Weekday of Ordinary Time

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Monday, 9 September 2013 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Claver, Priest (Scripture Reflection)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, indeed, as we heard today, God has His plans for all of us. And that plan is none other than in Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world. He had prepared that plan for salvation long beforehand, ever since the time of creation, ever since the fall of our forefathers into sin.

God did not abandon us to our fate that is to die because of our wrongdoings, our betrayal against His love, but He wants us to live, an eternal life with Him in heaven. That was why He had given us His love throughout time, sending prophets and messengers one after another, in order to bring mankind back to the Lord their God and Father who loves them.

God’s prophets and messengers existed throughout time, especially ones we know in Israel, the people first chosen by the Lord to be His people. He sent these prophets and messengers to Israel and put in them the understanding and knowledge on His plan for salvation of mankind. The prophets proclaimed the message of the Lord, but many kept their hearts shut tight against the Lord, spurning His eternal love.

But God is not someone who easily gives up. Yes, He did punish those who had wronged and disobeyed His commandments, like what He did to the people of Israel in the desert, where they wandered for forty years to atone for their sins and rebelliousness, but He ultimately did all that, because He loved all of them so greatly, that it truly had caused Him pain to watch them going astray from His ways.

He had given His laws and commandments to His people, through Moses His servant and through the prophets. He gave them all these so that they will stay true to His ways and do not fall back into their past, sinful ways. These laws are to be their guide in their lives, and yet, over time, they had taken it for granted and misused them for their own purposes. They become enslaved to the Law and had forgotten what the true intention and meaning of the Law was.

That is why, He chose to send the deliverer, in Jesus, the long awaited Messiah , the Christ. In Him, the Lord finally revealed the true intent and the plan that He had crafted for our salvation. Through Christ He had revealed the nature of His Law, including that of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made as a special day to honour the Lord, to love God, and not as a punishment for certain.

The Pharisees failed to see that, having had a set mind in their own version of the Law, and always set themselves in the path of Christ, always trying in futility to find fault with Him, particularly on the matter of the observance of the Sabbath Law. Instead of learning the true meaning of the Law, that is love, the love God has for all of us, they withdrew themselves into their sinfulness. This was what Christ had condemned them all for.

Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Peter Claver. He was a great priest and missionary, as a Spanish Jesuit who lived during the height of the Spanish American Empire in what is now known as Latin or South America. He lived at a time of conquest, when many native people of Spanish America were made into slaves of the Spanish conquerors.

St. Peter Claver worked hard as a missionary, and dedicated himself to his work, especially to the slaves, the enslaved natives of his mission work area. He denounced the slavery of fellow mankind, in an era when these slaves and the native people of the Americas in general were considered as less than human beings and were being traded as if they were animals.

He worked so hard that he kind of ‘enslaved himself to his work and ministry, but in this manner, his ‘enslavement’ is a good one. Unlike the Pharisees who enslaved themselves and the people they led on human laws, earning the condemnation of Christ, St. Peter Claver enslaved himself to the cause of love, the care of the least among all, the slaves and the lowest in the society.

Indeed, Christ Himself had done the same for all of us, for the sake of God’s children. He made Himself a slave for us, tortured and suffering, and died the humiliating death of a slave and a criminal on the cross, so that we may live and not die, so that we may not be slave again to sin, but to be free and not just any freedom, but eternal freedom from death and sin.

May the Lord who loves us so much that He is willing to die a slave’s death that we can be free from our enslavement to sin, together with St. Peter Claver and his love for the least among mankind and slaves, empower us, to dare to make a difference in our world today, and to be able to give our love and our entire being to them, in the way similar to what Christ and St. Peter Claver had done, that no one will remain unloved, and no one will remain a slave. Amen.

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Monday, 9 September 2013 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Claver, Priest (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Luke 6 : 6-11

On another Sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and began teaching. There was a man with a paralyzed right hand, and the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees watched Him : Would Jesus heal the man on the Sabbath? If He did, they could accuse Him.

But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to the man, “Get up, and stand in the middle.” Then He spoke to them, “I want to ask you : What is allowed by the Law on the Sabbath? To do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” And Jesus looked around at them all.

Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored, becoming as healthy as the other. But they were furious, and began to discuss with one another how they could deal with Jesus.

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Monday, 9 September 2013 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Claver, Priest (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Psalm 61 : 6-7, 9

Find rest in God alone, o my soul; from Him comes my hope. He alone is my rock and my salvation; with Him as my stronghold, I shall not be overcome.

Trust in Him at all times, my people; pour out your hearts before Him; God is our refuge.

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Monday, 9 September 2013 : 23rd Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Peter Claver, Priest (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Colossians 1 : 24 – Colossians 2 : 3

At present I rejoice when I suffer for you; I complete in my own flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of His body, which is the Church. For I am serving the Church since God entrusted to me the ministry to make the word of God fully known. I mean that mysterious plan that for centuries and generations remained secret, and which God has now revealed to His holy ones.

God willed to make known to them the riches and even the Glory that His mysterious plan reserved for the pagan nations : Christ is in you and you may hope God’s Glory. This Christ we preach. We warn and teach everyone true wisdom, aiming to make everyone perfect in Christ. For this cause I labour and struggle with the energy of Christ working powerfully in me.

I want you to know how I strive for you, for those of Laodicea and for so many who have not met me personally. I pray that all may be encouraged. May you be established in love, that you may obtain all the riches of a full understanding and know the mystery of God, Christ Himself. For in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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Saturday, 7 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we heard and be reaffirmed today, of the love our God has for all of us. That the Lord in His love, has given all of Himself through His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. He gave to us an outpouring of His love, and in His strong desire to bring us and reunite us back to Himself, He had sent us prophets and messengers to deliver His will to the people and to guide them to return to Him.

In the same way, through Moses His servant, He had revealed to His children about Himself, how He cares very much for their wellbeing, and showed them His love even when they constantly rebelled against His love, worshipping other gods instead of Him. He even gave them a set of law, the Law He gave to His people through Moses, as a guide for them in their lives that they will always remain ever faithful and ever loving, and stay in the grace of God at all times.

Yet, despite this, the people of God did not remain faithful, and they still rebelled constantly against the Lord, defying His laws and commandment, shutting out prophets and murdering them for showing the truth about their sinful ways, and for nagging them to return to God their Father who loves them. But the Lord did not give up on them, and continued to show His love without end, even when His children often did not love Him back.

The Lord in His anger and wrath could easily have wiped us out because of our rebelliousness, our sins, and our stubbornness, but He kept His faith in all of us, and willing for us to repent our sinful ways and return to the Lord. That was why, He gave His all and become one of us through Jesus, incarnate of the Blessed Virgin His mother, and through that, become a source of hope and salvation for all mankind.

Christ came into this world as the Messiah, the awaited Saviour, but He is also a prophet and a teacher, who explained the true meaning and intention of the Law and rules that God had given mankind through Moses and His other prophets and messengers. He showed that the Law does not exist to lord over the people of God, and neither should it become a yoke to burden the people.

The Pharisees did obey the Law, indeed, they appeared to be pious and obedient people of the Law. However most of them, and the teachers of the Law obeyed the Law in a perverted manner, in a twisted version of their own ‘Law’. Their love for the Law is superficial, and they enslaved themselves and the people they led without having the Lord at the centre of their lives.

That is why, brothers and sisters, today we are reminded of the need to truly love God and give of our whole self to Him, just as He had loved us and gave us His entire being to us, and He was not even shy to shed His own Body and Blood that we may live. Let us not love our Lord and God only superficially as the Pharisees had once done.

Yes, we need to obey rules and laws, but we must not be enslaved to them. Rather, let us make use of the Law of God as a way for us to better control and coordinate ourselves that we will be able to stay true to the Lord and remain firmly in God’s love and favour, that we will not fall into the temptations of the evil one. God bless us all. Amen.

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Saturday, 7 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Luke 6 : 1-5

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the corn fields, and His disciples began to pick heads of grain, crushing them in their hands for food. Some of the Pharisees asked them, “Why do you do what is forbidden on the Sabbath?”

Then Jesus spoke up and asked them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his men were hungry? He entered the house of God, took and ate the bread of the offering, and even gave some to his men, though only priests are allowed to eat that bread.”

And Jesus added, “The Son of Man is Lord and rules over the sabbath.”

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Saturday, 7 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Psalm 53 : 3-4, 6 and 8

By Your Name, o God, save me; You, the Valiant, uphold my cause. Hear my prayer, o God; listen to the words of my mouth.

See, God is my helper; the Lord upholds my life. Freely will I offer sacrifice to You and praise Your Name, o Lord, for it is good.

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Saturday, 7 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White

Colossians 1 : 21-23

You yourselves were once estranged and opposed to God because of your evil deeds, but now God has reconciled you in the human body of His Son through His death, so that you may be without fault, holy and blameless before Him.

Only stand firm, upon the foundation of your faith, and be steadfast in hope. Keep in mind the Gospel you have heard, which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which, I, Paul, became a minister.

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Friday, 6 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflection)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are truly reminded as ever always, that Christ our Lord lies at the very centre of our lives, and that He is what truly matters for us, while other things are often unnecessary and illusory in nature. Nonetheless, we often forget this fact and relegate Christ into a corner rather than embracing and appreciating the central role Christ plays in each of our own lives.

Everything that we have, our lives, our faith, and our very existence owed greatly to the Lord, through whom indeed we were created, given life, and then a new life through salvation of the cross. For Christ is the Word of God, through whom the Lord our Creator had created all of creation including all of us, whom He had given life through the breath of His Mouth.

And even when we had gone astray from Him and be estranged from Him like that of a child estranged from the father, He willed for us to be reconciled to Himself, by the outpouring of His love, through the numerous help He sent us along our journey in this world, through countless messengers and prophets who carried His desire and love for us, the desire to be reunited with us, His lost children.

That even when we had rejected Him by turning a deaf ear to the heedings of His prophets, and even tortured and slaughtered them in cold blood, He did not give up, but in His great and infinite love, He allowed Himself to give the ultimate manifestation of His love, that is to be incarnate through a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary His mother, to be our Saviour, through which He gathered all people to Himself.

Such great is His love for us, that He even readied Himself to suffer for us, to die for us, all that we who deserved death, will not die an agonising and eternal death, separated from God who loves us. That we may live through His death on the cross which saves, and through His glorious resurrection, through which He brought unto Himself those who had died in Him.

He dedicated Himself so much for us, that He became flesh like us, and through that mystical incarnation of the divine into man, God is united to us in an everlasting bond of love. Yes, brethren, just as Jesus in the Gospel today imagined Himself as the bridegroom in the midst of His beloved, so indeed He is our bridegroom, the divine bridegroom by God made man.

He rebuked the Pharisees not because it is wrong to fast or observe the laws, but precisely because they did not truly love God, and did not have God in their hearts, that God is not at the centre of their lives as He wanted from them. Instead, they allowed their pride, arrogance, selfishness, and human nature to take over them and corrupt them.

They fast for the sake of fasting, and to show the people their great piety, which is indeed evident, but truly empty. Many of them had missed entirely the point of doing things in accordance to the rules of the Lord, and did them not out of love for God, but out of love for themselves and their ‘greatness’ and ‘superior piety and faith’.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today, the lessons we had heard and taken into ourselves are truly beneficial for us. Let us make the best use out of them, in order to be able to dedicate ourselves and devote ourselves more to the Lord our God, that no matter whatever we are doing, we always do it for the Lord, and keep Him always at the very centre of our lives, each and every one of us. God bless us all. Amen.

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Friday, 6 September 2013 : 22nd Week of Ordinary Time (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Luke 5 : 33-39

Some people asked Jesus, “The disciples of John fast often and say long prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. Why is it that Your disciples eat and drink?” Then Jesus said to them, “You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them. But later the bridegroom will be taken from them, and they will fast in those days.”

Jesus also told them this parable : “No one tears a piece from a new coat to put it on an old one; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece taken from the new will not match the old. No one puts new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed as well. But new wine must be put into fresh skins. Yet no one who has tasted old wine is eager to drink new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”