Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saints)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we all listened to the words of the Sacred Scriptures, we are reminded once again of the salvation which we have generously received from the hands of the Lord Himself, Who has come into our midst, to reveal His love and mercy, His power and compassion so that by this act of supreme and most perfect, selfless and ever enduring love, God has made available to us the most wonderful grace of His love, reaching out to us through His Son, opening for us all the gates of Heaven. That is why we have to appreciate everything that He has done for us and realise what we have been entrusted with as Christians, in the need for all of us to love Him sincerely and genuinely from our hearts, and to carry out the missions He has given to us.

In our first reading today, we heard of the words mentioned by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who is likely St. Luke the Evangelist based on historical evidence, in which the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ into this world has become the means by which He has destroyed the chains of sin and death that have dominated over us and kept us ensnared and trapped in the path towards our destruction and damnation. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews explained how the Messiah, the Saviour of all had embraced our human nature for the specific reason of saving each and every one of us from the destruction because of our sins which have corrupted us all and our human nature. This justified the appearance of God in the form of Man, as Christ our Lord has revealed to us.

We must first understand that from the very beginning of time, we have been corrupted and made imperfect because of our disobedience against God and our choice of obeying and trusting the words of the evil one, Satan, the Deceiver rather than to put our faith and trust in God. We allowed ourselves to be swayed by the temptations of worldly desires, ambitions, greed and more such that we defiled our pure and perfect origin, as it had been crafted and designed by God, and we allowed sin to corrupt our nature through disobedience against God, His will, Law and commandments. And hence, in order to undo this corruption of our nature and to remove the darkness that has covered all of us, separating us from the fullness of God’s grace and love, hence God sent unto us His deliverance through His Son.

For this Son of God has been incarnate in the flesh, and become one just like us all, assuming our human nature and existence just as mentioned by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. And by His total and perfect obedience to the will of His Heavenly Father, He has become the archetype and example of the perfect Man, that had once been lost to us through sin and death. He has indeed become the New Adam, the New Man, breaking us all free from the dominion of sin, which He did by offering Himself as our High Priest, making the perfect supplication and offer on our behalf by the means of His own Most Precious Body and Blood, broken and outpoured for our sake on the Altar of His Cross at Calvary.

He can do this because while He has assumed our human flesh, existence and nature, but His humanity is distinct from His Divinity, and yet, both are indivisible and inseparable from each other. That is why, what He is offering is offering of Humanity which is made perfect by His Divinity and by His freedom from any taint of sin. Through Him and all of His works, His most perfect and wonderful sacrifice, in His ever enduring and powerful love for us, Christ has opened the doors of salvation to us, which in our Gospel passage today we have also heard and witnessed His great desire to bring us all back to the light of God’s grace, healing and strengthening us all amidst all the hardships and challenges that we have to face in life.

In that account from the Gospel according to St. Mark the Evangelist, we heard how the Lord healed the very sick mother-in-law of His disciple Simon, later to be known as St. Peter the Apostle. That occasion made many people to come and bring their sick ones to Him, so that He might heal them all as well. The Lord could very well have stayed and remained there, as He was very popular thanks to His miracles and healing, but as we heard, He chose to quietly leave the place behind, so that He could fulfil the missions and works that had been entrusted to Him. In this we have seen yet another example of the obedience and faithfulness which Christ has shown in His life, as opposed to the disobedience which we have shown against God.

It is a reminder that all of us as Christians must always strive to be obedient to God and to listen to Him at all times. We should not allow ourselves to be swayed by our desires, by the many temptations and evils all around us, which may attempt to lead us astray by pandering to our desires and our ego, our ambitions and attachments to worldly matters and pursuits. This is where we have to make the strong and firm stand for our faith in the Lord, committing ourselves wholeheartedly to His cause and to obey Him just as Jesus our Lord has shown us all the perfect example for all of us to follow. As Christians it is important that we should always show good examples and be good role models in our faith to everyone around us.

Today, the Church traditionally celebrates the Feast of St. Paul the Hermit, an ascetic whose great faith, commitment and obedience to God can truly inspire us all in how we all should live our own faith. He was a longtime ascetic after he escaped from the intense persecution of Christian during his youth by the Roman Emperor Decius, when he was just in his early twenties. According to tradition and hagiographic evidence, he would spend the next nine decades living as a hermit in the desert, dedicating himself to prayerful life in solitude, which eventually inspired many other people like the other famous ascetic, St. Anthony of Egypt, also known as St. Anthony the Great. His great holiness and dedication to a life pleasing to God is indeed an inspiration to us all as Christians, a life detached from all the worldly glory and temptations that often distract and mislead us down the wrong paths in life.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore follow in the examples shown to us by the Lord Himself and also His saints, like St. Paul the Hermit among others. Let us all strive to be ever more faithful and committed to the cause of the Lord from now on, doing whatever we can so that our every words, actions and deeds, our every interactions and good works, efforts and in all things, we will inspire many more people to live lives that are truly and wholeheartedly committed to God, as faithful and good Christians, now and always. Amen.