of the Lord.

The Holy Mass is the banquet of the Lord, where God gives us His own Body and Blood, that we may share in them and therefore, partake of the Lord, and be made holy and just. For the Lord Himself would dwell in us and make us the Temples of His holy presence.

And then, this is where we must take heed of another part of the Gospel today. The man without the wedding garment was taken out of the banquet and cast out into utter darkness. This means that, when we take part in the Holy Mass, and whenever we live our daily lives, we who have the Lord dwelling in us, the Temple of His presence and His Spirit, should act according to what He had shown and taught us, abandon all forms of wickedness and sin, or else risk to suffer the consequences of our Lord’s wrath.

Let us all follow the example of St. Bernard the Abbot, also known as St. Bernard of Clairvaux, whose feast we celebrate today. He was truly a holy and great man, whose works and devotions to the Lord was fully well known throughout Christendom, and many aspired to follow his examples. He dedicated his whole life in good service of the Lord, preaching the truth about the Lord and calling many sinners to forgiveness and grace of God.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux did not fear trouble or heresy that were threatening the souls of many around him. He waded through the difficulties and challenges, and called out many people out of the darkness and out of the terrible heresies, by his tireless works and commitments, seeking to bring salvation to as many as possible. He preached well into his old age, and trying to advance the cause of the Lord and His Church wherever possible.

May Almighty God help us that we may also follow in the examples of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and become ever more devoted servants of our Lord, and in our words and actions, may all of us be true to our faith and bring love and goodness to each other in all the world. God bless us all. Amen.

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Thursday, 20 August 2015 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Matthew 22 : 1-14

At that time, Jesus went on speaking to them in parables : “This story throws light on the kingdom of heaven : A king celebrated the wedding of his son. He sent his servants to call the invited guests to the wedding feast, but the guests refused to come.”

“Again he sent other servants, ordering them to say to the invited guests, ‘I have prepared a banquet, slaughtered my fattened calves and other animals, and now everything is ready. Come to the wedding!’ But they paid no attention and went away, some to their fields, and some to their work. Others seized the servants of the king, insulted them and killed them.”

“The king became angry. He sent his troops to destroy those murderers and burn their city. Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is prepared, but the invited guests were not worthy. Go instead to the crossroads, and invite everyone you find to the wedding feast.'”

“The servants went out at once into the streets and gathered everyone they found, good and bad alike, so that the hall was filled with guests. The king came in to see those who were at table, and he noticed a man not wearing the festal garment. So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in without the wedding garment?’ But the man remained silent.”

“So the king said to his servants, ‘Bind his hands and feet and throw him into the dark, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ Know that many are called, but few are chosen.”

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Thursday, 20 August 2015 : 20th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 39 : 5, 7-8a, 8b-9, 10

Blessed is the one who relies on the Lord and does not look to the proud nor go astray after false gods.

Sacrifice and oblation You did not desire; this You had me understand. Burnt offering and sin offering You do not require. Then I said, “Here I come!”

As the scroll says of me. To do Your will is my delight, o God, for Your Law is within my heart.

In the great assembly I have proclaimed Your saving help. My lips, o Lord, I did not seal – You know that very well.