Wednesday

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Wednesday, 1 March 2017 : Ash Wednesday (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet
Joel 2 : 12-18

YHVH says, “Yet even now, return to Me with your whole heart, with fasting, weeping and mourning. Rend your heart, not your garment. Return to YHVH, your God – gracious and compassionate.” YHVH is slow to anger, full of kindness, and He repents of having punished.

Who knows? Probably He will relent once more and spare some part of the harvest from which we may bring sacred offerings to YHVH, your God. Blow the trumpet in Zion, proclaim a sacred fast, call a solemn assembly. Gather the people, sanctify the community, bring together the elders, even the children and infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his bed, and the bride her room.

Between the vestibule and the altar, let the priests, YHVH’s ministers, weep and say : Spare Your people, YHVH? Do not humble them or make them an object of scorn among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples : Where is their God?

YHVH has become jealous for His land; He has had pity on His people.

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Wednesday, 22 February 2017 : Feast of Chair of St. Peter the Apostle (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day all of us celebrate together the great Feast of the Chair of St. Peter the Apostle. We may be wondering why is it that we celebrate the feast of a chair, but this chair mentioned here is not just a mere physical object, not just merely a chair, but even more importantly, it is the seat of authority of the Apostle St. Peter, whom God had appointed to be the leader of all of His disciples, and to whom He had entrusted the governance and authority over His entire Church.

The Chair of St. Peter refers to the Cathedra of St. Peter, or Cathedra Sancti Petri, the seat of the Episcopal authority of St. Peter as the first Bishop of Rome. And like that of the other bishops, the seat of the bishop or the Cathedra is the symbol of the authority which has been granted over the bishop over the entire flock in the diocese entrusted to his care. But for St. Peter, this authority granted to him is unique in a sense that as the Bishop of Rome, he and his many successors, that is the Popes throughout the ages have been given the authority not just over the Diocese of Rome, but also over the entire Church.

Thus today’s feast has a special significance, as it reminds us of the unity that all of us Christians have with the entire Church, anchored on the person of the Pope, the Vicar of Christ, who is the successor of St. Peter the Apostle, on whom God had established His Church. God had established His Church upon the solid rock foundation of St. Peter, whose name Cephas or Kepha in Aramaic, and Petros in Greek means rock.

We may think that God chose great and intellectual men, people with great capabilities and seemingly superhuman abilities. But that is not the way how God chose His servants and those whom He had deemed to be worthy. Men may have all the plans they prepared, and they may have all sorts of things in their mind, but it was not mankind who chose themselves before God, but God Who chose His people. He called those whom He had deemed to be worthy, not by any human standards, but by His standards.

St. Peter and the other members of the Twelve Apostles of our Lord Jesus were a diverse group of people, hailing from different origins and had different character and upbringing. Yet, most if not all of them are similar in one thing, that they, in the sight and opinion of mankind, are those who we commonly least expect to be those who were chosen for such important position.

Some of the Apostles were simple men, some holding positions that brought little prestige and acknowledgement then, even until today, such as fishermen and poor people of little renown. Most of the Apostles were illiterate and uneducated, a fact which we ourselves read in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, when the Pharisees and the elders were astounded at the great wisdom and eloquence at which the supposedly uneducated Apostles carried out the defence and witnessing of their faith.

St. Peter most important of all was a simple fisherman, who if we read the Gospels, is not a particularly faithful person. At times, there were moments when he faced challenges, doubts and weakness in his faith to the Lord. He was among the first of whom Jesus had called and chosen, and throughout his journey with our Lord, we heard of how, he stumbled when he tried to cross to Jesus walking on the water, as he doubted and his faith faltered, and started to sink before Jesus rescued him.

St. Peter also stumbled at Mount Tabor during the Transfiguration, when he wanted to convince Jesus to remain there on top of the mountain, awed by the glory of the Lord revealed to him there, and not wanting to go down to the lands below, to what Jesus had mentioned that He was to face great persecution, to be handed over to the chief priests and suffer death, and His disciples would suffer with Him.

And certainly all of us knew how St. Peter and the other Apostles fell asleep during the time when Jesus told them to stay on guard with Him at the Garden of Gethsemane during His time of agony and suffering, waiting for the betrayer Judas to come and take Him to the chief priests. He was chided with the other Apostles by Jesus, Who told them that while the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Finally, we all know how St. Peter denied Jesus three times during the time when He was incarcerated in the High Priest’s residence. In his fear, St. Peter denied Jesus not just once, but three times when the people around him accused him of being among those who followed Jesus. At that time, when Jesus had been arrested and were undergoing false charges of blasphemy, it was a very difficult time to be found out as those who followed Him, and St. Peter faltered.

Then all of must be wondering as to why Jesus chose St. Peter above all else, to be the one to whom He entrusted His entire Church, the entire body of all His faithful and beloved people to. Should God not have chosen better? Surely there are many more people who are more worthy of the task? This is exactly where what I have spoken about came to apply. It is not what man sees that God sees, and God sees faith and goodness where we may have failed to see it.

Even though his faith was weak, wavering, unsteady and shaken at many times, God saw in St. Peter, a heart and soul filled with genuine love and dedication, which is a trait also shared by the other Apostles, save that of Judas Iscariot the betrayer. All of them wavered in their faith, and had shaky belief in the Lord, but they all persevered through and did not give up, unlike Judas Iscariot. They showed the same qualities shared by the many other saints and martyrs of our Church.

God saw the goodness in them, and He forgave them their trespasses and failures, just as how Jesus forgave St. Peter three times after He had risen from the dead. It was a clear sign how Jesus had forgiven St. Peter and his denial, and his previous shortcomings. He knew just how much St. Peter loved Him, and just how far he would give himself to stand up and defend his faith in Him.

He gave him and the other Apostles His Holy Spirit, the Helper and strength through which He transformed these humble, uneducated and seemingly inconsequential and insignificant people, into steadfast and solid rocks of faith, the principal one which was the great faith of St. Peter, whom the Lord appointed to be the leader over all of the other Apostles, and by the virtue of that leadership, and the command which Jesus had given him, to take care of all the flock of the Lord.

Through all of these things which we have listened and pondered on this day, all of us can see how, first of all, God chose seemingly ordinary and insignificant man and woman, to be those whom He had chosen and blessed. He chose even sinners and those considered by many to be worthless and wicked, knowing that if these people repent, not only that they would be capable of truly great deeds, but at the same time, more soul would return to the Lord and be reconciled with Him.

Many saints were themselves great sinners, and they were called through repentance and much grief, having regretted their sins and wickedness, and therefore became the new parts of the Church, enriching it with their newfound faith and zeal. In the footsteps of the Apostles they have walked and toiled to make sure that the works which God had begun through His Apostles would be continued, that is the conversion of all mankind and the salvation of all souls. Through all of these, all of their contributions and works, they have glorified God and became examples for us all to follow.

Thus, all of us today need to continue the works of the Apostles, and united under the leadership of the Pope, who is the successor of St. Peter the Apostle, we need to continue to bring the Church through this modern day and time, and continue to preach the Good News of God, and call many others to repentance. The Lord had established His firm foundation on St. Peter, who was a simple man with wavering faith, but whom God had affirmed and strengthened, and thereafter became the solid rock foundation of the Church.

Let us all grow stronger in faith, by placing our complete trust in the Lord, and obey Him in all of His laws, commandments and precepts. Let us uphold the entirety of the teachings of the Church, through which we obediently follow the commandments of the Lord, just as He had taught these to His own Apostles and disciples. Let us all pray also for the intention of the entire Universal Church, and also for the Pope, our Vicar and leader, the Vicar of Christ on earth.

May the Lord bless us all, His Church on earth, and also our Pope, bishops, priests and all who had given themselves to the service of the Gospel and for the salvation of all mankind. May He strengthen our faith, that even though we may falter as St. Peter once did, but having put together our hope and faith in the Lord, we may grow stronger in faith, and become immovable like a rock, with steadfast and undying devotion as St. Peter and the other Apostles had in their Lord and Master, our God. St. Peter the Apostle, Vicar of Christ and Shepherd of all God’s people, pray for us and for God’s Church. Amen.

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Wednesday, 22 February 2017 : Feast of Chair of St. Peter the Apostle (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
Matthew 16 : 13-19

At that time, Jesus came to Caesarea Philippi. He asked His disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They said, “For some of them You are John the Baptist, for others Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”

Jesus asked them, “But you, who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “It is well for you, Simon Bar-Jona, for it is not flesh or blood that has revealed this to you, but My Father in heaven.”

“And now I say to you : You are Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church; and never will the powers of death overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven : whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you unbind on earth shall be unbound in heaven.”

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Wednesday, 22 February 2017 : Feast of Chair of St. Peter the Apostle (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White
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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Wednesday, 22 February 2017 : Feast of Chair of St. Peter the Apostle (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White
1 Peter 5 : 1-4

I now address myself to those elders among you; I, too, am an elder and a witness to the sufferings of Christ, hoping to share the Glory that is to be revealed.

Shepherd the flock which God has entrusted to you, guarding it not out of obligation but willingly for God’s sake; not as one looking for a reward but with a generous heart; do not lord it over those in your care, rather be an example to your flock.

Then, when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will be given a crown of unfading glory.

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Wednesday, 15 February 2017 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, on this day, as we continue the discourse from the Sacred Scriptures, we listened to the tale of Noah and his Ark, which endured the great flood with all of his family and with all of kinds of living animals and plants. Noah was saved from damnation and utter distraction because of his faith, dedication to God and to His ways, there is a new hope that arises within us, because God did not forget His beloved ones, and neither did He want to see us perish.

He had sent the great flood to the earth, wiping out all mankind save for Noah, for they were wicked and they refused to repent, and therefore, they met their fated destruction, because of their inability to change themselves and their ways of life. They died and perished because of their own sins, the result of their disobedience against God and His ways.

Noah alone had remained faithful, and therefore, God extended His protection and grace over him and his whole family, that he would not be counted among the wicked and the unjust, and perish with them. Instead, he was carried away safely in the Ark with his whole family, and from him descended all the sons and daughters of man, all the way down the generations to us today.

We are all around in this world because God has had mercy on our ancestors, on our forefathers. He has showed His love and forgiveness to them, and there were those among them who believed in God, turned away from their sins and followed Him. These were the ones who passed down their faith to their descendants, and from them, and also through the Church, we receive our faith.

And so great was God’s love for us that He gave us help and assistance throughout time, that whenever we fall into sin, He would give us His guides, prophets and messengers to remind us all of the true and right path, so that we would not fall deeper into the darkness and sin. There were many of those who refused to listen and therefore perish, but there were also those who listened to the Lord’s call, believed, and were saved.

Ultimately, He also gave us Himself through Jesus Christ His Son, Who came into the world in order to save us. He has done His many miraculous works, as what we heard in the Gospel today, healing those who were blind, and also those who were deaf, mute, paralysed, and also those who were afflicted and possessed by demons and wicked spirits.

He came into this world to rescue us, that we may not sink into the multitudes of our sins, and all the wickedness that are all around us. To this extent, He has established His Church, through which He gathered all those who believe in Him, and bring them to safety. For often the Church is likened to a boat, a ship sailing through the turbulent waters of this world. It was indeed just as how the Ark of Noah saved him and his family, with many other animals and plants from the destruction by the great flood.

God had given us all so much of His love, and now what we all need to do, is to replicate the same love which He had given us. We should not harden our hearts so much so that we became like those people living at Noah’s time, who must have laughed at Noah and mocked him for obeying the Lord’s command to build a great Ark. It was only when it was too late for them, when the flood took over them, that they realised their folly. But it was way too late for them.

Let us all spend some time to reflect on this matter, and learn to put forth more of our effort to love the Lord, by obeying Him and by listening to His words, following in His laws and commandments, so that in everything we say and do, we will always be found righteous by God, and be worthy to receive the eternal glory God had promised to all those who remain true and faithful to Him.

May the Lord bless us all and may He strengthen in us our faith, so that we may continue to serve Him with all our heart, and draw closer to Him with each and every passing day. God be with us all. Amen.

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Wednesday, 15 February 2017 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Mark 8 : 22-26

At that time, when Jesus and His disciples came to Bethsaida, He was asked to touch a blind man who was brought to Him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When He had put spittle on his eyes and laid His hands upon him, He asked, “Can you see anything?”

The man, who was beginning to see, replied, “I see people! They look like trees, but they move around.” Then Jesus laid His hands on his eyes again and the man could see perfectly. His sight was restored and he could see everything clearly. Then Jesus sent him home, saying, “Do not return to the village.”

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Wednesday, 15 February 2017 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Psalm 115 : 12-13, 14-15, 18-19

How can I repay the Lord for all His goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the Name of the Lord.

I will fulfil my vows to the Lord in the presence of all His people. It is painful to the Lord to see the death of His faithful.

I will carry out my vows to the Lord in the presence of His people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, o Jerusalem.

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Wednesday, 15 February 2017 : 6th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green
Genesis 8 : 6-13, 20-22

At the end of the forty days Noah opened the window of the Ark that he had built and let the raven out. This went off and kept flying to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth.

Then Noah let out the dove to see if the waters were receding from the earth. But the dove could not find a place to set its foot and flew back to him in the Ark for the waters still covered the surface of the whole earth. So Noah stretched out his hand, took hold of it and brought it back to himself in the Ark.

He waited some more days and again sent the dove out from the Ark. This time the dove came back to him in the evening with a fresh olive branch in its beak. Then Noah knew the waters had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and let the dove loose, but it did not return to him any more.

In the year six hundred and one, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the Ark and looked out and saw that the surface of the earth was dry. Noah built an altar to YHVH and, taking some of all the clean animals and all the clean birds, he offered burnt offerings on it.

YHVH smelled the pleasing aroma and said to Himself : “Never again will I curse the earth because of man, even though his heart is set on evil from childhood; never again will I strike down every living creature as I have done. As long as the earth lasts, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease to be.”

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Wednesday, 8 February 2017 : 5th Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints or Virgins)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in today’s Scripture readings, all of us heard about the account of the creation of Man, how God created the first of our kind and gave him life. He blessed them and gave them many things, and also the command and stewardship over the earth. It was also mentioned that God laid an important commandment to man, that he must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, a story which we are surely well acquainted with.

In that story we heard of how the first man, Adam and the first woman, Eve disobeyed God, when Satan disguised as a serpent tempted them to eat a fruit from the tree, and therefore gaining knowledge over good and evil to become like God their Creator. That was how mankind sinned and therefore were cast out of the Gardens of Eden, and were forced to endure sufferings on earth as a result of their disobedience.

But now let us ask this question to ourselves. Was it the forbidden fruit from the tree that had caused mankind to sin and to become wicked? Or was it because they themselves were unable to restrain their greed and failed to resist the temptations of the devil? This would become significant if we look into the Gospel passage today, where Jesus mentioned to the Pharisees and to the teachers of the Law, in their dispute about the rules of the laws that the latter tried to impose on the people of God.

We have to understand the dynamics and the historical developments of that time if we are to understand why Jesus struggled with these people, who refused to budge and adamantly tried to advance their own thinking against the truth revealed to all by God through Jesus. At that time, the Pharisees strictly enforced the rule of food prohibitions, or what is now known as the kosher rule.

They followed the old rule of Moses, which the Lord passed down to the people in the guidelines of what they ought to eat and not to eat. But at that time, the people of Israel were travelling in the desert, and they were truly rebellious and refused to obey the Lord and His ways. That was why God imposed on them the set of laws, rules and regulations that He had put in place so as to help them to control themselves and to help guide them on the way towards righteousness.

But God never intended for the laws to become a burden for His people, or as a tool to make people to lord it over others just because they conform to the rules, and while others did not. It was never God’s intention for His people to misunderstand the real meaning of His laws. Yet, that was precisely what the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law had done.

These people were too focused on the external applications of the Law, to the point that they were blinded to their own shortcomings and failures. They were so focused on the purity of their externals and all the observations of the laws they so carefully guarded, they had forgotten the most important commandment of all, that is to love and serve the Lord with all of their might and strength.

Many of the things which they had done, they did them in order to be seen and to be praised by the people who saw them. Many might have seen how they have observed fully the entirety of the laws of Moses, all of its rules and tenets, but on the other hand, as just mentioned, their intention for doing all these were wrong. God did not have the place of honour in their hearts as He should have.

It was just as how it was at the time of Adam and Eve. At that time, they disobeyed God and therefore sinned. It was not because of the fruit they ate that they have sinned, but because from their own hearts, wickedness had arisen, the inability to restrain their greed and desires which Satan used in order to bring about our downfall. In the same manner therefore, what Jesus said was very true, that what made someone impure is not something that we eat and bring in from the outside, but rather what came out from ourselves.

God created all things good and perfect, and therefore it is not right indeed to say that anything is impure or unclean. Rather, it was what had come out from our hearts that had led us into sin. It was our vulnerabilities and our tendency to fall into the temptations of worldliness which had brought us into sin, rather than anything else outside ourselves.

It is often that we, like the Pharisees and the elders, refused to see this truth because we are proud, and we do not want to lose our face, knowing that we are not perfect inside us, but dirty and wicked. And therefore, we put on masks of purity and piety, in order to hide the fact that we are sinners and delinquent rebels before God and men. But what we are doing is that we are just running away from the problem, and often, we end up in denial, which leads us all into an even greater sin, that is the refusal to repent from our sins.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is where perhaps we should look up to the examples of the holy saints we venerate and glorify today, namely St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita. St. Jerome Emiliani was an Italian priest whose deeds among the orphans and those who were suffering then, was greatly noted by his contemporaries, as he worked hard to ensure that these people were properly taken care of and not abandoned.

St. Jerome Emiliani established places for these people to settle in, renting houses for this purpose, and increasingly, there were more and more pious and loving people who followed in his footsteps and stepped in to help the orphans and the poor people to be able to have a decent living. Eventually a religious society founded upon the ideals and the works of St. Jerome Emiliani was established, through which many people would go on to follow in the footsteps of this great and holy saint.

Meanwhile, St. Josephine Bakhita was a former slave turned a pious nun, born in Sudan in northern Africa, and was sold to slavery at a very young age, when she was kidnapped by slave traders who sold her to the slave market. She was also sold and resold a few times between slave owners, which experiences troubled and traumatised her greatly.

Eventually she was bought by an Italian vice-consul, and through difficult moments, managed to make her way to Italy, where she received the faith and became one of the converts. She also managed to gain her freedom, and upon baptism, she chose to join the convent of religious sisters, becoming one of the Canossian sisters.

She eventually continued to serve God and His people dutifully, renowned for her great piety and faith, in her zeal in the service of God, and in how her holiness shone through her actions in life. She never forgot her experiences in life, how she had suffered through slavery and all the other injustices, and yet, as the perfect example of Christian love and virtue, it was told that when one youth asked her if she would forgive her captors and slavers, she immediately said without hesitation that she would forgive them, for without them, she would not be a Christian, a religious, and indeed, later a saint.

The examples of these two venerable saints can be our inspiration in life, brothers and sisters in Christ. We must follow in their footsteps, doing good in our lives, and not be trapped by our pride, our folly and our stubbornness to accept God’s grace, forgiveness and love. We must learn to be faithful as St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Josephine Bakhita had been faithful, and learn to love as they have loved.

May the Lord help us all, so that we may emulate the lives of His wonderful saints, and practice what they themselves had done, in our own lives. May the Lord bless us all and our works, so that they will bring much good to this world, and bring righteousness and justice upon ourselves, that we will be worthy of the Lord, and worthy to receive His promise of eternal life, purified from all of our sins. May God bless us all. Amen.