way of the Lord

by

Friday, 11 March 2016 : 4th Week of Lent (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

John 7 : 1-2, 10, 25-30

After this Jesus went around Galilee; He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews wanted to kill Him. Now the Jewish feast of the Tents was at hand. But after His brothers had gone to the festival, He also went up, not publicly but in secret.

Some of the people of Jerusalem said, “Is this not the Man they want to kill? And here He is speaking freely, and they do not say a word to Him? Can it be that the rulers know that this is really the Christ? Yet we know where this Man comes from; but when the Christ appears, no one will know where He comes from.”

So Jesus announced in a loud voice in the Temple court where He was teaching, “You say that you know Me and know where I come from! I have not come of Myself; I was sent by the One Who is true, and you do not know Him. I know Him for I come from Him and He sent Me.”

They would have arrested Him, but no one laid hands on Him because His time had not yet come.

by

Thursday, 10 March 2016 : 4th Week of Lent (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day we heard about God Who was angry at His people when they betrayed Him and went for the worship of the pagan idol, in the form of a golden calf, in a story that all of us are surely familiar with, as we must have heard it during our catechism classes. We heard how God became angry and how He punished them for their wrongdoings, by destroying those who have led the people to sin, and those who have refused to repent and follow God.

But many of us would not know or remember the part saying that Moses pleaded with God to spare His people from His anger and from the destruction He intended for them because of their sins. Many of us would not remember how Moses pleaded before God to think of the covenant which He had established with His faithful servants, and to remember of the great love which He had for all of mankind, His beloved creations.

In this story, we see the same narrative of sin and redemption which we often hear during this season of Lent, a time of penitence and repentance, where we are all called to change our wicked and mistaken ways, and to turn away from all these, following once again the path towards God our Lord and Saviour. In the story which we heard today, we hear a very important message for us all, that there is hope for us as long as we are willing to repent and commit ourselves to God.

But it will not be an easy path for us to take, for the path towards redemption and salvation in God is likely to be filled with challenges and obstacles, and Satan who is trying to tempt and lure us away from God, will certainly not remain passive or quiet while we are being drawn into the Lord’s salvation. He is actively trying to pull us away from God and to bring us down into the deepest depths of hell.

Shall we then follow his path or the path of the Lord? Satan’s path is apparently easier for us, more enticing, and more pleasurable, and indeed, more exciting than the path that God offers us, but at the end of that path is a great cliff, from which if we fall, we can never rise back up. On the other hand, God’s path, is a path of challenges, difficulties and also filled with many sufferings, and yet at the end of the journey is our eternal rewards in God.

The people of God in the desert chose the easy way out, when they thought that Moses and God had abandoned them after he ascended for forty days at Mount Horeb. They were too quickly tempted by the temptations of their flesh, and they did not have patience in them. They placed their trust in the gold and in all the wealth that they received when they left Egypt. The love for God was not in their hearts.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is a reminder to all of us, that through this season of Lent, and indeed throughout our lives, we should endeavour to resist the temptations of our flesh, and abandon the false idols that had kept us away from truly being devoted and faithful servants of the Lord our God. Are these false idols the same as the idols of Israel at that time? Maybe, and maybe not.

If we are talking about idols from stone, wood or anything else carved in the images of animals, beasts, and other worldly things, then we may not have these common in our world today, but if we talk about the false idols and gods of money, of wealth and human desires, then we can see indeed, how these, the pursuits of wealth, the greed of men for more and more, are keeping us away from God.

Let us all therefore learn and strive to keep faithfully God’s laws and commandments, and let us be disciplined in our lives, so that we may resist all the temptations of the devil and all of his seducers, and remain true in love to the Lord our God. May God bless us all, now and forever. Amen.

by

Thursday, 10 March 2016 : 4th Week of Lent (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

John 5 : 31-47

At that time, Jesus spoke to the Jews, “If I bore witness to Myself, My testimony would be worthless. But Another One is bearing witness to Me, and I know that His testimony is true when He bears witness to Me. John also bore witness to the truth when you sent messengers to him, but I do not seek such human testimony; I recall this for you, so that you may be saved.”

“John was a burning and shining lamp, and for a while you were willing to enjoy his light. But I have greater evidence than that of John – the works which the Father entrusted to Me to carry out. The very works I do bear witness : The Father has sent Me.”

“Thus He Who bears witness to Me is the Father Who sent Me. You have never heard His voice and have never seen His likeness; therefore, as long as you do not believe His messenger, His word is not in you. You search in the Scriptures, thinking that in them you will find life; yet Scripture bears witness to Me. But you refuse to come to Me, that you may live.”

“I am not seeking human praise; but I have known that love of God is not within you, for I have come in My Father’s Name and you do not accept Me. If another comes in his own name, you will accept him. As long as you seek praise from one another, instead of seeking the glory which comes from the only God, how can you believe?”

“Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father. Moses himself, in whom you placed your hope, accuses you. If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote of Me. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?”

by

Thursday, 10 March 2016 : 4th Week of Lent (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Exodus 32 : 7-14

Then YHVH said to Moses, “Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them and have made for themselves a molten calf; they have bowed down before it and sacrificed to it and said : ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of Egypt.'”

And YHVH said to Moses, “I see that these people are a stiff-necked people. Now just leave Me that My anger may blaze against them. I will destroy them, but of you I will make a great nation.”

But Moses calmed the anger of YHVH, his God, and said, “Why, o YHVH, should Your anger burst against Your people whom You brought out of the land of Egypt with such great power and with a mighty hand? Let not the Egyptians say : ‘YHVH brought them out with evil intent, for He wanted to kill them in the mountains and wipe them from the face of the earth.'”

“Turn away from the heat of Your anger and do not bring disaster on Your people. Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the promise You Yourself swore : I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land I spoke about I will give to them as an everlasting inheritance.”

YHVH then changed His mind and would not yet harm His people.

by

Wednesday, 9 March 2016 : 4th Week of Lent, Memorial of St. Frances of Rome, Religious (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today’s readings from the Sacred Scriptures speak to us about the affirmation of God’s love and devotion to us, and how He cares for us and wanted us to be loved and to be saved from eternal damnation, by bringing us all out of the darkness and into the light, out of wickedness and into righteousness and justice.

He spoke the truth and had shown us the truth through the sending of His own Son, Jesus, into the world, that all those who believe in Him, the Son of God, may believe in the Father also Who had sent His Son, so that we may be saved. Remember the passage, that God so loved the world, that He sent us His only Son, so that all who believe in Him will not perish, but have eternal life? That is exactly what I meant.

He does not desire our destruction or our damnation to hell, although many of us might have think so. As the Scripture says, He does not take pleasure in seeing the suffering of His children, His people, and His beloved ones. And this is why He showed His love in such a way, that He gave us nothing less than the perfect gift of His own Son, to be our Redeemer through even His own suffering and death.

Therefore, as we embark and continue through this season of Lent, it is important for us to take note of this truth and make use of the many opportunities which He had given us, so that we may accept His rich offerings of mercy and forgiveness, and turn back to Him with all of our strength and with all of our hearts. God does not want our destruction, but if we continue in our path in this world as we have often done, then we are risking our downfall and damnation.

If God has shown us such love and tender care, then why should we ignore Him or even reject Him and all the love He had shown us? We have nothing to lose from following God and being obedient to Him, although many of us are easily tempted by the temptations of this world, which Satan and his allies are trying to push onto us, so that we may not be saved and instead fall into sin.

Sin is our great enemy, and it is a great obstacle for all of us who are trying to reach out to God and to His salvation. It is the chains that keep us bound and separated from the love of God. If we want to be freed from this chain, then all of us ought to commit ourselves to change our ways and cast away all of our wicked ways, and find the way to salvation by doing what God had taught us to do, to obey all of His laws and commandments.

Today we celebrate the feast day of St. Frances of Rome, a woman religious, who devoted herself completely to the service of the Lord. She committed herself to a life of devotion and service to the people of God. Even though she was born to the rich and aristocratic class, but after her husband passed away, she devoted herself to a life of service for the poor, the destitute and the dying.

She allowed her own house to become a hospital for the sick and the dying, opening her doors for those who are suffering and the poor who did not have anyone who cared for them. She experienced many ridicule and challenges throughout the course of her work and dedication, and she faced them all with faith and commitment that all of us can indeed be inspired with. She continued to work hard regardless, and did her best to love those whom had been unloved.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, looking at the examples of St. Frances of Rome, all of us should also spend our time during this season of Lent to devote our time to serve the poor, the less fortunate, and help all those who have not been so blessed as we are. We should keep in mind those who are suffering, and do all that we can to help them, and to love them just as God had loved all of us.

Let us all imitate our Lord and His glorious saints, and let us love one another just as He had loved us. Let us reject all forms of sins and wickedness, and commit ourselves to a life of righteousness and justice. God bless us all and be with us always. Amen.

by

Tuesday, 8 March 2016 : 4th Week of Lent, Memorial of St. John of God, Religious (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, we heard about God Who brought upon healing on His people, by His love and mercy through which He blessed the sick and those who were with illness, making them whole and healthy once again. God had mercy on them and wanted to bring them to healing and succour, and to remove from them their suffering.

But in order to do so, we ourselves must come to accept God’s offer of love and mercy. We must open ourselves to the outpouring of God’s care and concern for us. After all, if He had come down Himself from heaven, and if He had been willing to sacrifice Himself for our sake, for our liberation and redemption, then we too should show our gratitude and thanks, and devote ourselves to Him.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, God will not abandon us to the darkness and to destruction unless we ourselves desire that destruction, either because we refuse to accept His love and mercy, or if we are stubborn in our insistence to follow our own path and desires, in doing what the world wants from us. Satan, the evil one is trying his best to pull us all away from salvation because through his temptations of the world, he tempts us with many things that may prevent us from following our true path to God.

Sin is the chain that keeps us bound into this world, and prevented us from achieving true liberation in God. Sin is the disease and corruption that is eating at our hearts, our minds and our souls, corrupting us from the inside and turning us into wicked beings. And with the sin we have in us, we have been made unworthy to stand before the presence of God and to be with Him.

Why is this so, brethren? That is because while God loves us all perfectly and greatly, but sin has no place before Him, as He is pure good and perfect. And sin is something that is abominable to God, because it was born from disobedience and rebellion against Him. If we want to have a share in His glory, then we have to endeavour to leave behind our sinful ways and abandon all of those wickedness in favour of righteousness.

This means that, as Christians, all of us should be using our time, and especially during this season of Lent to rectify our ways and to repent from all of our sins. This is the best and perfect time for us to be renewed in all our dealings and in all our ways, and this is the moment for us to look for a new opportunity at redemption and forgiveness of sins, the time for us to reflect on our own lives, and if we have strayed from the path towards salvation, this is the time for us to turn back.

In this season of Lent, we are all called to the presence of God, to be humble and to be sorrowful over our sins and past wickedness. We are all called to commit ourselves anew to the Lord, and to show that faith through our own concrete actions and dedications, through which we are to bring ourselves into God’s loving hands, and to be forgiven from our countless trespasses.

Today, we celebrate the feast day of St. John of God, a faithful religious and preacher, a great and dedicated servant of God, who committed his whole life in the service of God and the Gospel, and the spreading of the Good News of the Gospel to the whole world. St. John of God is truly a role model to all of us the faithful, to follow as we make our progress on the path towards salvation.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, St. John of God was renowned through his extensive service to the poor, the sick and the dying as part of the Knights Hospitallers, what we now know as the Military Order of Malta. He has devoted himself, his whole life and his efforts to serve the least and the last of the society, helping them to get by, and by showing his care and compassion for them, he showed the love of God to mankind.

Many people were inspired by his examples, and rightly, all of us should be inspired by those same examples as well. We should also lead the same exemplary life as those holy men and women had done. They too were once sinners, but what is important is that, they turned away from their sins, and found the path towards the glory of eternal life.

May God help us on our path, and may He bless us in all of our endeavours, so that in everything that we do, we may draw ever closer to the Lord and to His salvation. God bless us all. Amen.

by

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.

by

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.

by

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.

by

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.