way of the Lord

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Tuesday, 8 March 2016 : 4th Week of Lent, Memorial of St. John of God, Religious (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 45 : 2-3, 5-6, 8-9ab

God is our strength and protection, an ever-present help in affliction. We will not fear, therefore, though the earth be shaken and the mountains plunge into the seas.

There is a river whose streams bring joy to the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within, the city cannot quake, for God’s help is upon it at the break of day.

For with us is the Lord of hosts, the God of Jacob, our refuge. Come, see the works of the Lord – the marvellous things He has done in the world.

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Monday, 7 March 2016 : 4th Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Perpetua and St. Felicity, Martyrs (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard about the Lord Who chastised His people for their lack of faith, and for their refusal to believe, unless they see the signs and wonders, the miracles and all the supernatural things that they asked of the Lord Jesus to do and perform for them. They had no love for the Lord in their hearts, but instead, they only wanted to be awed and be satisfied of their curiosity.

They did not understand how God loves them so much and desires for them to be saved, from all of their shortcomings, their unworthiness, the wickedness of their sins and all of the evil and wicked things that had separated them from the fullness of God’s love and grace. But fortunately for us, our Lord loves us very greatly, and despite of our sins, He still wants to bring us out of our misery and suffering in sin, and lead us into eternal life.

However, what He needs from us is our commitment, our obedience and devotion to Him, the desire we need to have, the choice we need to make, in consciously walking on His paths towards salvation in God. This we can see in our Gospel today, where we heard about an official who came begging for Jesus our Lord to come and heal his son who was very sick and who was on the verge of death.

Jesus did not come with him, but instead, He just said simply that his son would live, and the official believed in him. He had faith in Jesus, and indeed, his son was healed and made whole again. Because of the faith which he had, and because of the commitment and devotion that he was willing to make to God, he has been granted his wishes, and God showed His favour upon him and his family.

This is contrasted to the attitude of the other people, which Jesus Himself showed in the very same Gospel passage, as they demanded Jesus to perform miracles and wonders, and even when He has done so many, many times, healing the sick and the dying, and even when He had raised the dead back to life, they still would not believe and doubted Him and refused to listen to Him.

This is an attitude which we cannot have, brothers and sisters in Christ, but rather, we should be more like the faithful official, having faith in God, even if we do not see His wonders and miracles right before our eyes. Our faith should not be founded upon awe and satisfaction of the flesh, but instead it should be based upon a genuine desire to love the Lord our God.

Today we commemorate the feast of St. Perpetua and St. Felicity, two great saints and martyrs, two great and holy women, whose life and examples can indeed be great inspiration for us, on how we ought to live our lives as the children and follower of our God. They were faithful and committed to the end, and they did not even fear death in the effort to keep themselves faithful to God.

They had different origins, St. Perpetua as a mother bearing a child, while St. Felicity was a slave, but both believed in God, and they met their end together having complete faith in God’s salvation. It was told that St. Perpetua converted to the faith and then when the Roman Emperor persecuted the faithful, despite the wishes of her father and others for her to reject her faith, but she remained committed and was imprisoned as a result.

The same devotion was shown by St. Felicity who was just a mere slave, and yet truly, through her faith in God, she had been made free from her true slavery, the slavery to sin and to the chains of the flesh. Through her dedication, commitment and courage, she had made herself worthy of God’s eternal life, salvation and redemption.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, shall we also seek to be like them, and do the same as what they have done? This means, shall we be truly faithful to the Lord in all things, and commit ourselves totally to Him? Let us no longer be separated from the love of God because of our disobedience, our reluctance and fear to follow Him, but instead, like the official, let us put our trust in Jesus, and commit ourselves to walk in His path and follow Him with all of our strength. God bless us all. Amen.

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Monday, 7 March 2016 : 4th Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Perpetua and St. Felicity, Martyrs (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Isaiah 65 : 17-21

I now create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind again. Be glad forever and rejoice in what I create; for I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in My people.

The sound of distress and the voice of weeping will not be heard in it anymore. You will no longer know of dead children or of adults who do not live out a lifetime. One who reaches a hundred years will have died a mere youth, but one who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.

They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant crops and eat their fruit.

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Sunday, 6 March 2016 : Fourth Sunday of Lent, Laetare Sunday (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet or Rose (Laetare Sunday)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, as we come together for the fourth Sunday in the season of Lent, we celebrate this Sunday which is also called the Laetare Sunday, where the liturgical colour is rose, similar to that of Gaudete Sunday in Advent, where the same theme is celebrated. Laetare, similar to Gaudete means ‘joy’ in Latin. It is a time for us to take a break in our sombre mood of the Lenten season, and to find and anticipate the joy that is to come as we celebrate Easter.

In the Scripture readings today we heard the joyful occasions when in the Book of Deuteronomy, we heard about the Israelites finally reaching the Promised Land after travelling for more than forty years, in the reparation and repentance for their sins and the sins of their forefathers, who refused to listen to God and disobeyed Him, that the Lord punished them to wander in the desert for forty years. Those who disobeyed God had all perished by the time the people of Israel reached the holy land, save for Joshua the faithful servant of God and Caleb, his compatriot.

In this we see how God purified His people through trials and tribulations, through pain and suffering in this world, that those who have not been able to stay faithful to the Lord and who have not been able to remain obedient, fell aside on the path to salvation and were cast out from the salvation in God. In this season of Lent, we too are purifying ourselves from the corruptions of the flesh, and the wickedness that remained in us, through our fasting and abstinences.

But the focus on this day remains on the outcome of all of our efforts to seek out the Lord our God through sincere and genuine penitential works. The celebratory nature of the Laetare Sunday in the midst of Lent is truly meant to help us and to encourage us in our path by showing us and allowing us to reflect on the future, on the outcome of our faith and of all our efforts, that all the difficulties we encountered for the sake of the Lord shall be rewarded wonderfully in the end.

In the Gospel we heard about the story of the prodigal son, which all of us should be very familiar with, that is the story told by Jesus about the younger son of a wealthy man and landowner, who went on to take his share of the inheritance and went to a foreign country, spending all of them on sinful living and wicked acts, and he only realised his folly when he had spent the last of his money, and he was left all alone in that foreign land.

And in his suffering, he came to realise the love which his father had for him, and decided with great courage to come back to his father, being greatly humbled and indeed, humiliated for his condition and situation. And he would not so much go home as to beg his father to forgive him and to treat him henceforth as a mere slave or servant, for he had greatly disappointed his father by his actions, and he was sure that his father would be angry with him.

And yet we knew how his father forgave him and welcomed him back with open arms, with great love and great joy. This story is a perfect representation of us mankind, and of our own attempt in reaching out to the Lord and in seeking His mercy when we have sinned against Him and disobeyed Him, and then how the Lord, our loving Father wants to welcome us back into His embrace. In that our Lord also mentioned the reality, that for every sinner that repents and changes his or her path and be saved, there is indeed a great joy and celebration in heaven.

All in all, everything we have heard and discussed thus far are about God’s loving and tender care for us, His mercy and forgiveness that He will give us mankind, forgiving us our sins and healing us from all of our troubles. In the Gospel passage used for the alternative reading in the case of preparation of the catechumens for the Sacrament of Baptism this Easter, taken from the Gospel of St. John, we heard yet another example, of how Jesus our Lord healed the blind man and restored to him his sight.

But we have to pay attention to a very important point that many people would easily overlook if they are not careful enough. And this is very important because especially in our time today, and even as many within the Church mistakenly believed, that while the Lord offered His mercy, forgiveness and salvation freely to all people without exception and without condition, but we often missed out the fine details of the truth, that no forgiveness, salvation or redemption can come about unless we accept it first, and devote ourselves fully to it.

This is why, in this season of Lent, it is important for all of us to understand its true purpose, and why we practice fasting, abstinence and all other observances, and why good deeds such as almsgiving and caring for the poor are encouraged. That is because, mercy and forgiveness from God only exercise their full function once we mankind, who accepted the mercy of God, internalised that mercy in us through real action, showing our regret, our sincere repentance, and the desire to turn away from all of our past sins, not just by mere words, but also through action.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, sin is like a disease, and it is indeed a disease, not of the flesh, but of the soul. But from the soul, sin can corrupt everything, including our minds, our hearts and our flesh too, our whole being. And it is this corruption that keep us away from truly being able to be reunited with our God, our loving Father.

If we look at the story of the prodigal son, it was not the part where he was reunited with his father that we have to focus our attention on. That part is just the conclusion of the long path that was initiated earlier on, namely at the moment when the prodigal younger son in the foreign land was suffering from the great famine and hunger, and he made that crucial decision to return to his father and beg for his mercy rather than to remain in his current state.

Similarly therefore, for sinners like us mankind, it is our conscious choice to accept God’s loving mercy and forgiveness, and then also our desire to be forgiven, shown by our rejection of the past sins and wickedness we used to embrace and enjoy, that bring us closer to the salvation in God. It is our commitment to lead a new life filled with faith in God that brings about our justification and redemption.

Therefore, in this great season of Lent, a great and perfect opportunity for us, let us all help one another in finding our path to the Lord. Let us all encourage each other to live a life no longer bound by sin and wickedness, but instead giving ourselves to the tender mercy of our Lord, and committing ourselves to a new life filled with hope, with faith and with love.

May our every actions bring us closer to God, and may we speak with one voice, and act with one determination, showing that we are all truly disciples and children of our Lord, our loving Father, that all justified in Him, we may receive our just rewards and the eternal life promised to all of His faithful ones. Let us look forward to the true joy that is to come, not the false joy of the world, but the joy found in the Lord alone. May God bless us all, and strengthen us in all of our endeavours. Amen.

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Sunday, 6 March 2016 : Fourth Sunday of Lent, Laetare Sunday (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet or Rose (Laetare Sunday)

2 Corinthians 5 : 17-21

For that same reason, the one who is in Christ is a new creature. For him the old things have passed away; a new world has come. All this is the work of God Who in Christ reconciled us to Himself, and Who entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation. Because in Christ God reconciled the world with Himself, no longer taking into account their trespasses and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

So we present ourselves as ambassadors in the Name of Christ, as if God Himself makes an appeal to you through us. Let God reconcile you; this we ask you in the Name of Christ. He had no sin, but God made Him bear our sin, so that in Him we might share the holiness of God.

Alternative reading (Readings from Year A)

Ephesians 5 : 8-14

You were once darkness, but you are now light in the Lord. Behave as children of light; the fruits of light are kindness, justice and truth in every form. You yourselves search out what pleases the Lord, and take no part in works of darkness that are of no benefit; expose them instead.

Indeed, it is a shame even to speak of what those people do in secret, but as soon as it is exposed to the light, everything becomes clear; and what is unmasked, becomes clear through light. Therefore it is said : “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead that the light of Christ may shine on you.”

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Sunday, 6 March 2016 : Fourth Sunday of Lent, Laetare Sunday (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet or Rose (Laetare Sunday)

Psalm 33 : 2-3, 4-5, 6-7

I will bless the Lord all my days; His praise will be ever on my lips. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the lowly hear and rejoice.

Oh, let us magnify the Lord, together let us glorify His Name! I sought the Lord, and He answered me; from all my fears He delivered me.

They who look to Him are radiant with joy, their faces never clouded with shame. When the poor cry out, the Lord hears and saves them from distress.

Alternative reading (Readings from Year A)

Psalm 22 : 1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters, He restores my soul.

He guides me through the right paths for His Name’s sake. Although I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are beside me : Your rod and Your staff comfort me.

You spread a table before me in the presence of my foes. You anoint my head with oil; my cup is overflowing.

Goodness and kindness will follow me all the days of my life. I shall dwell in the house of the Lord as long as I live.

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Saturday, 5 March 2016 : 3rd Week of Lent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard the Lord’s call for us to return to Him with a repentant and sorrowful heart, fully regretting all the sins and all the wickedness that we have committed in our lives, as He had spoken to the prophet Hosea. God showed His willingness to forgive sinners and show His mercy to them, as long as they are willing to genuinely abandon behind their sins and repent.

And just as the prophet Hosea preached to the peoples of Israel and Judah at the time, the same principle still applies for us even today. God is calling us to His side, to take our place at our rightful location, that is with Him. But in order to do this, we have to leave behind the corruptions and wicked things that had separated us from the love of God in the first place, that is sin.

In the Gospel, Jesus was comparing the attitudes of two persons, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. In order to fully understand this, we have to first be aware of and to understand the reality of the society of Jesus’ time, that is the comparison between those two people based on their standing in the society. Then, we can see indeed how we all should live, and how we should act if we are to receive God’s mercy and forgiveness.

The Pharisees were very well respected and even rightly feared among the people in the society of the Israelites at the time, including the teachers of the Law and the scribes, for these were the ones who were well educated by the standards of the time, as compared to the rest of the people who were mostly illiterate and uneducated. They were deemed as the leaders of the people, especially in the matter of the faith.

On the other hand, the tax collectors were often reviled and rejected by the society, as they were firstly seen as those who tried to extort money from the people and no one indeed liked to pay taxes, especially not when the taxes ended up in the hands of their Roman masters and conquerors. They were therefore seen as collaborators and traitors, betraying their homeland and their country, as well as their people.

But yet, the actions of the Pharisees and the tax collectors showed that the people’s prejudice is wrong, and they should not have treated the respective persons in accordance to their own preconceived prejudices and ideas. It means that no righteous person has the right to condemn another whom he or she deem to be worse than them, and neither will sinner fall into damnation without hope for redemption.

In this season of Lent therefore, let us all help one another on the path to eternal redemption, rather than pursuing our usual judgmental attitudes. It is in our nature to look down on others who we deem to be inferior to us. But it is time for us to reflect on our own actions, as we too are sinners. We should not hinder the path of those who look for God’s redemption, and instead we should help and encourage one another in finding our way to the Lord.

Let us all commit ourselves anew to God, and let us all show love in all of our actions, both to the Lord our God, as well as to our fellow men. May through our actions, filled with love, true faith and devotion to God, we may be brought to eternal salvation and receive the fullness of God’s grace forevermore. God bless us all. Amen.

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Friday, 4 March 2016 : 3rd Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Casimir (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard from the Holy Scriptures about the Law of God which we all mankind should listen to and obey to, as it has been given by God to us as the means through which our salvation would come from. God had given us these laws as the guides by which we may find our way to return to the Lord our God, especially after we have been wayward on our path to Him.

For while we may think that it is easy and convenient to speak about love, but it is in reality not as easy as it seems. Love is not as what we all often think about, as in our minds and in our understanding, we often look at love as the love and even the lust existing between two peoples, between a man and a woman, who desire each other, and then developing into a relationship.

No, it is not just this kind of love, as the problem is that, in our limited human understanding, we see love as the twisted love that it is in our world today. Let us just see how it was a few weeks ago when the secular world is celebrating in its own way the Valentine’s Day, as a day of romancing and as a day of materialistic craze as one tries to outdo the other in trying to impress their respective lovers.

And we see the amount of advertising, commercialisation and the monetisation of love, where it becomes a commodity for trading and selling, instead of what love is in accordance to what God had told us and shown us. This is the kind of love that we know, not true love but a selfish love, love that cares only about ourselves and those to whom we share that love, but often at the expense of the others whom we do not care about.

You all may be asking, why did I spend so much time going through love and its concept, and how it is realised in our world today, while the Gospel today speaks of God’s Law? That is because, just as in the first reading from the Book of the prophet Hosea spoke about the love that God is pouring down on us all mankind, and how He wants to release us from the suffering of this world due to our sins, and how He wants to make us pure and clean once again, then it was His Law that was an instrument through which He was trying to help us to accomplish this.

And that Law of God is about love, and is indeed Love itself, for God is Love. If God is true and real Love, then surely all that He brings into this world will be filled with love. And in the Gospel, Jesus summarised aptly that God’s Law is truly about two fundamental things that we have to do, that is to first of all, love God before all other things, and do so with all of our hearts’ strength, with all of our focus and effort, and then do the same for the others around us, our fellow men.

In order to understand this fully, we have to realise the context in which the Gospel passage happened in the past. During the time of Jesus, and particularly throughout His ministry, the Pharisees, the elders and the teachers of the Law were often against Jesus and His works, and they always tried to find fault in Him and to condemn Him, because in their eyes and in their minds, He had violated and disobeyed the Law of God as they knew it.

That is because to them, the Law has become empty and devoid of its true meaning, and instead become an instrument of oppression and punishment, and through their way of observing the Law, they did these without true understanding of the purpose of the Law that is the love of God, made through the Law for His desire to bring mankind filled with sin to repentance and thus to receive from Him the eternal redemption.

Therefore, on this day, all of us are called to find out more about God’s commandments of love, and then after understanding them, their purpose and attention, let us all not stop there but continue to commit ourselves to do what the Lord had asked us to do in our own lives. And this season of Lent is the perfect time and opportunity for us to do what is good, filled with charity, care and concern for our brethren around us, and thus devoting ourselves to love God all the more.

Today we mark the feast of St. Casimir of Poland, a faithful and devoted servant of God who devoted his whole life to the Lord. St. Casimir was a royal prince and indeed the crown prince of both the kingdoms of Poland and Lithuania, a mighty Christian kingdom at that time. He was destined to succeed as king, but he never let that fact to hold him back and to distract him, as he continued to devote himself fully to God and to the people.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, St. Casimir showed by his actions, by his ministry and service to the weak and the poor, the rejected ones and the ostracised, he helped them and showed the love of God to them. He was a humble and pious man, who obeyed the Lord and His commandments at every opportunity. He showed true understanding of the Law, by his loving actions and by his dedication. And through this, he showed us how to be a real disciple of the Lord.

May God help us all to draw ever nearer to Him, and may all of us be strengthened in our hearts to love God and our fellow men ever more, without condition and without selfishness and desire attached, but instead with great sincerity. Let us all follow the examples of St. Casimir of Poland and also the examples of the other saints and holy people of God, and be made worthy and holy ourselves, and be worthy of the kingdom of God. Amen.

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Friday, 4 March 2016 : 3rd Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Casimir (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Psalm 80 : 6c-8a, 8bc-9, 10-11ab, 14 and 17

They heard a voice they did not know : “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. I relieved your shoulder from burden; I freed your hands. You called in distress, and I saved you.”

“Unseen, I answered you in thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Hear, My people, as I admonish you. If only you would listen, o Israel!

There shall be no strange god among you, you shall not worship any alien god, for I the Lord am your God, Who led you forth from the land of Egypt.

If only My people would listen, if only Israel would walk in My ways. I would feed you with the finest wheat and satisfy you with honey from the rock.

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Thursday, 3 March 2016 : 3rd Week of Lent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard the word of God spoken through the Holy Scriptures, where we heard about how the people doubted what the Lord Jesus had done, and even accused Him of colluding with the devil and his forces in order to perform the miraculous things that He had done. It was indeed sad to witness such a turn of events, and surely many of us are asking, why is it so?

It is because their hearts had been hardened by prejudice, by selfishness, by stubbornness, and by worldly desires of men, who sought to satisfy themselves first at the expense of others. They hardened their hearts because Jesus spoke the truth to them, and the truth to these people was not something that is good or appealing. For it was revealed the extent of their sinfulness, and how wicked they had been.

And they had not changed in their ways of life. They resorted to wicked and unholy things, and they refused when someone came telling them to turn away from their paths. That is the nature of our human pride, our ego, that we are reluctant to admit that we are wrong and that the other person or people were right. Our ego and ambition prevented us from looking humbly at things and instead of rectifying the issues at hand, we ended up perpetuating the bad things we have done.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we are all called to reject all sorts of ego and human pride, and all the negative emotions and wickedness inside each one of us. And why is this very important, brethren? What Jesus our Lord had told us this day also ring true in its other meaning and reminder to us. When He spoke of a kingdom being divided against itself will fall, it also spoke about the same division that is currently inflicted in us.

What does this mean? Let us look at the state of the Church itself, brothers and sisters, that we have so many people who professed faith in the Lord, and yet equally as many professed the faith in their own ways, and many followed their own versions of the faith, refusing to obey the Lord and His Church, of which there is only one, the One and only Holy Mother Church, the Catholic Church.

God established His Church on earth through His Apostles and the other disciples, who continued His mission through many places and from cities to cities, as more and more people come to believe in the Lord. But it was human ego and pride that made them to start to be distracted and be swayed in their path towards God. And instead of listening to the Lord and obeying His commandment through His Church, they chose to forge their own path and broke apart the unity of the Church.

And thus the scandal of disunity was born, and many Christians everywhere were divided against each other, and many refused to listen to the call of God calling them to return to the Holy Mother Church. They accused one another and calling each other liars and sinners, while they themselves did not look at their own sins and wrongdoings. And these are what we should avoid doing in this season of Lent.

Rather, God is calling us to work hard and to labour for unity, for the complete reunification of His Church, the Body of our Lord consisting of all those who professed true faith in God and in full obedience to Him in the unity of His Church under the authority of St. Peter and his successors, the Popes as well as the bishops united to the authority of the Vicar of Christ.

And so, let us all, brethren in Christ, work together as one to overcome our human emotions and challenges that had become our obstacles in the path to true unity, and let us help to restore the unity of the faithful in God’s Church, by learning to be humble, and to preach humility, so that all those who have left the true faith by following their own paths may return in humility and together we may find our way to God and to His salvation. May God bless us all, His Church. Amen.